In a New York Times Op-Ed, two former U.S. officials, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon warn of the potential for Egypt's crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood to engender Islamic extremism. "Egypt’s crisis threatens to add fuel to the ongoing terrorist activity across...
Historian Margaret MacMillan has published a lengthy report for the Brookings Institution exploring the "lessons of the Great War" and drawing parallels between the state of international affairs prior to WWI and today. In one section, she discusses "The Temptations...
I've predicted failure for Secretary of State John Kerry's push for peace negotiations and a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of the (many) reasons past efforts to "broker" a deal have failed is because Israel makes a handful of demands that are...
It's rare that I write about good news. But the editorial from yesterday's New York Times is really good news. Entitled "Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower," the Times editorial board praises and defends Snowden's decision to leak information about the NSA and argue he...
Much has been made recently of the apparent tension between the U.S. and its longtime ally, Saudi Arabia. The thinking essentially goes like this: Washington hasn't sufficiently bowed to Saudi interests on issues like post-Mubarak Egypt, the Syrian civil war, and the...
Almost 100 years ago, nearly 100,000 men on the Western Front in Europe stopped fighting the Great War for a while. Some stopped for a few days, some -- especially those who began the truce on Boxing Day or later -- lasted until the start of 1915. In some places, this...
The CIA and JSOC are engaged in a covert war in Colombia that involves intelligence cooperation and help in carrying out an assassination campaign against domestic rebels with U.S.-provided "smart bombs," according to an investigative report from the Washington Post's...
Barring a last-minute frantic call from the White House, CBS’s “Face the Nation” will interview whistleblowers Thomas Drake (ex-senior executive at the National Security Agency) and Jesselyn Radack (ex-ethics adviser at the Justice Department). Michael Hayden, who...
Five years after the devastating Israeli war on Gaza, called 'Operation Cast Lead,' Israel has again bombed the densely populated open air prison strip to its south. Several Gazans have been reported injured and at least one toddler has been killed. All of the media...
When the NSA's bulk collection of every single American's phone records was disclosed this past summer, defenders of the program argued it was not invasive surveillance because it's only metadata (who you called, when, and for how long) and doesn't include the...
