So much for those “Mission Accomplished” and “Victory” speeches. Things are tilting very bad directions in Afghanistan.

The North Korea problem needs management. . .now. While this may sound like a modest incident, it’s very scary. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, escalation, and violence in an already tense situation given North Korea’s seeming determination to hold a nuclear test are possible triggers for a regional conflagration in Northeast Asia.

Yesterday, I hosted a meeting with European Parliament Member Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (and Deputy Chairman of the Free Democracts in the European Parliament) who gave a talk titled: “Europe’s Evolving Stakes in the Middle East.” The meeting was assembled by the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

Vice President Cheney’s disregard for America’s system of checks and balances and his huff-and-puff advocacy of unilateral military responses to complex national security challenges has really harmed America’s portfolio of interests. He should be challenged every time and every where he speaks.

The unilateral thing is failing — so time to consider alternative options. Michael Lind, in his new book The American Way of Strategy puts a proposal out that international stability and prosperity will best be pursued in the future through regional concerts of power. Here is an excellent summary of the book.

(FEMA Director Michael Brown, President George W. Bush, and Florida Congressman Mark Foley) What was it about a picture being better than a thousand words? One wonders if Scooter Libby, Paul Bremer, and Don Rumsfeld have been cropped out of the shot.

Kremlinology may be anachronistic, but observing and interpreting Bush-world has taken its place as one of my extra-curricular activities. I can hardly believe that George Bush 41 throttled his son so harshly in a speech he gave last night at the home of the German Ambassador to the U.S.

Congressman Mark Foley once commented that he was dismayed and disheartened by the tainting of the Presidency by Bill Clinton’s “sexual addiction problem.” What comes around. . . I have not commented much on the blog about this growing scandal about who knew what when in the Mark Foley/Congressional page imbroglio.

A lot of pro-John Bolton pundits and followers as well as many in the network of people and institutions opposed to Bolton’s confirmation are in a tizzy about a small gossip item that ran on an on-line conservative weekly magazine, Human Events.

My colleague and friend Nir Rosen has been working his way through some of the more interesting sites and scenes in Lebanon — and trailing along with many Nasrallah groupies to get a fix on the Hezbollah leader’s rise and on the evolving shape of Lebanese politics and identity.