Continued U.S. military threats against the DPRK waste precious time which could be better spent in earnest negotiations recognizing each party’s interests.
Continued U.S. military threats against the DPRK waste precious time which could be better spent in earnest negotiations recognizing each party’s interests.
History never repeats; but it rhymes, and it often echoes. What can Robert Kaplan’s study of the mujahidin teach us about ISIS?
The key to crafting effective counterterrorism policies depends on balanced judgments between democratic principles and security policies.
The current American presidential election has placed Islam and Muslims on the center stage of a nasty campaign politics.
Are Syrian refugees a threat to U.S. national security? In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, most Americans are on edge and many are reluctant to let in any more Muslims, especially Syrian refugees.
The further backward you can look, the further forward you can see. – Winston Churchill One of my pet peeves is a friend or acquaintance coming up to me and saying: “Gail, where have you been? I haven’t seen you around for a long time.” I know I’m being cranky, but what annoys me is […]
Let’s be honest, foreign policy making has never been democratic. The label of national security has offered governments around the world the power to hide information from their citizens. Aside from this statement, the making of American foreign policy has completely shifted since 9/11. Not only this shift was abrupt and made under intense emotional stress, but […]
If terrorists entered the U.S. today to conduct a 9/11-scale attack and used the same money-movement methods employed by the hijackers in 2001, it is “possible, but not probable” that their financial activities would bring them to the attention of intelligence and law-enforcement officials. That’s the assessment of Dennis M. Lormel, who led the […]
This documentary is all over the place. It is in part a history of modern Afghanistan and also a film about independent journalists – some of whom were killed – trying to report on the situation on the ground. Afghanistan is called “The Graveyard of Empires” for good reason: Every country or empire that has […]
Staying alive at DHS is a full-time occupation. One slip-up, the chain quivers, the blame starts its downward flow, and if you’re an agent, you’re pulling duty in Pembina, ND, or spending the rest of your working life doodling on a yellow legal pad in an empty room at HQ/DC. So believe me when I tell you that it takes more than a fit of pique to file a legal complaint against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as the National Ice Council has done on behalf of eleven agents who believe that recent policy directives on prosecutorial discretion and the Dream directive on deferred action—are forcing them to choose between enforcing immigration and deportation laws passed by the US Congress in 1996 and their professional careers. Christopher Crane, head of the Council, reports that agents who continue to enforce laws currently on the books—ignoring policy directives from the top instructing them neither to apprehend, arrest, or depart aliens who’ve entered the US illegally or who’ve overstayed their visas (even illegals serving time in US prisons for felonies and misdemeanors)—are targets for disciplinary action….
It is difficult to find words as the anniversary of 9/11 arrives again. The inclination is strong to sum-up, to summarize in some way the distance covered, as if distance somehow lends better perspective on the attacks of 9/11. Last year I wrote a blog post calling for reflection and renewal and I think that […]
Osama bin Laden: killed and al Qaeda: on the run. That’s the balance sheet — more or less — that the U.S. has to share with the world. Meanwhile, its biggest ally in the War on Terror — Pakistan — has nothing to present except that its own people have been terrorized by militants, with […]
You don’t have to tell me it’s the tenth anniversary of the Al Qaeda attacks on the US. I was there, thank you. There is plenty to be said on the subject, and politicians, pundits and the population at large are saying it. My only comment today on this is to consider the cost. According […]
I’ve been reviewing some of the 9/11 commentaries and news reports that are saturating our media as the anniversary approaches and I have to admit that many of them leave me feeling cold. This commentary by Frank Rich in the New York Magazine, for example, raises many interesting and provocative points that I found myself […]
As C.S. Lewis states in The Abolition of Man, once you step outside of the Tao, by which he means the world of objective value, you and your civilization fall ultimately down a slippery slope into the abyss of value indeterminacy and the rule of a Nietzschean will to power. According to Lewis, “A dogmatic […]