History and the Kagans: Paradise and Power I
In his December 2006 Washington Post article, “Our ‘Messianic Impulse,’” Robert Kagan acknowledges that many have been critical of America’s approach not just to Iraq but to foreign policy in...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power II
Robert Kagan’s neocon credo can be summarized without too much simplification thus: America is the pivotal nation not only in current world affairs but in the whole grand sweep of human history. Kagan,...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power III
“The world has become normal again.” So Robert Kagan begins his recent essay“End of Dreams, Return of History.” A mere decade and a half ago some historians and foreign policy experts were announcing...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power IV
Robert Kagan, it seems, has evolved. In his recent essay with Ivo Daalder, “The Next Intervention,” he has called for a “Concert of Democracies,” a new international “arrangement” in which “the world's...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power V
In his essay, “End of Dreams, Return of History,” (which I briefly referenced in Part III of this series and to which I will return in more detail in future posts), Robert Kagan claims that we have...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power VI
“It would take the will of men, not nature, to bring down this horrific human invention.” So says Robert Kagan in his most recent column for The Washington Post. The “horrific human invention” to which...
View ArticleOur Window of Opportunity
The evidence, as a November 18 Washington Posteditorial intones, is “overwhelming.” The evidence that the editorial adduces includes signs of diminishing violence throughout Iraq, the rout of al Qaeda...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power VII
On Monday, 3 December, the combined intelligence agencies of the US released a summary of their National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The same day at a press briefing, Stephen Hadley, the National...
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power VIII
Victor Davis Hanson does not like echo chambers, and Washington, he claims, has become one. A number of notions, it seems, are flinging repetitively around the enclosed and reverberant spaces of the...
View ArticleObama Promises the Military Industrial Complex 90,000 Fresh Ground Troops.
Obama's Pledge to the Military Complex:Obama has made the boldest pledge (shocking to many) to increase standing ground troops by 92,000. This feeds against the Eisenhower 'standing army' argument....
View ArticleHistory and the Kagans: Paradise and Power IX
Barack Obama, according to Michael O’Hanlon in his recent Wall Street Journalopinion piece, “has some work to do.” Obama advertises himself as the candidate who will harmonize all the voices, raucous...
View ArticleCowboy Nation: Prelude
He’s back and he’s gunning for bear.Norman Podhoretz, in his June 2007 essay, “The Case for Bombing Iran,” argues that the US can no longer afford to put off attacking Iran, the “main center of the...
View ArticleCowboy Nation I
The neocons are a resolute and resilient bunch. Their fantasy of implanting in the autocratic aridity of the Middle East a garden of seedling democracies has proven, in reality, to be a far more...
View ArticleCowboy Nation II
Victor Davis Hanson has assessed the situation and come to the inescapable conclusion: Europe is in decline. He delivers this judgment, with his customary elegance and dash, in a recent interview, “The...
View ArticleThe "Battle" for the Soul of John McCain (Foreign Policy)
The New York Times had a good article on Thursday about the two prominent camps in conservative foreign policy, the pragmatists and the neocons, and their efforts to exude influence on the Republican...
View ArticleCowboy Nation III
In a major foreign policy address on March 26, John McCain declared himself an idealist. He is an idealist because he believes that the core American “principles of free people and free markets” can...
View ArticleCowboy Nation IV
In his recent Washington Postarticle, Michael Leahy lays out the evidence in support of a contention that few would dispute: John McCain has a temper. Few would dispute it because, as Leahy reports,...
View ArticleCowboy Nation V
Dean Barnett has read George Packer’s essay heralding “the fall of conservatism “and judges it “not particularly insightful.” Barnett specifically takes Packer to task for failing to acknowledge a...
View ArticleA "September 10 mind-set"
The Obama and McCain camps are having a bit of back-and-forth over terrorism, national security, etc. The point of conflict seems to be Obama's praise for the capture, prosecution, and incarceration...
View ArticleUS Foreign Policy Idealism.
Robert Kagan, a policy expert who is advising Sen. John McCain has written an essay on American military interventions and American expansionism throughout our republic's history. (The article is no...
View ArticleCowboy Nation VI
“The world has become normal again.” So Robert Kagan begins his latest effort, The Return of History and the End of Dreams. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he says, the world had in the 90s a...
View ArticleObama’s Mideast Strategy: Brought to You by CFR-Brookings.
A headline on the United Press International website declares: "CFR-Brookings report reveals Obama’s Mideast strategy." In other words, the "liberal" think tank at the Brookings Institute and the CFR...
View ArticleCowboy Nation VII
On a recent trip to Iraq, in July 2008, Kim Kagan, wife of Fred Kagan and herself one of the architects of the surge, did something that she had not done on any of her previous trips. She visited “the...
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Vivisecting Kagan's Defense "Cut" Flim-Flammery
If the NeoConniving Robert Kagan's viewpoint about "cuts" in the defense budget expressed on the Washington Post's "Op"-Ed page today were actually true, left-progressives would have something to...
View ArticleMorning Feature: Pentagon Pushback (Plus Kossaku)
After two days off, I'm back for our beloved Kula, who's taking time off to move, so the Kula Krew have a place to gather for Koffee, Kuddles, and Konversation. In today's offering, the troubling but...
View ArticleMorning Feature: A Tale of Two Galaxies - Truthy Way & Belt Way
While our beloved Kula is away, I'm filling in so the Kula Krew have a place to gather for Koffee, Kuddles, and Konversation. In today's offering we further explore a topic that arose in Sunday's Ask...
View ArticleWPost’s Neocons Aim Their Editorial Guns At Iran
The neocon editorial writers at the Washington Post used the run-up to the Geneva meetings between the United States and Iran to marginalize the significance of the negotiations, to endorse a policy of...
View ArticleRobert Kagan Still Suffers from Cranial-Rectal Insertion
Robert Kagan and his brother Fred contributed significantly to the Iraq War Party and confirmed their position throughout the 00 decade. Well, Robert appears to want to maintain his position as he...
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The Daily Show/Colbert Report Social Hour 02.21.12
Tonight on TDS, Russ Feingold, While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era ; and on TCR, Robert Kagan .
View ArticleNew Ad: "These Guys"
This week's ad's a bit off the beaten. The Hal Rineyesque narration is replaced by a distinctly different character. Economics are not the focus. Instead, it's a look at an aspect of Mr. Romney's...
View ArticlePutting the Venom in Romney's Chicken-hawk Rhetoric
It's hard not to be startled, outraged, and angered at Mitt Romney's tone-deaf foreign policy pronouncements. And rightly so ...Mitt Romney’s ‘No Apology’ Foreign Policyby Michael Falcone,...
View ArticleOctober 16th Talking Points For President Obama
As an avid observer of national politics I’ll be honest and admit that President Obama’s last debate performance was nothing short of abysmal. What I find particularly frustrating about Barack Obama in...
View ArticleWhy Is Our Foreign Policy in the Former Soviet Union Being Run by PNAC...
I understand that the US State Department has of late been inclined toward interventionsim, whether it be Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton, or John...
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Neocons "jolted back to life" like Frankenzombies from hell - must be tried...
Evoking images of Frankenstein's castle Edward Luce of The Financial Times warns us that America’s neocons have been jolted back to life, refusing to die, like contagious zombies from hell, coming...
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"Bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a president’s...
Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institute is an unlikely voice to join the cacophony of voices slamming Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for his upcoming speech before Congress on March...
View ArticleWhat are the odds Hillary Clinton has us neck-deep in another ME quagmire in...
Let’s assume, as kos pointed out in his bullet-point-laden front-pager, that Hillary Clinton is very likely to be our next president.Let’s get all the cheering out of the way up front…YEA, HILLARY!!!!!...
View ArticleDo Feminists Support Coups? Honduran Women on Hillary Clinton
U.S. Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has built her campaign around her self-proclaimed dedication to fighting for women’s rights, as well as her superior experience in the realm...
View ArticleWhy are GOPers like Neocons welcome in the Democratic party, but Greens and...
Why the constant accusations against supporters of Bernie Sanders that “they are not real democrats?” Why the cheers of joy every time a republican dumps the GOP because of Donald Trump, and confesses...
View ArticleRobert Kagan: Neo-con Godfather, PNAC cofounder...and Hillary Clinton endorser.
First, a bit of background. The man pictured here is none other than Robert Kagan. His career in the neoconservative school of International Relations has been long and storied. Here are some (only...
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Robert Parry: “Bernie Sanders as Commander-in-Chief”
Bernie Sanders as Commander-in-Chiefby Robert ParryConsortium NewsTuesday, March 29th, 2016Sen. Bernie Sanders’s landslide victories in Washington State, Alaska and Hawaii on Saturday coincided with a...
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“'H' is for Hawk.” So, “Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?”
Before I get to Robert Parry’s article, further down, I wanted to mention my Thursday post.Yesterday, I published a diary (see: NYT’s/Mark Landler’s Scathing Critique: “How Hillary Clinton Became a...
View ArticleNew York Times editor flooded with anti-Semitic attacks from Trump supporters
All it took was a link to open the floodgates.On Thursday evening, New York Times Washington editor, Jonathan Weisman tweeted out a link to a Robert Kagan editorial in the Washington Post. Kagan’s...
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Former Reagan State Department Official Scorches Donald Trump: This Is How...
For the past year much has been written about Donald Trump. He may be the most widely despised candidate for president to ever seek the office. The animosity directed at him comes from all across the...
View ArticleWhy Some Are Angry: A Hobson's Choice on Foreign Policy-Social Policy Hostage...
(Before some get all hide happy, let me say that I am a life long Democrat, and will vote for the nominee of the Democratic Party on November the 8th. But perhaps a third of our party, plus a sizable...
View ArticleHillary, Please Tell Kagan Thanks... But No Thanks.
I went back and forth all morning on whether to post now, we have our nominee, and I am not ecstatic about our choice, but in 40 years of voting I’ve never pulled the lever, punched the card or scanned...
View Article“I saw how it was, and I was ready.”
Last in a seriesFirst installmentSecond installmentThird installmentFourth installmentFifth installmentSixth installmentSeventh installmentEighth installmentOriginally posted at Blog on the Run:...
View ArticleHow I saw the light: being under the thumb of Putin is bad, Bill Kristol and...
A little click bait hyperbolic title there, not unlike my last diary. I'm just trying to fit in with what passes as jurnalism these days. New poling has come out that shows the most hawkish political...
View ArticleICYMI, there are RED ALERT opinion pieces at both The NY Times and The...
Robert Kagan, writing in The Washington Post warns It’s up to the people to foil Trump’s plot against democracy....Trump and his supporters have told us exactly how they plan to hold onto power...
View ArticleNational Guard being readied to respond to election civil unrest... And then...
Talking Points Memo reportsNational Guard Taps Units To Respond To Potential Civil UnrestWASHINGTON (AP) — The National Guard has designated military police units in two states to serve as rapid...
View ArticleRobert Kagan offers a terrifying treatise on Trump and the future of the nation
Some of the most intelligent and penetrating criticism of what has become of the Republican Party in the wake of Donald Trump has come from disaffected, former Republicans. From The Washington...
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