October 24, 2024

This Election: Personal, Not Political

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. – H.L. Mencken Elections are seldom about issues. Indeed, this year you could argue that the only issue for the media and the Democrat party is Donald Trump. ...

January 31, 2024

Assessing Donald J. Trump

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” — William Shakespeare. If you are cynical and look at the Donald J. Trump phenomenon, you could say to yourself, “Who cares, it doesn’t matter; even if ...

October 19, 2023

Is Israel expendable?

James Jesus Angleton, former head of CIA counterintelligence, once said that the intelligence business is a “wilderness of mirrors.” Surely he was speaking about intelligence and policy at the merge, a junction now obscured by secrecy, bi...

August 25, 2023

False Starts in Republican Land

With the Republican Party primary debates, the 2024 U.S. presidential election is now underway.  Right out of the gate, like 2020 and 2022, American moderates and conservatives are living up to the low expectations they set for themselves....

July 28, 2023

Flooding the zone

Flooding the zone in American football usually means putting more pass receivers on one side of the line than the other team can reasonably cover.  In literature, the cliché usually means too much of everything.  If we had ...

July 24, 2023

Ukraine and the U.S. Response: Flooding the Zone

"This self-defeating behavior, so the argument goes, must be the result of warped domestic politics." – John Mearsheimer Flooding the zone in American football usually means putting more pass receivers on one side of the line...

June 13, 2023

The Three Republicans Worth Talking About for 2024

"Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." —Orwell The next American presidential election year should be a potboiler — not Orwell's 1984, but close. The playbook on the left is...

February 20, 2023

Forever Wars

“When fanatics are on top, there are no limits to oppression.” — H.L. Mencken February 24 will mark one year since the conflict between Ukraine and Russia reignited into armed hostilities. When Joe Biden was asked recently how...

December 24, 2022

The Valley and the Swamp

"Twitter is the place to find real-time, reliable information about the 2022 midterms  — whether you're looking for breaking news from reporters, information on voting, or policy positions from candidates. We aim to enable he...

October 12, 2022

A Take on Trump and Tulsi

"In order to have your voice heard in Washington, you must make some small contribution." —Elon Musk Donald Trump is a political vampire, now a mythical figure; folk hero to some and an ogre for others.  Try as they m...

July 28, 2022

Ukraine: A tale of two Victorias

We might now call the proxy war in Ukraine a tale of two Victorias — a contest between the world views of assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and Indiana congresswoman Victoria Spartz.  Nuland magically vanished from the headli...

June 21, 2022

Guns and Poses

"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working-class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." - George Orwell In many ways, gun arguments are similar to identity scrums. Like all ...

June 10, 2022

Unhinged

"People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." — George Orwell America has become a nation where political hysteria is, or aspires to be, normalized. The national...

May 10, 2022

Trump and Musk: A Hard Row to Hoe

Elon Musk and Donald Trump have a lot in common -- wealthy entrepreneurs who actually get thing things done. Personal peccadilloes aside, both are successful businessmen who work for a living, innovate, and actually create well-paying jobs in the pri...

April 23, 2022

What are Putin's objectives in Ukraine now?

Vladimir Putin once claimed that the Russian army could take Kiev in two weeks if the need arose.  Two months into the so-called "special military operation" of 2022, Putin's forecast seems to have hit a wall of reality. ...

March 21, 2022

A Great Reset Is Already Underway in Utah

We hear much these days about paradigm shifts and resets.  Much of the chat comes from crucibles like the World Economic Forum.  The WEF is a kind of "masters of the universe" boys club that meets to greet, eat, and ski ...

February 7, 2022

Is the US Too Rich to Get Foreign Policy Right?

The only bet more speculative than assessing personal motives might be a bet on conventional wisdom — issues like national security policy.  Just to game the system for a moment, let's look at possible personal political motives v...

December 11, 2021

How Notre Dame's outgoing coach measures up to legend Knute Rockne

"A coach's greatest asset is his sense of responsibility — the reliance placed on him by his players." —Knute Rockne Notre Dame used to be the iconic Catholic school, a place where academic, moral, and athletic standards ...

November 14, 2021

In the Age of Blowback

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” - Winston Churchill Not long ago, the adjective “bully” meant superb or wonderful. Indeed, Teddy Roosevelt coined the phrase “bu...

October 28, 2021

Gunfight at the PC Corral

"My definition of a man's man is a man who knows gun safety, and we all did." —Kurt Vonnegut Reality is often stranger than fiction. A few days ago, Alex Baldwin, an outspoken Hollywood political activist, shot and kille...

September 7, 2021

What If Intelligence Officers Were Asking the Questions at a Biden Press Conference?

“Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” – H. L. Mencken   “Presser” is media slang for a press conference; in theory, an opportunity for political mandarins to keep the public informed. Th...

August 24, 2021

Assessing the Taliban victory

“The history of the intelligence community is replete with violations of the trust of the American people.” – James Clapper In another time and place, I was the Director of Research and Russian (nee Soviet) Studies at USAF In...

May 30, 2021

The Jerusalem Jihad, Same as It Ever Was

"If we searched the entire world for a person, more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew.  Notice, I do not say the Israeli." —Hassan Nasrallah ...

March 19, 2021

ISIS, Air Power, and RAND

A candid book about small wars, Muslim conflicts in particular, is a rare volume these days. Government sponsored and/or commercial authors are loath to touch anything Islamic, especially fascist religious states like ISIS, in any context tactical, o...

March 1, 2021

Geriatric genocide in New York

"Who cares where they died? They died." —Andrew Cuomo Everybody has a COVID-19 story these days.   My tale begins in March 2020, when the Wuflu was new in America and Doctor Gucci (AKA Fauci) was still ambivalent a...

January 2, 2021

Boycott the Biden inauguration

"Sin by silence makes cowards of men." —Lincoln Good people across America are wringing their hands over the 2020 presidential election results.  Seventy million voters are in a lot of political angst. Worse still,...

November 2, 2020

The Bidens: A Delaware mafia

Delaware is not famous for much of anything except Dupont/Dow, on-shore tax havens, and a lucrative toll gate on the I-95 Interstate. Delaware's minor and opaque reputation may change as the Biden family corruption saga unfolds. If you have...

October 22, 2020

Why the Polls May be Wrong Again

Polls and pundits were wrong across the board prior to the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, the anti-Trump spin was so universal with pollsters and journalists in the last presidential election, that even three and a half years later, it’...

September 21, 2020

The Link between Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln

Donald Trump might be the most controversial president since Abraham Lincoln. The other day Trump compared himself to Lincoln in a civil rights context and ignited another media tantrum. Surely, Trump is no match for Lincoln's lawyerly reticen...

September 2, 2020

Public television couldn't stop slanting convention coverage

I am an equal opportunity political observer.  I watched or listened to both the Democrat and Republican national nominating conventions from gavel to gavel.  Call me a masochist if you will, but truth today is a lot like tilling a vacan...

June 22, 2020

Petraeus pathetically panders

General David Petraeus, USA (ret.) is in the headlines again.  The other day he appeared on the pages of the Atlantic, a left-of-center monthly, running a virtue signal above his tarnished four-star fender flag.  Se...

June 7, 2020

Revenge Racism Rules

A quintet of unmasked white tweens, oblivious to Covid social distancing, has been plastering our neighborhood with flyers. One reads “You are contributing to killing black people…do something you racist f***s.” Another reads ...

May 18, 2020

A tale of two governors

Donald Trump provoked a controversy midway through the 2020 COVID-19 crisis by asserting that he, the president, set national pandemic policy.  If the truth be told, he stepped onto a political minefield, the predictable push/pull of state ...

May 12, 2020

The Wuhan Virus, Globalism and the November Election

They say that truth is the first casualty in war. Surely, the Covid-19 battlefield is littered with as much hyperbole and misinformation as any other “war.” A crisis also tends to test conventional wisdom, theories of governance like glob...

April 16, 2020

Hazards of Warehousing the Elderly

The coronavirus pandemic has precipitated a behavioral sea change across the land. We all now do things that might have seemed ludicrous just a few short months ago; no handshakes, no hugs, no kisses, and no large gatherings. Social intercourse, l...

March 16, 2020

Cooking the debates

The 2020 Democrat primaries may have looked like a clown car, a food fight, or even a bloodbath, but all that noise masked the real signal.  Few moderators asked relevant questions on the left — or of the left. Who asks about the B...

January 6, 2020

Eastwood's jewel

Not many things get better with age.  Clint Eastwood might be the exception. At age 89, Eastwood still manages to redeem a film industry that usually panders to liberal tropes and adolescent morons.  His latest offering is a bi...

December 11, 2019

Quid Pro Quo Equals Trump Twice

The so-called House impeachment “inquiry” in November was a little like turning over rocks in a vacant lot. Every time you looked, something ugly crawled off. Alas, blowback is God’s way of dispensing poetic and political justice...

November 18, 2019

The Department of Defense Joins the Coup Cabal

We like to think of military officers as political eunuchs, but that fairy tale is a smug myth. No American government institutions, including the military services, thrive or survive in Washington without vigorous internal and external political eng...

February 15, 2017

First blood: Mike Flynn

"… never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." – John Donne Trump-haters have drawn first blood.  Michael Flynn was the first casualty.  General Flynn could come back into th...

February 8, 2017

Trump and Bannon: Buccaneer Brothers

Donald Trump is the hero in a fable of his own making.  In the beginning, he may not have been a true believer himself, but he was smart enough to recognize that Republicans were fed up with the Bush dynasty and business as usual on the right. ...

January 27, 2017

A Tale of Two Coups: Moscow 1991 and Washington 2016

The other day, I received an email from a schoolgirl in Moscow: New Year's salutations, thanks for a gift, and a request that read: "Get your troops out of Poland; love, your Russky niece." I laughed at her presumption about my in...

January 16, 2017

Requiem for a Lightweight: Obama Out

Critics often make for strange bedfellows.  Louis Farrakhan and Cornell West are examples.  Both argue that Barack Obama was not ready for prime time.  For Farrakhan, Obama failed on race and social issues.  For West, the 44th pre...

January 2, 2017

Trump Versus the Blue Wall in Washington

Much of what Donald Trump said during the 2016 campaign seemed to be braggadocio, bombast, and on occasion, a kind of non-specific cranial buzz. Still, if you listened carefully, and ignored the ambient noise, there was always a message in most of hi...

December 22, 2016

Fake News and Fake Intelligence

Fact and truth are often very different things. With fact, a thing is, or it is not – a fairly simple binary calculation.  An assertion might be a fact and at the same time not necessarily true.  Truth is an amphibian, a sinister spec...

December 14, 2016

Drain the Intelligence Swamp!

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on Public Television shortly before the presidential election for an extended interview with Charlie Rose. Mister Rose, like many of his peers these days, swings between hard news at dusk and b...

December 5, 2016

The DNC Has a Political Death Wish

Experience is the best teacher – or so says the conventional wisdom.  In practice, the most common lesson is that too many folks never learn – especially those encumbered by ideology.  Or as a philosopher might put it, "wha...

November 24, 2016

Giving Thanks: Donald Trump’s Top Ten

There are many things that can be said about the election of Donald Trump and most will probably get said before 20 January 17. Beyond an unlikely candidacy and an even more surprising election, Trump, long before inauguration, is an overachiever on ...

September 29, 2016

Dowd Out Loud

“Women are affected by the lunar tides once a month; men have raging hormones every day.” – Maureen Brigid Dowd                   ...

September 21, 2016

Debating Hillary

“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.”  - Christopher Hitchens The impending presidential debates are likely to be the best attended in the history of American politics. The viewing and listening audience ...

August 29, 2016

How the Clintons Gave American Foreign Policy its Muslim Tilt

The Clinton role in the rise of Islamic irredentism has now come full circle.  Bill Clinton might get the credit for the original Muslim tilt. Bosnia (1992-95) set the table for a series of interventions that gave birth to the so-called Arab Spr...

August 26, 2016

The Foreign Policy Establishment’s War on Trump

You probably never heard of Max Boot, not that you missed much. Like Ash Carter, Mister Boot is one of those defense intellectuals who makes a living from all things vicarious; consulting, “scholarship,” partisan journalism, political ...

August 9, 2016

Trump Is Dangerous?

All we know about Donald Trump’s policy is what he says, not what he has done or will do. Trump has no policy track record. He has never held office. Intimations of what he might do are often vague, too. Yet, beneath the rhetorical bluster, a f...

August 3, 2016

Brand Loyalty and Hillary

Politics is a visual experience. The images created during the late great American primary season are examples. First, we had the Trump clan, straight out of Lake Wobegon where “all the men are strong, the women good looking, and the children w...

July 25, 2016

In Like (General) Flynn?

The other day, after another a big jihad kill on the Cote d’Azur, the French Prime Minister lit a virtual firestorm by claiming that France will have to learn to “live with terrorism.”  Indeed, Manuel Walls, like Coco Channel i...

July 18, 2016

Open Season on Cops

The police were ambushed again in Baton Rouge on Sunday, three dead and three seriously wounded. A dozen cops were ambushed in Dallas on 7 July, five of those died. Police nationwide are literally in the crosshairs. Baton Rouge is just the latest ...

July 16, 2016

Globalism at Bay

The recent referendum in Britain, aka “Brexit,” might be a case study in poetic justice. David Cameron, the unctuous PM who sponsored the exit referendum, never expected a majority “yes” vote. Cameron is a typical political we...

June 30, 2016

Hillary’s coterie of anti-Semites

Hillary Clinton has a lot going for her in 2016. Among her primary assets we might list genitals (aka “first woman”), Bill’s and Barack’s coattails, pastel pant suits, felons, feminists, plus sizes, dependents, gender benders,...

June 22, 2016

Donald Trump and Hyphenated America

Matters of form, not substance are the things that get Donald Trump in trouble with the media and the establishment in 2016. Trump has not mastered the Orwellian arts; empty words, doublespeak, vacuous promises, and cluelessness. Trump is especial...

June 17, 2016

Israeli rabbi responds to Obama on Islamist threat

  It’s the video of the day, the most lucid and succinct analysis of the Islamist threat and Obama administration vacuity that I have heard in a while. Trump is correct. POTUS is stupid, ignorant, or possessed by a hidden agenda. Door n...

June 8, 2016

Muhammad Ali, Tool of Hucksters

I would have never thought to put Muhammad Ali (aka Cassius Clay) and Donald Trump in the same sentence, no less the same argument. Nonetheless, the other day, ABC did it for me. When Ali died, Donald Trump had some very gracious remarks about the bo...

May 31, 2016

General Petraeus and Victorious Jihad

You remember David Petraeus. He was the Obama era model for a politically correct general. Petraeus left the military with four stars and a chest full of medals only to be undone by Tampa camp followers and a subordinate female from his days in Kabul...

May 25, 2016

Putin and the Night Wolves

If nothing else, Vladimir Putin is a leader who paints Russia’s image with broad strokes. He overcame a KGB and Communist past to create a kind of democratic autocracy in Russia. He literally, and figuratively, restored Christianity and Orthodo...

May 18, 2016

Trump and the Victory Deficit

Donald Trump is an amateur politician. He might be the first to admit it. Surely, he is no amateur businessman; yet he still seems a bit naïve about rhetoric, bombast, and braggadocio in the public square. None of this makes his brutal candor an...

May 5, 2016

The Peter Pan Counter-Revolution

Monday morning quarterbacks are like book critics; they often confuse bestsellers with literature.  So it is with politics. We often have trouble distinguishing entertainment from culture.  2016 is one of those years, where interesting and ...

April 27, 2016

Growing up before November

The Republican primaries began as an opportunity to vote for someone.  Now that the choices have gone from a baker’s dozen to two, the last few primaries seem to be about voting against someone.  That’s sad.  Party regulars...

April 25, 2016

Trump Stumps Deniers

In any other election year, at this point in the primaries, party leaders would be rallying around the frontrunners in the name of unity. But 2016 is no ordinary year. Hillary Clinton’s coronation has been a bumpy ride thanks to Bernie Sanders,...

March 23, 2016

Dunces and Doctrines: Obama’s Foreign Policy According to The Atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg has the April Fool’s cover of The Atlantic this Spring, a confectioner’s assessment of seven some odd years of the Team Obama foreign policy. Celebrity journalism is usually classified as either an orchid or an onion. Eit...

March 3, 2016

Trump Already Is a Third Party Candidate

Questions have dogged the Donald Trump campaign from the start. Who is this guy? What does he believe? What are his party loyalties? And finally, will Trump run as a third party candidate if Republicans try to torpedo his quest for the White House? ...

February 25, 2016

Revolution in 2016? Sanders or Trump?

Bernie Sanders promises a “revolution” in November. What he really means, if elected, is more of the same, only bigger - more taxes, more spending, and more redistribution of other people’s money.       T...

February 2, 2016

Donald and Bernie: The Outer Borough Brothers

They couldn’t be more different, most folks would say. Trump is a loud decadent capitalist and Sanders is a shrill socialist, or worse. One is running as a Republican, the other a Democrat. And we all understand how “different” poli...

January 21, 2016

The Pits of Republican Politics

A single fatal shibboleth stalks political elites on the Right. This is the confused notion that Republicans must mimic the Democrat Left to be successful in presidential races. When you take a hard look a recent political memes, what you see is the ...

January 7, 2016

A Strategy to Defeat Islamic Theo-fascism

Surely, whatever passed for American foreign or military policy in the past three decades is not working. Just as clearly, in case anyone keeps score these days, the dark side of Islam is ascendant at home and abroad. What follows here is a catalogue...

December 21, 2015

Trump and the Wisdom of Crowds

If you cannot appreciate the “wisdom of crowds,” you will never understand American democracy or the Trump phenomenon. Trial by fire builds character -- and constituencies. The other day a headline read; “Donald Trump declares wa...

December 15, 2015

ISIS and Obama

“We are not at war with Islam.” – Barack Hussein Obama We could begin with: “ISIS comes to America.”  But that would suggest that the latest mutant strain of Muslim terror is somehow new or unique.  The ...

December 2, 2015

Perfidious Turkey

On 25 November a Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter, allegedly flown by NATO Turkish pilots, shot down a Russian Sukhoi bomber over Syria. The Turks claimed that the SU-24 violated their airspace, apparently by a few kilometers -- or seconds in flight time...

November 27, 2015

ISIS and US: Believers vs. Agnostics

Political leaders, East and West, are separated by more than custom, tradition, or practice. The divide is cultural. Put aside for the moment obvious things like power differentials or even notions of winning and losing. The Caliph of the Islamic ...

November 18, 2015

Trojan Horses at a Gallop

Islamic fanatics struck another blow for cynicism last Friday night in Paris -- wholesale and gratuitous slaughter in the name of their sanguinary Muslim god. History teaches few lessons these days. We say “Muslim god" because most othe...

October 26, 2015

Signals and Noise in Presidential Politics

Truth is a tough nut, both fruit and seed. Few people want to shuck their own nuts or work hard enough to discover truth. As with nuts, we usually like someone else to do the work, the shelling. Thus truth, for most, is received wisdom. We are inclin...

October 14, 2015

Debate in name only

The first Democratic Party debate was everything we hoped it would not be: a boring coronation.  Alas, Mrs. Clinton literally shouted the competition off the stage.  She bitch-slapped the boys with the usual Clintonista talking points: gun ...

October 1, 2015

Putin, the Indispensable Man?

Human history is about a lot of things, but mostly it’s about the right men or women at the right place and time. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Washington for instance are examples of what might be called American success synergy. Lincoln, Lee...

September 23, 2015

Victimology, African Americans, and Islam

Language is a swinging door, especially English, where words come and go with abandon. “Blacklash” is one of those words. When the drama index is highest, euphemisms and neologisms abound. Domestic and international angst literally produc...

September 10, 2015

Mohammed's Cuckoos

The cuckoo is one of the more interesting migrants in the animal kingdom. It spends part of the year in sunny Africa, but nests and breeds in Europe. Cuckoos appropriate the nests of other birds to lay eggs. The lark or dove in turn does not recogniz...

September 2, 2015

Vetting Hillary

The coronation of Hillary Rodham as presidential nominee for 2016 is proceeding apace if the debate schedule provides any evidence. The first Democrat “debate” is scheduled for 13 October. So far there are only two and a half prominent ca...

August 4, 2015

Debate Advice for a Front Runner

The Republican establishment is perplexed. Democrats are distraught.  A liberal Media is having a hissy fit. Indeed, all of the usual whiners are groping for explanations. Even FOX News is stammering and sputtering for clarity. Going into the fi...

July 28, 2015

Trump's Trump

Donald Trump is a piece of work even by New York standards: tall, white, loud, brash, entrepreneurial, successful, rich, ruthlessly candid, well-dressed, and fond of heterosexual women. He has married at least three delicious ladies in fact. Trump ha...

July 16, 2015

Hillary and Bernie: Socialist Cage Match

Bertrand Russell, I believe, once said that the problem with truth is that it isn’t very interesting, or at least not as interesting as the alternatives. A flaccid football in New England or a larger Kardashian azimuth is big news. Severed head...

July 2, 2015

Kurdistan: Model for Islamic Reform

If reform or peace is to come to Islam, it will not come from any new Arab state on Israel’s border, especially one forged in the historical crucible of Islamic terror. If contemporary Muslim belief and praxis is to be altered, Sunni Palestinia...

June 18, 2015

Dangerous Liaisons: RAND Corporation and America's National Security

Once upon a time, when America believed in totalitarian threats, RAND Corporation might have been the go-to venue to game or explore kinetic solutions to problems like Pakistan, North Korea, and now Iran.  Those days are long gone.  Unfortu...

June 12, 2015

The All-volunteer Military: Too Much From Too Few

The United States had a long tradition of military success from the Revolutionary War through World War II. American military art/science (strategy, operations, and tactics) is now a modern example of an institution in decline. The slide may have beg...

June 2, 2015

The Canonization of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Justice Massachusetts style coughed up another hairball on 15 May; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Muslim Chechen terrorist who, along with his brother, detonated two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. The older brother was killed by pol...

May 6, 2015

Hibernian Anti-Semitism

Ireland is no stranger to religious or racial hatred. Part of the trouble is geography. Nurtured by religion and isolation, island monocultures often breed narrow minds and asocial practice. Clerical pedophilia and chronic alcoholism might be two Iri...

April 20, 2015

Hillary's Family Jewels

You might think of political assets like the family jewels, things inherited but not necessarily merited. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a virtual hope chest, an endowment like no other politician in American history. Her first gift was the coat tails of...

March 23, 2015

DNI Cooks the Books Again

There was a time that intelligence estimates were cloaked in secrecy. Peer review, such that it was, was limited to a few analysts with security clearances, analysts that were not necessarily substantive experts. The iconic Intelligence report is the...

March 19, 2015

The Faces of Foreign Policy Failure

Personality is seldom thought to be relevant to national security analysis. Yet in the end, intelligence, policy, and failures are made by men -- and the occasional woman. We are fond of blaming history, institutions, processes, or systems for social...

March 11, 2015

Intelligence: Broken Arrow

Policy is a worldview. Intelligence is the real world, a wilderness of untidy facts that may or may not influence policy. When Intelligence fails to provide a true and defensible estimate, a clear picture of threat, policy becomes a rat’s nest ...

February 28, 2015

Arrested Development and the Internet

Who says that peers of the realm are anachronistic? Who claims that the House of Lords is a vestige of privilege and indolence? The Baroness of Ot Moor has written a book, a practical tome too, indeed a rare vessel of common sense. Susan Greenfield...

February 28, 2015

What if Putin didn't have Nemtsov killed?

Rick Moran and most other observers of Russia assume that the Latin adage “cui bono?” (“who benefits?”) is enough to presume responsibility for the death of Boris Nemtsov belongs to Vladimir Putin. But if this is a sanctioned ...

February 16, 2015

War Powers and Sucker Punches

Leading with your chin is always bad form, especially in politics. The newly minted Republican Congress is just about to step into a sucker punch from the White House. The President claims that he needs a new authorization from Congress to pursue the...

February 10, 2015

Williams and NBC: No Valor, No Pride, and No Shame

Brian Williams has been the face of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and now he seems to be the face of shamelessness, too. Williams has regaled his gullible Media colleagues for a decade or more about a brush with death in Iraq that never hap...

February 4, 2015

Islam and Appeasement

Europe and America are impaled on the horns of a strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the world is besieged by jihadi religious terror, barbarity, and serial wars with jihadists.  Concurrently, most of the civilized world defends the very religio...

January 28, 2015

A Tale of Two Soldiers: Benjamin Netanyahu and Caroline Glick

Benjamin Netanyahu and Caroline Glick are both in the news these days, each for different reasons.  Netanyahu is coming to address the American Congress in March about the Shia bomb. Ms. Glick is above the fold because she may be about to transi...

January 12, 2015

Journalists and Jihadis

Muslim sensitivities everywhere are now more important than truth or justice anywhere.  Alas, France and many other naïve Europeans have surrendered pride and identity to Brussels and in turn volunteered to be colonized by a 5th column of A...

December 22, 2014

Pyongyang Accepts Hollywood's Surrender

There is more to the Sony hacking and movie distribution cancelling than meets the eye.  Over the years regime change projects have taken some bizarre twists and turns. The cast of characters working for Washington in the Obama era is often some...

December 8, 2014

Liberal Heroes?

Liberals are a lot of things, but hero is not usually the first thought that comes to mind. Nonetheless, those of us who scribble about the vicissitudes of 21st century politics and culture are often happy to discover that some on the Left sometimes ...

November 25, 2014

Islamism, Islamofascism, and Islam

Words matter. Alas, neologisms come into the language all the time, especially when the drama index is high. Ironically, polemicists on the Right and Left abhor words like Islamism. Liberals think the word unfairly links radicals or terrorists wit...

November 17, 2014

Regime Change in America?

Hold the champagne! The recent mid-term election in America is not a sweep, a wave, or a revolution.  The same president is still in the Oval Office and the usual suspects still reign in the House and Senate. Sure, Harry Reid might get a smal...

October 28, 2014

ISIS <em>is</em> Islam!

Barack Obama is given to making extraordinary pronouncements. Many of the more dramatic assertions seldom are based on facts, reason, or reflection.  Put aside, if you can, the hyperbole which often accompanies wishful thinking about domestic so...

October 13, 2014

Netanyahu's Plan

Benjamin Netanyahu is one of a kind among seasoned politicians. He doesn’t just think outside of the box, the Israeli prime minister makes boxes for men like Barack Hussein Obama. Take the perennial impasse in the Middle East, the so-called Pal...

October 7, 2014

Madam Secretary: Front Running for Hillary

Long gone are the days when a line might be drawn between art and politics. Today you might argue that that the performing arts, especially, have become a kind of propaganda arm for a promiscuous worldview. The issue isn’t just literal pornogra...

September 18, 2014

Taking Sides in the Muslim Civil War

If domestic policy is about buying votes; foreign policy is about buying a legacy. Alas, most Americans couldn’t find Baghdad or Mosul on a map. And as long as volunteers do the dying, it’s difficult for politicians or Facebook drones ...

September 9, 2014

Global Pathology (Again)

We often think of human behavior as events with boundaries.  Indeed, contemporary online choices mostly seem to be binary; either/or, black/ white, on/ off, yes /no, for/against, or the now ubiquitous “like/dislike.” The binary meme ...

August 27, 2014

The Obama Caliphate

Making excuses for Islam seems to have become a norm after the Muslim/Arab attack against New York City in 2001. The apologetics started when George Bush allowed a chartered planeload of Saudis to flee the country before the smoke had cleared over gr...

August 13, 2014

We Are Israel

“We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient." Golda Meir as a girl Almost every news report on the latest Palestinian war leads with comparative casualties; Isr...

July 31, 2014

The Biggest American Deficit: Trust

Trust stands alone in the glass menagerie of fragile personal and national virtues. Without trust, individual, commercial, and civic relationships are impossible.  Children must trust parents, couples must trust each other, and families must be ...

July 29, 2014

Military Character Deficits

So now we have John Walsh. Another flag officer who steps on his crank and then pretends he was ill at the time.  Maybe it’s a David Patraeus thing, a kind of self-love, a lust for advancement and the values lost in the heat of that pursui...

July 9, 2014

Federal Food Fight

Once upon a time, the only question about food was quantity; too much here, too little there. “Here” usually meant America or the free world and “there” was usually the undeveloped or Third World. The clear broth of hunger and...

June 16, 2014

Strategic Swap Meets

Sometimes a picture is worth a million words. Take Michelle Obama’s recent head shot, a pouty face over a sign that reads: “Bring back our girls!” Michelle is pleading with Boko Haram to return several hundred Nigerian girls abducte...

June 2, 2014

Government Bureaucracy Fails Veterans

Alas, corrupt government is host to many ironies, but three are paramount: success is a liability, failure is an asset, and as long as the intentions are pure in the public mind, better funding follows failure, not success. Once established, bigger c...

May 29, 2014

NSA's Big Payday

The National Security Agency is the child of Pearl Harbor, the worst warning disaster, until recently, in American history.  The World Trade Center was the first homeland test of NSA. The Fort Meade complex and General Mike Hayden, USAF, failed ...

May 12, 2014

Clayton Lockett and Barack Obama

Clayton Lockett was executed last week in Oklahoma for the torture/ murder of a 19-year-old girl after gaming the judicial system at taxpayer expense for the last 15 years. He was convicted originally on the basis of a videotaped, remorseless, if not...

April 15, 2014

Mike Morell will fit right in at Dan Rather's old network

Freedom of the Press is at once a virtue and a vice. The virtue is underwritten by the belief that candor and an informed electorate make for honest government. Press freedom becomes a vice when journalists choose to be government surrogates; enabler...

March 25, 2014

Don't Kid Yourself about Ukraine

Say what you will about Vladimir Putin. Some of worst may be true. Say what you will about Kremlin policy. A totalitarian history might still have some traction in Moscow. And say what you will about the Russian majority. They still seem to prefer a ...

March 18, 2014

Russophobia and Islamophilia

It’s hard to believe that it has been a quarter of a century since Ronald Reagan began to dismantle the ideological wall that divided Europe. Harder still to believe that American politicians, Right and Left, are trying to resuscitate the Cold ...

March 7, 2014

Vulgar Amateurs at the State Department

The United States, the European Union, and NATO are playing kingmaker again, this time in the Ukraine where the stakes could be nuclear.  Somehow, regime change has become the default setting for America foreign policy.  Let’s review ...

March 5, 2014

Bimbo Politics

Bimbos are drawn to powerful men like moths to the proverbial flame.  Like courtesans, some women will humiliate themselves for power or personal loyalty.  Politics is better than sex because power may get ugly but, unlike sex, power never ...

February 9, 2014

Running Against a Cultural First

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign is underway. Not officially, of course, but interest groups and pundits are already taking sides and stirring the political pot. Presumptive front runners seem to be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for th...

January 2, 2014

James Clapper and The Lies of Intelligence

If you met James Clapper, you would probably like him.  In spite of his post-military beard and perennial scowl, he is actually a congenial chap.  When he speaks to you, he has that rare ability to make you feel that you might be the most...

December 17, 2013

The Psychobabble Bubble

Those looking for symptoms of cultural lunacy never have far to look.  Two recent examples tell the tale.  A six year old from Colorado was suspended from public school for kissing a classmate's hand.  Never mind that the little girl w...

November 15, 2013

Competence, Care, and Christie

The issue isn't health care anymore, if it ever was. Competence is the issue. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) rollout speaks for itself; mismanaged as theory, legislation, and now policy.  And the president and his party own this pig. Obama and th...

November 1, 2013

Rent Seeking and Other Blood Sports

The fact that incompetence has a second act in the Oval Office is more a function of inertia on the Right than any achievement on the Left.  Indeed, the Democrats didn't win the last presidential race, the Republicans lost it. And liberals didn'...

October 9, 2013

The Decline and Fall of National Security

Two unlikely sets of institutions are playing key roles in the decline of American foreign policy effectiveness: Intelligence agencies and military commands.  The CIA and DOD, agencies that were heretofore above politics have lost their objectiv...

October 2, 2013

The Golden Goose is Almost Done

The President compared the Affordable Care Act to the Apple Corporation yesterday while attempting to defend the flailing of the new and expanding Obamacare bureaucracy.  A few days earlier, he had invoked the Runaway Slave Act in a similar conf...

September 16, 2013

Strategic Blindness in Syria

War is a messy business. Serial wars get even more untidy over time. Often, it's hard to know where one begins and another ends. Such is the case today as the Arab spring looks like another Muslim winter. America and Europe stumble from one conflict ...

August 27, 2013

Islam's Choice

Just when you thought things couldn't get worse in the Middle East, along comes another coup. Not just any coup, but a power grab in Cairo, the most populous Arab capital. Not that precipitous regime changes are novelties in the Muslim world; coups h...

August 13, 2013

The Perfect Mayor

What follows here is an unpaid, unsolicited, spontaneous endorsement of Carlos Danger for mayor of New York City. Carlos (aka Tony) is perfect for New York. He's trim, loud, and stupid. He is also fabulous and famous; never mind that he made his name...

July 30, 2013

Whistles, Whistleblowers and Rats

Whistles are in the news these days; wolf whistles, dog whistles, and government whistle blowers. All are, given allowances for pitch and volume, propelled by the same hot air. We might begin with wolf whistles, the traditional or spontaneous nois...

July 8, 2013

Why Call it Intelligence?

The American Intelligence Community (IC) is starting to resemble a large cast of delinquents, a Faustian opera where bad behavior seeks constant rationalization and confirmation.  And like most bad behavior, the real remedy might not be that com...

June 24, 2013

Obama's Terror Gambit

It seems that the Goebbels playbook is working. Obama fronts the game so well that he dodges any personal responsibility for various lies and administration blunders now in the news. And all of this is OK with the Twitter twits. The buck no longer st...

June 9, 2013

Spin Win for Brennan

I suppose you could argue that all language is political, at least to the extent that writers or speakers do not necessarily share the same assumptions, or motives, as readers and listeners.  Then, of course, there is the problem of euphemism a ...

April 5, 2013

More is Never Enough

Barack Hussein Obama finally went to Israel. Before the trip, America had a schizophrenic, yet constant, Mideast foreign policy; stroking autocratic Arabs and alienating democratic Israelis. Indeed, the 'Brennan' doctrine took sides in the Shia/Sunn...

March 8, 2013

Nielsen and the Wasteland

I received another online opinion survey the other day and clicked it into that bottomless pit of cyber-trash.  Unsolicited surveys remind me not to join social networks or give out my e-mail address. I went cold turkey on opinion surveys after...

February 11, 2013

The Vector of American Foreign Policy

If you were wondering about the vector of American foreign and military policy in the next four years, you could do worse than examine the new national security team: John Brennan, John Kerry, Charles Hagel, and Martin Dempsey. John Brennan Brennan ...

December 28, 2012

Best Dog Whistles of 2012

A dog whistle makes a sound or sends a command that only a canine can hear.  A rhetorical dog whistle is a coded message for select listeners, usually the politically correct. Euphemism is the breath that blows rhetorical dog whistles.  A f...

December 5, 2012

Pentagon Peacocks

The Davis Petraeus saga is another urban legend; a myth about a great man felled by a single flaw or indiscretion. The truth is that Petraeus is a bit player in a larger, uglier drama, the political corruption the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and that...

November 15, 2012

Generals and Geographic Bachelors

General David Petraeus illuminates two grand military issues at just the right moment: officer corps character and flag officer performance. Petraeus could be the poster child for a clueless Gilbert and Sullivan character too -- "The very model of a ...

November 7, 2012

The Mourning After

Wednesday morning political quarterbacks are like the Monday sports variety, only you hear from the former two days later. Similar to literary critics, the "I told you so" crowd usually stays above the fray and then comes down only to shoot the wound...

October 20, 2012

One Question for a Romney Win

Two thirds of the American presidential debates are now history. The conventional wisdom now sees the 2012 presidential race as a dead heat; or let's say one for Romney and a draw for Obama so far. The challenger might have been two for two had he no...

October 6, 2012

Playing the China Card

Republicans are being hammered by a series of Democrat commercials suggesting that Bain Capital, and Mitt Romney by association, were instrumental in outsourcing jobs to China.  At the same time, campaign commercials represent President Obama as...

October 1, 2012

No Decency of Candor

Reading some political obituaries these days is a little like watching someone die twice -- a kind of tombstone ricochet.  The Christopher Stevens obit that appeared in the 12 September 2012 edition of the Washington Post is an example.  An...

September 24, 2012

Malice in the Mimbar

We are assured daily that communications technology and globalization are liberating the Muslim world.  We are also led to believe that social networks bring down the totalitarians.  We are ultimately led to believe that democracy is the de...

September 19, 2012

Hillary's Pulpit

"Bully pulpit" is a phrase coined by Teddy Roosevelt to describe the White House as a platform from which to promote an agenda. Today, almost any high office might be seen as a bully pulpit. Take, as an example, the American Secretary of State, an of...

September 16, 2012

Appeasement and Blowback

Too much honesty in military politics is kin to tinkering with an improvised explosive device. Take the recent incendiary essay, Truth, Lies, and Afghanistan, by Colonel Daniel L. Davis that appeared in the Armed Forces Journal earlier this year. The...

September 3, 2012

Generation Screwed?

Change is tough in the best of times; worse still when the air is filled with invective and half-truths.  Fabrications and distortions are predictable features of any election year; but the most pernicious lie is the invented future.  Anyth...

July 8, 2012

Divided We Stand

"Churches must learn humility as well as teach it." -George Bernard Shaw Atheism was all the rage a few years ago, when several books received a measure of notoriety.  The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and God Is Not Great by the late Christ...

June 22, 2012

The Science of Ignorance

The first attempt to formalize the study of ignorance came recently with historian Robert Proctor of Stanford University who coined the neologism "Agnotology" to describe what he believed to be culturally produced ignorance. His purpose was to expose...

May 30, 2012

Pandering without Profit

Two successive administrations now have sought to appease Muslims by minimizing the threat from Islamists.  Indeed, science has now been enlisted in that effort.  Early stimulus came from the White House. Hours after 9/11, a Republican pres...

May 1, 2012

Victimhood and 'Choice'

Choice is one of those issues that never leave the headlines for very long.  The latest brouhaha began when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic Party advisor, claimed that Mitt Romney's wife, mother of five, grandmother to 16, "never worked a day in her ...

April 23, 2012

Mike Wallace, Entertainment, and Journalism

Mike Wallace, veteran media personality, died the other day at age 93.  May he rest in peace.  If air time and salary are measures of merit, Wallace was a television star and an unqualified success.  He was a triple-treat too: pitchman...

March 6, 2012

Netanyahu's Canary

Every time Benjamin Netanyahu comes to America, the world should be  reminded that Barack Obama has never been to Israel. After nearly four years, the leader of the free world continues to shun the only true democracy in the Middle East. During ...

March 1, 2012

An Act of Valor Dissent

Socialist realism is making a comeback in some strange places -- Hollywood and the Pentagon are good examples.  Like the Soviet propaganda flicks of yore, the good guys are ten feet tall, and the bad guys are ambiguous nitwits.  The action ...

February 26, 2012

The Energy of Poverty

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum drew fire from the usual suspects the other day for his remarks on the utility of inequality.  A typical reaction was that of columnist Charles M. Blow in the New York Times, who accused Senator Santorum of "...

January 21, 2012

Newt vs CNN; First Round TKO

Correspondent John King was lit up like a deer in the headlights by Newt Gingrich at the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina on 19 January. If audience reaction is a measure, King came across like a prissy cocker spaniel baiting a pit bu...

December 27, 2011

Americans Elect: An Obama Trojan Horse?

Americans Elect (AE), the new political party that claims to be a non-partisan non-party, is now on the California ballot. What a shocker! The left coast leviathan is the first big state to endorse a staking horse!  After reading a piece in Amer...

December 12, 2011

Americans Elect: Early Dirty Tricks

Another dirty trick tsunami may have been launched on Sunday by a group which calls itself "Americans Elect" (AE), a new political party that claims it's not a political party - just a movement. Put aside the hubris in their branding, the idea behind...

November 21, 2011

The Democrats Were Not For Me

I was programmed at birth to be a Democrat, a big city liberal. My parents were Irish and Catholic. Pardon any redundancy. In my slice of the East Bronx, you went to high school, you did a few years in the military, and then you came home to look for...

August 3, 2011

The American Animal Farm

George Orwell wrote his famous Animal Farm allegory about the corrupting potential of socialism in 1943.  The novel was not published for two years because the liberal Bloomsbury establishment did not want to offend the new Labour Party majority...

July 5, 2011

A National Security Apparatus in Decline

The deck chairs on the ship of state are being rearranged once more.  Robert Gates is out to pasture after a career at CIA followed by a shorter tenure at DOD.  Leon Panetta, former California congressman and incumbent spymaster, is replaci...

June 17, 2011

Bimbo Feminism

The sorriest aspect of philandering politicians is often their wives, the spouses who stand by their man and play the victim in the service of political viability.  The modern standard for political survival was set by former NY Senator, no...

June 5, 2011

Amphibian Politics

"We forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is men who are afraid of the light." - Plato Great political metaphors earn a long shelf life.  Plato coined one of the best, a thought probably lifted from Socrates.  Plato li...

May 18, 2011

Death by Metaphor; Goodbye Newt!

Newt Gingrich has done it again. He throws his hat into the ring, and before it hits the ground, he has his foot in his mouth -- again.  Hard to believe that a politician can have too much ego, but surely Gingrich is suffering from an embarrassm...

April 28, 2011

Arab Awakening?

First it was the "Jasmine Revolution" and then it was the "Arab Spring." The "Arab Awakening" is latest euphemism for internecine mayhem in Muslim world. These terms are invariably accompanied by the adjectives "pea...

April 6, 2011

No Exit

The American war, against an enemy whose name we dare not speak, has opened yet another front in Libya. We are not at war with Islam, according to the White House. Still, we now kill Islamists or Muslims on four fronts within dar al Islam; Iraq, Afgh...

March 12, 2011

Women and the Secret of Life

Twenty five hundred years ago Pericles spoke to the grieving mothers and wives of Athens; women who had lost husbands and sons in the Peloponnesian wars. He told them that their men had given the "true measure of a man's worth." Not in defe...

February 21, 2011

Risky Business: Lara Logan and CBS

Lara Logan walked into a journalist's worst nightmare. Instead of covering a story, she became the story. Such hazards are something of a tradition at CBS; Mike Wallace became the William Westmoreland story and Dan Rather became the George Bush story...

February 16, 2011

Cooking the Intelligence Books

Donald Rumsfeld has written a book. Four years out of office, such tomes ought to be called "shots from the grave," a fusillade of explanations after the fact. Such literature has a long and honored tradition. Dwight Eisenhower wrote and sp...

February 1, 2011

Richard Cohen Redeemed

When the subject is Islam or Islamism, few voices on the left find the courage to abandon their near universal political correctness. Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens are among that small minority. On 1 February, Richard Cohen of the Washington P...

January 31, 2011

The Egyptian Revolt and Imperial Islamism

The Arab revolt underway in Egypt may be unique.  Previous popular uprisings were underwritten by anti-colonial sentiments.  Contemporary revolts (including unrest in Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, and Jordan) target nationalist or secular govern...

January 13, 2011

The Sick and the Dead

A close reading of Sherriff Clarence Dupnik's recent statements suggests that he and Jared Lee Loughner may suffer from similar degrees of delusion.  The sheriff has leveled charges of racism, bigotry, and conspiracy without evidence or arg...

December 28, 2010

Russia in NATO?

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." - Sun TzuRussians observers often see their political glass half-empty.  Recent arguments on the pages of the Moscow Times about NATO membership provide an example.  First there was Micha...

December 6, 2010

TSA Collateral Damage

You've read a hundred stories about the horrors at airports these days, but reading can't hold a candle to an actual flight. In early November, I was invited to a friend's farm in California for the annual olive harvest. The harvest went well enough;...

November 16, 2010

A First Intelligence Reform: Fire John Brennan

The intelligence community has impaled itself on the horns of a strategic dilemma. On the one hand, the tactical collection, surveillance, and targeting matrix represents a real-time, global capability -- arguably a "gold standard" of techn...

October 5, 2010

The Urban Plantation

Education, like the economy and terrorism, has been elevated to a national security problem. Unfortunately, the alarmist rhetoric is seldom matched by decisive action at the personal, municipal, or national level.In the nation's capital, the presiden...

September 11, 2010

The Shifting Paradigm of Islam

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has discovered an Egyptian anti-Semite. Unfortunately, the object of Cohen's ire has been dead for over four decades. Yes, Cohen, who once labeled Israel a "historical mistake," has taken to the pages of...

August 22, 2010

Atheists and Anti-Semites

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.  - Blaise PascalChristopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great (the book) and Bill Maher's Religulous (the film) are hysterical -- not hysterically funny, just frenzied. If you didn't know better, you might t...

August 1, 2010

The Chicken Soup Solution

"As a child, our family menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it." - Buddy HackettThere are four clear threats to the modern family, and possibly civilization at large: cell phones, the iPod, the internet, and junk food....

June 29, 2010

Who Betrays Us?

Crystal is not glass. Strike crystal and it rings like a bell. When it breaks, crystal makes a special noise, a sound like the end of music. The other day, we heard the end of a special elegy, the 24 notes of taps, when General Stanley McChrystal fur...

June 18, 2010

Soccer -- the Dubious Thrill of Nil-Nil

Americans call it soccer. Europe and the developing world call it football. Semantics is just the start of the confusion. The foot is only one of two appendages that might be used to strike the ball in soccer -- hands can only be used for clearing na...

June 2, 2010

American Intelligence: Too Big to Succeed?

The top Intelligence job in the national security arena has claimed another victim. Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and titular head of the Intelligence Community (IC), has announced plans to retire. Pundits suggest that his dep...

April 21, 2010

Soft Power and No Plan for Iran

Anyone who remembers the Vietnam War might be having hot flashes of déjà vu today. We are again engaged in a grand campaign to "win the hearts and minds" of an implacable foe in a place where we do not understand the language,...

February 27, 2010

The Internet and the Agora

The blogosphere seems to be flushing the mainstream downstream. The blowback is venomous and not a pretty sight. Media stars, especially, are fighting a vicious rearguard action against the inevitable. The rise of the internet and the fall of traditi...

January 1, 2010

The Last Great Tiger-Hunt

Concerned citizens are wondering about the media obsession with Tiger Woods, the world's greatest golfer. A day after Thanksgiving, Tiger was party to a domestic disturbance involving a wife wielding a five-iron in the wee hours. Our favorite golfer ...

December 20, 2009

Whistling in the Dark

Dennis Blair’s commentary for the opinion pages of the Washington Post on 18 December is a world class contribution to the literature of denial. His assessment of national security since 9/11 is notable only for what it ignores. The Director o...

December 8, 2009

Kicking the Can in Afghanistan

"Kick the Can" is a child's game familiar to kids from large cities. The only equipment required is an old tin can and a few willing children. The skills in play are stealth and speed. Like "Hide and Seek," all but one of the grou...

October 31, 2009

The Lessons of Turkish Backsliding

Turkey has long been held up as an exemplar of a model Islamic state; secular, moderate, democratic, and collegial. Butt he inherent contradictions of an "Islamic republic" may be coming home to roost -- putting the lie to secular, mod...

October 9, 2009

The Prophylactic Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize has now become, like the American literary Pulitzer, a certification of political correctness. The Nobel nominating process closed a mere two weeks after Barak Obama took office. With less than a year in office, Obama's prize ca...

August 16, 2009

Islam and Monoculture

"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it". - George OrwellMonoculture is a term that has been freighted with a lot of baggage, mostly negative. The origin of this compound word is usually traced to agriculture where it is used to descri...