Please check out these two outstanding articles in National Review Online (Part I and Part II) written by my good friend, Reggie Gibbs. His account is truly fascinating.
Archive for the ‘American Foreign Policy’ Category
Mattis is a Great Pick to be CENTCOM Commander
U.S. Marine Corps General James N. Mattis, who currently serves as the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, has been selected to lead U.S. Central Command. This is an outstanding pick by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Mattis is an exemplary general officer and a true strategic thinker. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media is beating up on Mattis for some comments he’s made in the past about warfare. His remarks were candid and, unfortunately, have been taken out of context. One misleading headline reads: “James Mattis: ‘It’s fun to shoot some people.’” Here’s the context for the quote:
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years, because they didn’t wear a veil. You know guys like that ain’t…
John Kerry’s Misinformed Position on the New START Treaty
Yesterday, Senator John F. Kerry wrote an op-ed in response to Mitt Romney’s piece published earlier this week in which the former governor argued against ratifying the New START Treaty. Kerry’s op-ed was not only hyper-partisan but, as The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano notes, quite inaccurate as well. Kerry’s op-ed was little more than partisan drivel. It lacked any sort of serious analytical rigor. I would expect a better quality of analysis and thought from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Steele’s Failed Critique Highlights Division Among Conservatives on War Strategy
In 2006, I was really pulling for Michael Steele in his battle to win a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland. Unfortunately, Ben Cardin won and Steele wound up running the Republican National Committee. Steele’s odd remarks about the war in Afghanistan have led to a growing number of calls for his resignation among prominent conservatives. The war in Afghanistan was definitely not a war of President Barack Obama’s choosing, as Steele suggested in his remarks at a Connecticut fundraiser. This factual inaccuracy made the rest of Steele’s comments seem off-the-wall, but it appears as though he was trying to challenge the president’s strategy for prosecuting the war. He just failed miserably:
Well if he’s such a…
Don’t Be Facebook Friends with a Spy
It appears as though accused Russian spy Mikhail Semenko was an active social networker. Semenko and his comrades are a case study in espionage 2.0. He had accounts on LinkedIn and Facebook. He even ran a blog on the Chinese economy. What are the lessons here? Well, first, you should know who you’re connected to on these social networking sites. A Facebook news feed could have been a great source of intelligence for Semenko, if he was friends with the right people–say, a congressman on the right committee who posts a little too much on his Facebook account or even a mid-level civil servant working in a sensitive national security position. It seems hard to believe, but…
Focus Group with Frank Luntz in Old Town Alexandria
I’ve seen Frank Luntz on TV a bunch of times and I’ve always found him to be a pretty interesting guy. He’s definitely passionate about what he does. Last week, I participated in a focus group with Frank at his office in Old Town Alexandria. I was one of about 30 participants who showed up for the 3-hour session. The subject of the evening was Israel. It was a pretty interesting experience. Before we started, they gave us sandwiches from Panera. I had the smoked turkey, which was pretty solid. Then we filled out a pretty lengthy questionnaire, watched a series of informational videos, news clips, and speeches. We got to use those cool dials, or “Perception Analyzers,” Frank uses on TV…
Fran Townshend Speech at National Defense University
I heard Fran Townshend, the former Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush, speak the other night at National Defense University at Ft. McNair. I was fortunate enough to get an invite through my affiliation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and their Nuclear Scholars Initiative program. She gave a solid speech about the continued threat of terrorism and how it’s important for the government to clearly communicate threats to the American people. People get anxious when they’re kept in the dark and only told bits and pieces of a story, she argued. She also provided some lessons she learned navigating the sprawling national security bureaucracy both as a civil servant and a high-level political appointee.
I asked her during…
Red Dawn Remake with People’s Liberation Army!
So it looks like the classic 1984 war film Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayzee and Charlie Sheen, is being remade. This time, though, the Chinese will be the invaders. If you haven’t seen the original, you should definitely check it out. Red Dawn was listed as #15 on National Review Online’s list of the Best Conservative Movies.
I’m really fired up for this film. While I’ll miss Swayzee and Sheen, I have high hopes for Connor Cruise, Tom Cruise’s son. More specifically, though, I’m glad that China’s growing military power is starting to get some attention in the popular media. Defense analysts and a handful of policymakers have been watching China’s…