Taking “No” As Iran’s Answer

The editors of the Washington Post articulate a position similar to the one that I took yesterday: The Obama administration and European governments have set the end of the year as a deadline for the transfer of the uranium out of Iran and for progress in the overall negotiations. But the administration must consider whether it makes sense to grant the ...

Update on the Fort Hood Massacre

The picture that is emerging of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the American-born Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded dozens of others at Fort Hood yesterday is of a deeply troubled and conflicted individual: As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened at Fort Hood, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of this son of Palestinian immigrants, a man who ...

Breaking: Shootings at Fort Hood (Updated)

Seven people are reported to have been killed and twenty injured in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas: At least seven people are dead and 20 wounded in a mass shooting Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, and at least one suspect is believed to be holed up in a building and shooting at SWAT team members, NBC News and affiliate ...

Marking the Anniversary of the Embassy Seizure

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U. S. embassy in Tehran by factions of the revolution that overthrew the shah. President Obama has issued a statement on the occasion which I will reproduce in full here: Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 ...

Haggling With the Iranians

In her address yesterday to a joint session of Congress German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her country's insistence that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program in compliance with multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions: Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, yesterday delivered a stern warning to Iran's hard-line leader amid signs that the west's patience with Tehran's prevarication on its nuclear programme ...

Destruction of a What?

There's a fascinating article in Spiegel Online (in English) on “Operation Orchard”, the operation in September 2007 in Syria in which the Israeli air force destroyed what many have termed a “nuclear plant”, what the article calls “Syria's Al Kibar nuclear reactor”, and the Syrians have characterized as a conventional military facility. Spiegel has interviewed Syrian, Israeli, and American ...

What’s Next in Afghanistan?

President Karzai narrowly won a clearly fraudulent election. His main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has withdrawn from consideration as a candidate, ruling out a run-off election. That leaves us with an Afghan government of little or no legitimacy, unworthy of our confidence or that of the Afghan people. Classical counter-insurgency strategy requires a government with the support ...

Friedman’s Vote on Afghanistan

Columnist Thomas Friedman has put in his vote for what we should do in Afghanistan: Don't Build Up It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the ...

Maintaining Commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan

Month to date there have been four U. S. casualties in Iraq. Each death remains a tragedy but that's a far cry from a year ago or two years ago. Fatalities in the Iraqi security forces have declined, too, each month of this year seeing fewer casualties than in the corresponding month of last year. Things are ...

A Case for Humility in Afghanistan?

Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan: To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, ...

Misconceptions About Iran’s Nuclear Program

Pay particular attention to Joseph Cirincione's op-ed in the Washington Post, characterized as “Five Myths About Iran's Nuclear Program”. I think a better word than “myth” would be “misconception”. In the op-ed Mr. Cirincione lays out five misconceptions about Iran's nuclear program and explains why they're misconceptions. Here they are: Iran is on the verge of developing a ...

Fueling Afghanistan

For a long time now I've been saying that the biggest problem facing our forces in Afghanistan isn't the absence of a viable partner in the Afghan government or whether we should be pursuing a strategy of counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency or the tactics we're employing there. It's the logistics. Here's another example of that. Would you believe ...

OTB Radio – Tonight at 5:30 Eastern

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern. Dave Schuler will cost-host and we'll be talking about the news of the day. And probably the news of other days, too. We'll also be taking calls at (646) 716-7030. Owing to a high trolls to legit callers ratio, however, we'll be using the ...

Meet the New Doctrine

I was rather surprised at the uproar in some corners of the blogosphere following the publication in Izvestiya of an interview with Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin's security council. In the interview Mr. Patrushev mentioned a new doctrine regarding the Russian Federation's use of nuclear weapons (hat tip: Nathan Hodge). Meteor Blades notes that ...

The Debate on Afghanistan

The debate over our policy in Afghanistan continues in the nation's opinion pages. Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic makes the case for counter-insurgency: Obama needs to get behind his chosen general as soon as possible and put this spectacle of indecisiveness behind him. Gen. McChrystal must become the face of a policy that is supported at every level of the Administration, just ...