Appearing alongside CIA Director David Petraeus before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said of Iran: “We don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon.” Before the hearing, as James Fallows of The Atlantic reports, Clapper released his “Worldwide Threat … Read more
President Barack Obama’s vision for modernizing the U.S. military is little more than an exercise in “back to the future.” Consider: Back in 2001, the armed forces were nearly a decade into positing what 21st-century warfare would entail. These considerations were based on notions set forth by the individual (military) services. They also considered how … Read more
As active U.S. military involvement in Iraq draws to a close, what does the moral scorecard on this adventure look like from an American point of view? Granted that a comprehensive weighing of results will only be possible some years from now, at the moment the picture is something like this. In a perverse way, … Read more
This is the first round of a 4 part debate between Robert R. Reilly and Russell Shaw on the question, “Was the Iraq war just?” Saddam Hussein’s regime was evil and it threatened vital U.S. national security interests. Its extirpation achieved a great good, the final accomplishment of which is still in the balance … Read more