Outside the Beltway

According to a new poll, the Tea Party movement, which is largely now the base of the GOP, is not completely in step with the views of American voters as a whole.

Israelis and Palestinians don’t agree on much these days, but they do agree that Barack Obama hasn’t helped the peace process at all since coming to office.

Conservative Republicans who are typically deferential to the military are ignoring the advice of the military leadership on the new START Treaty.

Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.

The Washington Independent goes dark in December, failing to find profitability in three years.

Terrorism risk assessment: Russia at “Extreme Risk”, Greece at “High Risk”, U. S. at “Medium Risk”, Canada and Germany at “Low Risk”.

So will there be an efficacious backlash against TSA policies? I am guessing no.

Airport security is less intrusive in Communist China and war torn Afghanistan than in the USA. Have we finally had enough?

The incoming freshman of the 112th Congress say that they won’t repeat the mistakes that Republicans made when they gained power sixteen years ago, but some of the advice they’re getting virtually guarantees it will happen if they aren’t careful.

Here’s my plan for creating a budget surplus of $126 billion by 2015 and $592 billion by 2030.

Hamid Karazi says that the United States needs to reduce it’s military presence in his country. Perhaps we should listen to him.

Democratic consultants Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell offer some free advice for President Obama. It’s worth every penny.

The immediate reactions from left and right to the proposals from the Chairmen of the Debt Commission are about what you’d expect.

According to reports, the Obama Administration is set to abandon the July 2011 withdrawal deadline that was set earlier this year.

He’s the darkest of dark horses right now, but Gary Johnson stands as the heir apparent to Ron Paul’s surprisingly energetic 2008 run for the GOP nomination.

The latest story being repeated by the conservative talking heads is the claim that President Obama will be spending $ 200 million per day on his upcoming overseas trip. The problem is that it’s not true.

Will the incoming “Tea Party” caucus in the House and Senate force the GOP to reconsider its views on foreign policy? Don’t count on it.

Jonah Goldberg has written a bad column. In this case, an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune headlined “Why is Assange still alive?”

Ivo Daalder, the US Ambassador to NATO, says that we are “seeing the corner and can peek around it in Afghanistan” and that a province-by-province handover of security responsibilities to the host government will “start in the first half of 2011.” But the final handover is not expected until “the end of 2014” and NATO forces will remain in an advisory capacity indefinitely. “The process will take years,” he emphasized.

The Pentagon is looking at a system that would flag suspicious access to data, similar to the alerts by credit cards companies designed to prevent fraudulent charges.

The military surge in Afghanistan appears to be having little impact on the Taliban.

We already knew that Hamid Karzai was corrupt, now we know he takes bribes from the Iranians.

In what is being described as the largest leak of secret documents in U.S. history, Wikileaks has made public more than 400,000 documents related to the seven year long Iraq War.

The Tea Party movement doesn’t seem to have a coherent view on foreign policy. Which means that a Tea Party victory will just mean more of the same Republican neo-conservatism.

Tom Brokaw notices something peculiar about the campaign debates: Nobody’s talking about Iraq or Afghanistan.

Who’s to blame for the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, President Obama or those who have actually been encouraging bias against Muslims?

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged in a newly released letter that the Wikileaks Afghan War document dump wasn’t as damaging as the Pentagon initially claimed. So what was the uproar all about?

American troops in Afghanistan are overindulging in the fast food fare brought in to raise their morale.

General Jim Jones is stepping down as National Security Advisor.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars has endorsed Ron Klein, who never served a day in uniform, over retired LTC Allen West, a decorated veteran of several foreign wars. Is this an outrage?

Yet another study shows what any of us who’ve ever spent any time around soldiers already knew: Our Army is not comprised of stupid people who couldn’t find a decent job.

Daniel Larison’s “The Case Against NATO” makes compelling reading. In my New Atlanticist post “The Case Against the Case Against NATO,” I explain why it’s wrong.

Arnold Schwarzenegger predicts President Obama’s re-election. Historically, that’s the safe bet.

While Americans concern themselves with domestic politics and mid-term elections, the situation in Pakistan seems to continue to get worse.

Robert Lane Greene investigates the rise of acronyms, initialisms, and other informal shortenings of speech.

Pakistan yesterday blocked NATO’s primary supply line into Afghanistan in retaliation for an air strike that killed three Pakistani paramilitaries. Are the two countries truly allies?

Yesterday’s NATO Beyond Afghanistan conference was a depressing day for fans of the most successful military alliance in history.

Vice-President Biden has a message for the Democratic base — stop complaining and just support us already.

The Obama White House is asserting that the President has the authority to issue assassination orders against American citizens, and that no Court has the authority to review his decision. If that doesn’t worry you, it should.

Bob Woodward reports that President Obama was looking for options other than staying the course in Afghanistan. The military didn’t provide any.

If the United Nations has its way, E.T. will be meeting an obscure Malaysian astrophysicists if he arrives.

Perhaps the biggest insight from Bob Woodward’s latest book is the sharpness of the split between the military and civilian leadership.

According to a new book from Bob Woorward, American policy in Afghanistan is the result of a decision making process that can only be described as chaotic at best.