Outside the Beltway

Bin Laden spent the last half-decade in a compound where his only contact with the outside world was a few couriers.

Congress is coming back to Washington and gas prices continue to rise. Expect a lot of demagoguery, but very little in the way of solutions.

Will days of strong economic growth ever return? And what happens if they don’t?

Superman will renounce his American citizenship!

An aide’s compliment about the president “leading from behind” has generated controversy.

President Obama is suffering in the polls because of high gas prices, but is there really anything he can do about them?

The NYT says it’s time for U. S. advisers and military air traffic controllers on the ground in Libya.

Events in Syria, and the world’s response to them, are revealing the moral bankruptcy of the justification for the war in Libya.

Is there a magic formula to fix soaring gas prices? A Washington Examiner editorial claims to have found it.

Francis Fukuyama: “In the developed world, we take the existence of government so much for granted that we sometimes forget how difficult it was to create.”

Stephen Walt doesn’t expect Obama’s foreign policy to change along with the names on the org chart.

My first piece for The American Conservative, which they’ve titled “War Isn’t for Everyone–The military needs civilian control, not citizen soldiers,” is in the May issue.

Defense Secretary Gates hinted this week that the U.S. would stay in Iraq if the Iraqis wanted. It doesn’t seem like they do.

Continuing problems with the coalition operation in Libya reinforce an old military adage: You fight like you train.

The only people responsible for the murders in Afghanistan are the people who committed them, but the demagogues like Terry Jones deserve condemnation as well.

Modern life requires us to put a high degree of trust in those to whom we delegate responsibility

President Obama has pledged no slaughter and no ground troops for Libya. He may well be forced to pick one.

The groups we supported were defeated by the Taliban in the civil war that followed Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban and Usama bin Laden were supported by the separate “Sayyaf” group of Mujahideen supported by Saudi Arabia and Deobandi fanatics in Pakistan.

Senator Joe Lieberman said today that we should intervene in Syria using the same rationale we did for Libya. Because, you know, what’s the big deal about a fourth war?

Newt Gingrich on Libya: “This is as badly executed, I think, as any policy we’ve seen since WWII, and it will become a case study for how not to engage in this type of activity.”

Jorge Benitez has written a useful Libya Primer: Who is In Charge of Allied Forces? The short answer: No one.

Palin thinks Israel apologizes too much and it would seem that some find this to be a profound statement.

Is Libya a war? Hell yes, Libya is a war.

The uneasy coalition that coalesced around action in Libya will be strained by decisions to come.

U.S. officials are making clear that the current mission in Libya may not lead to the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule. If that’s the case, then why are we there in the first place?

What are the limits of Resolution 1973? Are there any?

Did President Obama pull off a diplomatic masterstroke? Or is he muddling through?

America is about to enter a third war in the Muslim world with no clear idea of the end game.

With minor exceptions, all of the potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012 seem to have accepted the idea that defense spending, and the Bush-era interventionist foreign policy, are off the table when it comes time to talk spending cuts.

The Obama Administration is asking the U.N. Security Council to authorize direct military intervention in Libya. The question is, why now?

New York Times journalists Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks, and Lynsey Addario have not been heard from in more than 24 hours.