Foreign Policy
The US and Torture: A Brazilian Perspective
Thanks to the Washington Monthly’s Nancy LeTourneau, I was alerted to another torture report that came out in recent days, this one from Brazil. That country’s National Truth Commission reported on its investigation into the 21-years of dictatorship that came ...
Read MoreCuba and the US
I have sometimes cited US-Cuban relations as an unusually pure illustration of the effects of the US presidential electoral college on policy. Cuba had been a major locus of Cold War history: the site of the US’s most embarrassing Cold ...
Read MoreTorture and Its Apologists
A notably fatuous defense of the use of torture by the Bush administration’s CIA came unsurprisingly from ex-President Bush himself, before the Senate Intelligence Committee report came out: We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the ...
Read MoreHamas: An Added Note
A friend of mine has reacted to my post of 10/7 with the correct observation that there is, indeed, a basis for believing that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel—that objective is in Hamas’s charter. I didn’t discuss ...
Read MoreWhat Does Hamas Want?
Once again I find myself taking issue with a generally admirable op-ed column by the NY Times’ Roger Cohen. Lamenting the inability of many Israelis and other Jews to recognize the humanity of the Palestinians, Cohen mentions in passing that ...
Read MoreIn contemplating evil, to understand is not to justify
How are we to make sense of a phenomenon like ISIL? A group of human beings who engage in acts of unspeakable cruelty with no apparent compunctions whatsoever. In a powerful column yesterday, the NY Times’ Roger Cohen argues that ...
Read MoreThe Syrian Illusion
Once again I find myself in the unusual position of favorably citing the NY Times’ Ross Douthat. In his column yesterday Douthat nicely debunked the plan, proposed by President Obama and now approved by Congress, to arm the so-called “moderate” ...
Read MoreObama, the US and ISIS
The President’s speech to the nation Wednesday can be reduced to two essential points: ISIS does not pose a present threat to the United States, but it does pose a potential long-term threat. We must therefore act against it. But ...
Read MoreThe Clinton Worldview
Hillary has clarified. She says that she really didn’t mean to attack President Obama’s foreign policies in that Atlantic interview last week. Maybe. But she did very clearly mean to stake out a position to the hawkish right of the ...
Read MoreIraq, Again
A couple of months ago, I said that it was hard to know the right course for the US in dealing with developments in Iraq, and that President Obama’s cautious approach was “about right.” Circumstances have changed, but my basic ...
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