Now that General David Petraeus has mothballed his uniforms, turned the ISAF command in Afghanistan over to General John Allen, and taken Leon Panetta’s chair at the CIA, the next to last big name who fought for primacy in DC’s Afghanistan policy wars is, for the most part, off to other pastures.
In the case of the United States — which has been indisputably the reigning global superpower for six decades — there are signs — ranging from the tumult in the Middle East to a humiliating war in Afghanistan to a downgrade of US sovereign debt — that America is at a key inflection point in…
Later today in Washington, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation will release a proposal and report titled “The Startup Act’. it’s not legislation but rather a package of proposals designed to facilitate growth of young firms, which interestingly, are responsible for “all” new net jobs created in our economy in recent years.
Over the last couple of years, I have been increasingly impressed by the work and thinking of Georgetown scholar and now outgoing Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Arturo Valenzuela. I didn’t start there.
Part of the annual foreign policy ritual in Washington is that the US President, Vice President, and leading Members of Congress make major campaign and fundraising speeches, sign on to resolutions, and pledge unconditional support to Israel, often referring to it as “the only genuine democracy in the Middle East.
Christopher Hitchens just pulled all the sticky veneer off of a cancerous Pakistan-US relationship — that has been going into the muck not just since we learned that Osama bin Laden was living somewhat pleasantly just down the street from Pakistan’s West Point but much before, particularly when A.Q.
Watching on a long flight the other day the classic 1966 Sergio Leone spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly I couldn’t help but think that Afghanistan would make a great backdrop for a remake of the Clint Eastwood classic.
For the next couple of days, some of the world’s leading thinkers will be spending time in Aix-en-Provence wrestling through “The State of the World” organized by Le Cercle des Economistes.
West Point now has its first “openly gay” member on its Board of Visitors thanks to the appointment of former Army captain Sue Fulton, a founding Board Member of OutServe, by President Obama.
I recently had breakfast with FrumForum proprietor and smart issues strategist David Frum who said that if the GOP was really an oligarchy, then Mitt Romney would come out on top.
