Outside the Beltway

Is there a Romney Doctrine?

My first piece for The New Republic, “Why the Obama Administration’s Drone War May Soon Reach a Tipping Point,” is up.

Mitt Romney is making claims about Naval readiness that are, at best, misleading.

How far should the press go in challenging assertions by politicians?

The US intelligence community has more information at its disposal than ever. Unfortunately, it can’t efficiently process it and make the necessary connections.

Not surprisingly, most of the Republican candidates for President aren’t too keen on reducing the excessive growth in Executive Branch power.

While unfortunate, the loss of an RQ-170 drone over Iran may not be the intelligence disaster some make it out to be.

Don’t believe the fear mongering about the coming decreases in the growth of defense spending.

I’ll be liveblogging tonight’s Republican national security debate over at RealClearWorld along with a solid team of foreign policy analyst

Why we shouldn’t be surprised that police are using tools of violence against protestors.

The CIA’s drone war in Pakistan has gotten so out of hand that the Pentagon and State Department are reigning it in.

A computer virus has infected America’s fleet of Predator and Reaper drones.

Rezwan Ferdaus, an American Muslim, has been charged with a major terrorist plot against his country.

Success in Libya does not make the American mission any less unjustified than it was on the day President Obama announced it.

Honoring the fallen by ensuring that the didn’t die in vain is a recipe for getting more good men killed.

Leon Panetta has been brought in to oversee significant cuts to the U.S. Defense budget. Meanwhile, we’re in six wars.

Our good ally Pakistan has publicly ordered us to leave a base used for “covert” CIA drone attacks.

A few Republicans have picked up on John McCain’s criticism of critics of the Libya mission as being “isolationist.”

The Obama Administration tells Congress that it doesn’t need to comply with the War Powers Act because the Act does not apply to the mission in Libya.

American drone strikes in Yemen are intensifying. Is this a new war. or just the same one we’ve been fighting since October 2001?

The Obama Administration is offering an odd explanation for why it doesn’t need to comply with the War Powers Act.

The GOP is facing a battle between its fiscal conservatism and i’s military adventurism.

Are American diplomats lying to reporters because they figure our citizens can’t handle the truth?

Another FBI sting operation results in the arrest of a “terrorist,” or did it create a crime where none existed before?

Robert Lane Greene investigates the rise of acronyms, initialisms, and other informal shortenings of speech.

What’s so wrong with saying that America will survive even if al Qaeda manages to hit us again ?

Will Israel attack Iran ? You’d better hope not.

Again, despite the rhetoric of some, the US does continue to enforce laws relevant to the border and, indeed, enforcement has been on the rise.

Barack Obama has significantly widened his predecessor’s global war on terrorism, even if he’s no longer calling it that.

The scumbags at WikiLeaks have published a huge trove of classified documents provided to them by one or more traitors in our military.