A “regional AUMF” would codify the long-standing practice of executive “doctrines” governing U.S. policy towards particular regions.
A “regional AUMF” would codify the long-standing practice of executive “doctrines” governing U.S. policy towards particular regions.
Combat Outpost Zormat, Paktia Province When U.S. Major Lee and Captain Gil entered Ganat Kahiyl High School in eastern Afghanistan recently, a local teacher slipped them a small note: “The Taliban have visited our school and forced their curriculum upon us. Can the government help?” This was not an empty threat. Insurgents burned down Sahakh […]
Bite me. You might as well go outside and shout it loud, because there isn’t enough DEET in your medicine chest to fend off the bloodlust of Culex pipiens, Anopheles, Aedes vexans, and dozens of other species of infected mosquitoes blanketing the United States. And West Nile virus season has just begun—consider August 2012 a preview.
Don’t get me wrong. Health organizations, federal, state and local, have spent buckets of money on nice-looking, easy-to-understand websites that calmly advise citizens to douse ourselves with bug spray, wear light, long-sleeved clothing (think Out of Africa), eliminate standing pools of water, and, of course, just stay inside the damn house until the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sounds the all-clear.
All good. But hardly sufficient.
West Nile virus—how it got here, how it travels, how it kills, and how health officials could, but often fail to mount the most effective responses—is a complicated story, a cautionary tale, some would say, about power, ego, bureaucracy, preparedness, ignorance, incompetence, and disparate champions whose voices routinely go unheard and whose counsel is too often ignored.
Right now, the highbeams are on Dallas, Texas, ‘Ground Zero’ for West Nile—and Mayor Mike Rawlings has indeed declared a state of emergency in the municipality. As the number of victims escalates, however, so does the anxiety of state and local officials, as well as the complaints of constituents, who’ve begun to question and criticize the city’s response to the health crisis….
Been off the blogosphere for the last month because of a project I was working on. Thought I’d get back into the saddle by looking into the latest on Afghanistan. On July 10th in response to a reporter’s question, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the surge had been a success. In response to some […]
Some of the provisions in 2011 Budget Control Act, meaning the failure of the 2011 “supercommittee” to find $1.2 trillion in cuts, are sweeping the media back into a fury of preemptive Armageddon terror. The rapidly approaching sequestration (a procedure by which automatic spending cuts are implemented)–which will hit both defense and non-defense spending if Congress […]
A recent reading of E. M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, prompted me to reflect on the West’s drawn out engagement in Afghanistan. The centerpiece of this prescient narrative is an incident in an ancient cave in Northwestern India between an Indian doctor and an English woman during the heyday of the British Raj. […]
While the debate over the current ban against openly gay service members in the US military continues in Washington, there is another story about the consequences of breaking barriers in the military that is also getting attention: the ongoing prevalence of sexual violence against women in the military. The BBC carried an interesting story this […]