Lincoln Chafee Comments on America’s Legitimacy Deficit in the Iraq War

-

35

Lincoln Chafee used to shoe horses — literally. I never knew the term, farrier, until I walked into the then Rhode Island Senator’s office one day and saw a framed assortment of farrier licenses with the thin, scraggly-looking, long-haired picture of the would-be Senator Chafee on each.

Luttwakianism Applied to American Policy Towards the Middle East

-

16

Edward Luttwak — a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of many best-selling high concept treatments of war, strategy, and the international economy — is a turbo-charged intellect wrapped in the garb of a John Le Carre-esque spy. I always feel like I’m learning secrets from him.

Chess Pieces Move: Bush Admin Officials Plan to Meet with Iranian and Syrian Reps in Neighborhood “Block Party”

-

31

I’m getting a lot of “official statements” from U.S. Senators in my in-box all of a sudden commenting on the Bush administration’s change of heart regarding attending official meetings with representatives from the governments of Iran and Syria.

Hezbollah Plays Nationalism Card

-

20

This short International Herald Tribune piece by the Nixon Center’s Alexis Debat and Ghassan Schbley got me thinking about the simultaneously turbulent centrifugal and centripetal forces between transnational Islamist movements and state structures in the Middle East It’s a very short, clever article — but here is the part with which I partly disagree and…

The Terrorism Surge: Measuring the Iraq Effect

-

17

My colleagues Peter Bergen, who moonlights at CNN’s terrorism analyst and is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, and Paul Cruickshank, a Research Fellow at NYU’s Center on Law and Security and frequent collaborator with New America foreign policy projects, have a great Mother Jones cover story piece out measuring the impact that…