It seems that in the weeks since Gen. McChrystal’s report was leaked, that the Afghanistan discussion has been limited by a false binary: Is it better to send more troops to protect civilians or is it better to draw down troops and increase air strikes on Al Qaeda targets? Since the success of a greater troop commitment ultimately relies on the legitimacy of the Afghan government, a third and probably far better option is to first establish how legitimate that government can possibly be.[...]

There has been so much buzz about GOP.com that I had to check it out. And I am so, so, so glad I did[...]

It appears that, as a writer for the interwebs, it is incumbent upon me to comment on President Obama’s Nobel Prize. Everyone, it seems, is ambivalent about his receiving the prize, not least Obama himself. [...]

The Union and the Confederacy, as combatants in the Civil War, were each represented by a national flag.
The Union flag—not to be mistaken for Britain’s Union Jack—featured thirteen alternating red and white stripes and a white star for each state in the Union on a field of blue.  The Union Flag of 1859 sported 33 [...]

U.S. policy in Afghanistan increasingly reminds me of the episode of The Twilight Zone in which a little girl inadvertently slips though her bedroom wall and into a dimension not unlike an M.C. Escher drawing.

Who is Kim Jong-un? He’s the youngest son of Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang, North Korea’s ruthless leader. Kim Jong-un is now 26 and also the most likely to be his father’s successor. It’s not ironic that he’s also the most like his father in portly appearance as well as vicious personality more so than Kim Jong Il’s other two sons, Kim Jong-nam and [...]