Whatever happened to the Bush-era adoration by Republicans of the wise adage by Senator Arthur Vandenberg in the Truman era, that “politics stops at the water’s edge” ? Well, that is a naive question, of course. The only real theme to partisan Republican crticism of Obama is reflexive, unthinking opposition. Daniel Larison sums it up…

Last night, Katie Couric interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on CBS. I think this could have been a good thing, but ultimately was totally meaningless. Couric is not a seasoned interviewer like Barbara Walters, in terms of getting the “big fish”, and I think she knows this, and tried to overcompensate by challenging Ahmadinejad on…

I am engaged in some rethinking of our Afghanistan policy, and trying to look at Obama’s proposed strategy with a fresh outlook. This is more challenging because I am generally a fan of Obama’s policies rather than a critic. As a starting point, Obama’s idea of linking Afghanistan and Pakistan policy together is predicated on…

This is a guest post by Haroon Moghul. Not surprisingly, in the days since Iran’s election fiasco, Western media have attempted to fit the events inside the Islamic Republic into a convenient framework. I call this the myth of secular inevitability, or the legend of liberalization. (Because it is an ahistorical and metaphysical claim, kind…

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