In January 1864, some strangely dressed men with odd accents arrived in the camp of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, whose troops had been reeling from shortages of arms and supplies. They demonstrate a new weapon – an amazingly high powered accurate “repeater” rifle – and offer it to Lee.
He …
There is a good rule taught in newsrooms early in one’s reporting life that goes along the lines of why one should listen to so-called crazy people. It is because, sometimes, they actually say the truth.
By dint of luck or perhaps true insight, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has stumbled into …
U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers chairs the House of Representatives’ panel on intelligence, which this week overwhelmingly approved a new cyber security bill designed to enhance data sharing between the government and private industry to protect computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks.
Yet the day before it passed, Rogers had …
Anniversaries are dangerous days. There is often a flash of attention, lots of words and supposedly deep thought and meaningful promises. Then the sun goes down, and life goes on as before. The world often notes an anniversary without real thought or determination on how to take the steps needed …
The idea of arming the Syrian rebels is being chatted up once again. The debate will wander and focus in many theoretical directions. Yet essentially the decision will focus on one key pivot: is the goal a short-term or long-term victory?
The safe bet: short-term considerations will win out.
The U.N. proclamation …
With the French military intervention in Mali shifting to a more sustained action, the reality of the long, hard slog in the Mali region has triggered inevitable questions by diplomats, policy planners and many others as to what defines success – and what comes next?
Most mouthed answer: “Somalia.”
That’s correct. The …
For decades there have been conversations, tough questions, “ah-ha” moments, deep insights and common sense shared in one-on-one exchanges with John Kerry and Chuck Hagel. In all those times interacting with them, watching them, analyzing them, not one umbrella has been spotted.
These men are not appeasers or pleasers. They are …
Bashar Assad, let me introduce you to Slobodan Milosevic.
Technically, you cannot shake his hand – at least today. Milosevic died in his cell in The Hague, after the nation that he led into war and ruin emerged to form a tentative democracy. The new Yugoslav leadership traded Milosevic …
It was only two months since the fighting ignited in Bosnia. Scary, but not yet out of control. But food was already getting tight so the spring air – and rumors of bread available – brought the citizens of Sarajevo out to the market for a hastily formed …
It was Zaire then. As I sat along the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura, Burundi, I marveled at the moment. Baby hippos splashed playfully in the water as their adults looked carefully from across the way. The sun set with purples and yellows and pinks, in rays …
Going home. The resonance of that phrase is universal. The happy homecoming. The poignant or sad one. The unsure one. The second chance one.
For His Royal Highness Prince Mahdi Al-Senussi that ultimate appellation of his “going home” remains to be determined. Forty-two years to the month that Prince …
The possible Balkanization of Syria is an increasingly likely prospect – at least for the short-term – and could provide a historic counterpoint in the Middle East to what the West did to carve up the region almost a century ago.
With the Ottoman Empire defeated after World War I, the triumphant Allies …
That perfect moment of the triumph of the people happened again in Syria. The rebels captured another border crossing between Syria and Turkey, lowering the Syrian flag and raising their own banner. It is a symbolic moment of victory – and in a bloody civil war abundant with …
It essentially was an accident. Saddam Hussein had been whipped in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraq’s Kurds and Shia to rise up. They did – but Bush was all talk; there was no U.S. military help and they were slaughtered.
So as Kurdish …
As a rite of summer in U.S. presidential campaigns, the nominee of the challenging party takes a trip out of the country to buff up his foreign policy credentials. Republican Mitt Romney is no exception, and his trip, not surprisingly, included a stop in Israel.
Romney has a long …
