Petraeus on the Move

Posted: Thursday, September 18, 2008
When General Petraeus took command in Iraq in February 2007, it was in a death spiral, teetering on the brink of a full-scale civil war. In 19 months, General Petraeus achieved the closest thing to a battlefield miracle you are likely to witness in your lifetime.  [Full Story]

The Woodward Way of War
It's not who wins, it's how you make the decisions
Posted: Thursday, September 18, 2008
Bob Woodward has written his fourth book in six years on the Bush presidency. They have ranged from fairly glowing (Bush at War) to excoriating (State of Denial). The latest, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, while less harsh on Bush than State of Denial, is still plenty critical.  [Full Story]

Experience and Character

Posted: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
There is a lot of discussion these days about Sarah Palin and her qualifications to be Vice President. The fair-minded skeptics, represented by writers like David Brooks, argue that good governance requires acquired skills and, most of all, prudence. And prudence, in turn, is acquired through experience. But experience is not itself the sine qua non for success in a national leader, and inexperience is not necessarily a big drawback.  [Full Story]

Biden Was Wrong On the Cold War

Posted: Thursday, September 4, 2008
There are few members of Congress whose record on national security matters can be judged, with the benefit of hindsight, to be as consistently bad as Joseph Biden's.  [Full Story]

The Significance of Sarah Palin

Posted: Thursday, September 4, 2008
There is a lot to say about Sarah Palin’s performance last night, but perhaps the place to begin is with this observation: Boy did Democrats choose the wrong hockey mom to pick a fight with.  [Full Story]

Back to Saddleback

Posted: Thursday, August 28, 2008
The most lasting impact of the recent nationally televised interview Rick Warren did with Senators Barack Obama and John McCain may not have to do with the two presidential candidates. It may be its effect on, and the impression people have of, evangelical Christianity.  [Full Story]

MSOBAMA
The network of Democratic campaign record.
Posted: Thursday, August 7, 2008
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's hyper-partisanship and straight-from-the-fever-swamps mentality is well documented. What is interesting to me, during the times I've tuned in to his program, is that he never interviews anyone who holds an alternative point of view. He appears -- unlike the competitors he often obsesses about -- to be afraid to expose his ideas to the light of day.  [Full Story]

The Decline of Joe Klein
A good political columnist gone wrong.
Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2008
In my recent exchanges with Joe Klein, I made the point that blogging was harming Klein because it allowed his unfiltered rage to make its way into print (so to speak), thereby embarrassing him and Time magazine. Klein responded with a blog post offering... more unfiltered rage. I sense a pattern developing.  [Full Story]

Obama In Iraq's Quicksand

Posted: Wednesday, July 30, 2008
To listen to Barack Obama attempt to explain his views on Iraq and the so-called surge is becoming, for those of us who have followed his responses over the last 18 months, something of a spectacle. With every effort, it seems, he is compounding his mistakes in judgment with intellectually dishonest answers, ones which melt away under even minimal scrutiny.   [Full Story]

Just Blame America

Posted: Tuesday, July 29, 2008
N.T. Wright is an outstanding New Testament scholar, but when it comes to making pronouncements on international affairs and especially the war against militant Islam and Iraq he ought to remain silent rather than make comments that indicate he is way out of his depth.  [Full Story]