Outside the Beltway

There seems to be an effort underway to reassess the legacy of our 43rd President.

The events in Boston on Monday were tragic, but there was one shining success.

A bipartisan commission of elder statesmen confirms what we’ve known for years.

A new report confirms that the United States did engage in torture in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

We treat violence by lone individuals differently than organized violence. Race, religion, and national origin have nothing to do with that.

A preventative strike against North Korea is a bad idea.

Revisiting an old posting of mine on the subject.

My latest for The National Interest, “It’s Not Too Soon to Tell,” has posted.

Because sometimes poorly contructed observations can set a fellow to writing.

The odds for a party switch in the House of Representatives remain quite low.

My latest for The National Interest, “Hagel’s Three Questions,” ponders our national security decisionmaking.

Will the prohibitive favorite for the 2016 Democratic nomination do it differently this time around?

Emily DePrang looks back at “‘Baghdad Bob’ and His Ridiculous, True Predictions.”

So what, exactly, is going on in North Korea? And how should we respond to Kim’s bluster?

An American fighting with Syrian rebels faces life in prison for firing an RPG against a government we’re trying to oust.

Conveying military experience to civilian human resources departments is hard.

Targeting terrorist leadership may be counterproductive.

The Army has war gamed a conflict to secure a failed North Korea. It would not be a cakewalk.

One in eight Americans support drone strikes against Americans on American soil.

The Iraq War did significant damage to the legacy of the Republican Party.

Second thoughts about the Iraq War

A tendency to expand objectives mid-fight has seen America fail in its last four major wars.

California’s senior senator comes to the right conclusion through the wrong reasoning.

Walter Russell Mead presents his sitrep of the War on Terror.

The regime we fought for in Iraq is now aiding the regime we’re fighting against (at least by proxy) in Syria.

Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 charges stemming from turning classified documents over to WikiLeaks.

A theory on why Benghazi will not die as a political issue.

For the moment, Republicans appear to be blocking Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense but they don’t seem to know why they’re doing it.

The smear campaign against defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel has taken a bizarre turn.

Pretending like the Bush administration never happened is a problem for the GOP.

Chuck Hagel will be confirmed, but the campaign against him tells us much about the current state of Republican foreign policy

The Obama Administration has given us a peek at its legal arguments for targeted killings and they are troubling to say the least.

Andrew Bacevich bemoans the social impact of the all-volunteer force.

Is America’s focus on defense weakening the country?

My latest for The National Interest, “Ignoring the Hagel Hearing Farce,” has posted.

The office working to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba has been closed.

Greg Jaffe has an outstanding feature titled “In one Army family, women in combat evokes two different perspectives.”

My latest for The National Interest, “Obama Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine,” is out.