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.

This is a guest note by Daniel R. DePetris, an MA Candidate at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where he studies security issues and Middle Eastern affairs. He is an associate editor of the Journal on Terrorism and Security Analysis and blogs at the Atlantic Sentinel.

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.

(click image for larger version) A semi-occasional feature of The Washington Note, which is in process of moving to this new spot at The Atlantic is a snapshot now and then of three awesome pups. Meet Annie (on left) and her two brothers, Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner, and Buddy. More soon.

(photo credit: Gary Burke) “Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be,” General Douglas MacArthur said in August 1962. I’ve often thought about these words and whom we owe for our nationhood.