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Posted On: Jun 29, 2010
It's obvious to everyone that post-Saddam Iraq has an array of internal weaknesses. Hatred between Sunnis and Shiites exploded into near civil war in 2006 - 2007, and animosity between those religious factions continues to roil. Relations between Arabs (both Sunnis and Shiites) and Kurds are also tense and could easily lead to armed conflict, especially over the political status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Iraq's political system borders on the dysfunctional, as evidenced by the continui...
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Posted On: Jun 03, 2010
Leon Hardar in The Huffington PostThe Israeli military's violent raid on the Free Gaza aid flotilla has been analyzed to death -- no pun intended! -- here and elsewhere. And while I'm not trying to pile on the Israeli government, I do think that the incident points out to issues that go beyond what was obviously a failed military operation based on faulty intelligence that has resulted in humanitarian tragedy and a diplomatic and public relations disaster for the Israelis.First, we are remind...
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Posted On: May 24, 2010
First, They Came for the Sex Offendersby David RittgersFirst, they came for the sex offenders. I am not a sex offender, but I opposed the civil commitment of sex offenders by the federal government because it is not an activity within the enumerated powers of Congress. The Supreme Court decided otherwise in Comstock, with the exception of Justices Thomas and Scalia.Next, they will come for suspected terrorists. As Dahlia Lithwick (who I rarely agree with – here is her commentary on the Hell...
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Posted On: May 20, 2010
by David RittgersThe attempted Times Square bombing prompted Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Scott Brown (R-MA) to propose that anyone suspected of providing material support, as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2339A, to State Department-listed terrorist groups be stripped of their citizenship. As Julian Sanchez points out, existing law provides for expatriation for a number of reasons, but in two distinct categories. The first is for actions that demonstrate intent to relinquish citizenship: sw...
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Posted On: May 20, 2010
by Christopher PrebleThe Economist is featuring an online debate this week around the proposition “This house believes that the war in Afghanistan is winnable.” John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security agrees. Peter Galbraith takes the opposing view.The organizers of the event invited me to contribute my two cents. Excerpts of my essay (“Featured Guest,” on the right side of the page) are posted below:The appropriate question is not whether the war is winnable. If we defin...
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Posted On: May 20, 2010
by Ted Galen Carpenter05.19.2010 Akbar Ganji is someone U.S. officials should heed when it comes to policy toward his native Iran. Ganji, a writer and journalist who became the fifth biennial recipient of the Milton Friedman Award for Advancing Liberty on May 13, hasn’t just talked the talk when it comes to working to establish a democratic Iran, he has walked the walk far beyond what most people could endure. During the late 1990s, he presented evidence that the mullahs were behind the ass...
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Posted On: May 20, 2010
by Doug BandowThis article appeared on The Daily Caller on May 19, 2010. The easiest way for an American to fly into Afghanistan is on Kam Air from Dubai. But it appears that only Americans fly into Afghanistan on Kam Air from Dubai. Almost, anyway.The vast majority of passengers on my flights into and out of Kabul were white males, many with military-style haircuts and several with military tattoos. A few may be on active duty. Most probably are private security consultants. As in...
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Posted On: May 19, 2010
Posted by Julian SanchezAs Jeff Stein notes over at the Washington Post, the declassified summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Christmas underpants bomber ought to sound awfully familiar to anyone who thumbed through the 9/11 Commission’s massive analysis of intelligence failures. Of the 14 points of failure identified by the Senate, one pertains to a failure of surveillance acquisition: the understandably vague claim that NSA “did not pursue potential collection...
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Posted On: May 06, 2010
Edited by Benjamin H. Friedman, Jim Harper, and Christopher A. PrebleTerrorizing Ourselves explores disciplined approaches to terrorism and dismantles the flawed thinking that dominates today's national security policy. It exposes how politicians manipulate fear for political purposes and shows how anxiety about terrorism is driving military adventurism, exploding the national debt, militarizing domestic affairs, and shifting expenditures away from other urgent priorities. E-Book at...
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Posted On: Apr 12, 2010
On April 8, 2010, President Obama issued a message to the attendees of the NGO Nuclear Security Summit, thanking them for their dedication and contributions to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
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Posted On: Apr 09, 2010
April 2010 edition of NATO Watch’s monthly Observatory. The focus is on NATO policy-making and operational activities and the clips are drawn from a wide range of subscriptions, feeds and alerts covering a substantial part of the major English language newspapers and other periodicals worldwide.
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Posted On: Apr 06, 2010
by Malou Innocent Malou Innocent is a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute.This article appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on April 5, 2010. There's a growing narrative that Iraq's solidifying democracy makes the seven years of US war and occupation a worthy enterprise.Some observers have even spun Iraq's March 7 elections as proof that democracy promotion via military occupation can succeed. Don't believe the hype. The Iraq war remains a mistake of mammoth proportions. And Ira...
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Posted On: Mar 31, 2010
NAT HENTOFF | Posted: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 5:00 am Last Dec. 18, a New York Times editorial grimly prophesied that President Obama, "like George W. Bush, will decree that the entire planet is a battlefield and anyone arrested anywhere on terrorism charges may be tried in military tribunals." Obama hasn't quite gone that far, but he has seriously proposed permanent detention for terrorism suspects who can't be tried because alleged evidence against them has been obtained by torture. Ho...
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Posted On: Jan 21, 2010
In a briefing on January 21, 2010, Sue Veres Royal, co-director of U.S. in the World, presented recent findings about effective messaging for advocates working on human rights in the context of national security. The presentation, with the presenter's notes, are available upon request.
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Posted On: Jan 11, 2010
Monthly newsletter focusing on NATO policy-making and operational activities. The clips are drawn from a wide range of subscriptions, feeds and alerts covering a substantial part of the major English language newspapers and other periodicals worldwide
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Posted On: Jan 06, 2010
Posted by Christopher PrebleThat is the question posed at the National Journal’s National Security experts blog.My response:We shouldn’t even be contemplating war in Yemen, but we should also understand that the proposed expansion of security assistance to the government there is likely to pay only meager dividends.Steven Metz gets at the nub of this problem in his two thoughtful posts (here and here). We have an unreliable ally. We have minimal capacity for making them more reliable....
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Posted On: Jan 05, 2010
A December 2009 report from the Charity and Security Network describes how U.S. nonprofits are hindered from being an ally against violent extremism due to burdensome CTMs.
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Posted On: Dec 23, 2009
by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Afghanistan is the sort of country which humanitarian-minded people understandably want to "fix." It has become a target of aggressive pro-war activists ranging from neoconservatives who believe in remaking other societies at gunpoint to feminists who believe in waging war to improve the status of women.The latter group belies the common assumption that the Left opposes war. While the Right traditionally resisted imperialistic social engi...
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Posted On: Dec 08, 2009
The fourth edition of NATO Watch’s bi-monthly Observatory newsletter. Our focus is on NATO policy-making and operational activities and the clips are drawn from a wide range of subscriptions, feeds and alerts covering a substantial part of the major English language newspapers and other periodicals worldwide.
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Posted On: Dec 02, 2009
Policy ForumThursday, December 3, 4:00 p.m. Featuring Julian Sanchez, Research Fellow, Cato Institute; Gregory Nojeim, Senior Counsel, The Center for Democracy and Technology; Jena Baker McNeill, Homeland Security Policy Analyst, The Heritage Foundation; and Richard Samp, Chief Counsel, Washington Legal Foundation. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato InstituteAbout the event - Congress is presently moving to renew several provisions of the USA...