Ross Douthat penned an interesting column in a recent issue of the Altantic saying that post-9/11 America has, culturally, returned to the paranoid style of the 1970s.
Conservatives such as Noonan hoped that 9/11 would bring back the best of the 1940s and ’50s, playing Pearl Harbor to a new era of patriotism and solidarity. Many […]

I think this is great.
Army Gen. David Petraeus, the four-star general who led troops in Iraq for the past year, will be nominated by President Bush to be the next commander of U.S. Central Command, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.
Gates said he expected Petraeus to make the shift in late summer or early fall. […]

Hamas, on the State Department Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization list, has all but endorsed Senator Obama . . .
–The Tank, a National Review Online blog
Well, we knew this would come around sooner or later. The primary isn’t even over yet! Can’t these Hamas guys at least hold out until the convention, like Hillary’s doing?
But, seriously, […]

Here we go again.
The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and says it will soon start identifying prime candidates for jobs at the Baghdad embassy and outlying provinces, according to a cable obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
A similar call-up notice last year caused an […]

So, W. Thomas Smith, Jr., who criticized me for a post I made earlier this year by declaring his holier-than-thou reporting and fact-checking methods, seems to have run into quite a bit of trouble himself over his “reporting” in the Middle East.
The story is all over the Web, but the Columbia Journalism Review blog has […]

I like this comment made in a blog post about the recently released National Intelligence Estimate deflating the Bush administration’s rhetoric advocating bombing Iran:
It reminds me of that quote from Kurt von Hammerstein:
I divide officers into four classes — the clever, the lazy, the stupid and the industrious. Each officer possesses at least two of […]

GovExec.com is reporting that Foreign Service Officers — the folks who work for the State Department at embassies around the world — are upset over a new policy that would force them to serve in Iraq:
Several hundred U.S. diplomats vented anger and frustration Wednesday about the State Department’s decision to force foreign service officers to […]

Captain Bill Putnam, an Army Reserve intelligence officer, suggests in the Small Wars Journal that soccer may be an effective strategy for building national unity in Iraq, a prerequisite for American withdrawal:
Soccer is Iraq’s only true national sport. The passion it generates is twice that of the Super Bowl or the College Football national championship. […]

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has accused Britain of not doing enough to fight international terrorism, which he says could take 20 or 30 years to beat.
[Hotel Tango: Foreign Policy Passport]

So much for hating us for our freedom. As much as we hear about Middle Easterners hating Americans, they obviously don’t have a problem with our television, music and fashion:
MTV Arabia, a new 24-hour free satellite channel, will begin broadcasting in Arabic across the Middle East on Nov. 16. The Viacom-owned network’s flagship show, Hip […]