Iraq

There's the war in Iraq and then there is the war over the war in Iraq. The first is about gaining ground against the sectarian militias and terrorists who plague that country. The second is about storytelling.

Advocates of staying and fighting in Iraq are at a distinct disadvantage in the second war. The burden of the Iraq fighting falls on such a small number of military families that it is easy to portray the troops in the field as victims.… more

Five years after the US -led invasion, Iraq remains a deeply violent and divided society. Faced with one of the largest displacement and humanitarian crises in the world, Iraqi civilians are in urgent need of assistance. Particularly vulnerable are the 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis who have fled their homes for safer locations inside Iraq. Unable to access their food rations and often unemployed, they live in squalid conditions, have run out of resources and find it extremely difficult to… more

General Richard A. Cody graduated from West Point in 1972, flew helicopters, ascended to command the storied 101st Airborne Division, and then, toward the end of his career, settled into management; now, at fifty-seven, he wears four stars as the Army Vice-Chief of Staff. This summer, he will retire from military service.

In 2004, in a little-noted speech, Cody described the Army’s efforts to adapt to its new commitments. (It was attempting to fight terrorism, quell the Taliban, invade and pacify… more

Listen carefully when a new president is inaugurated next January for the sigh of relief coming from most of those Middle Easterners whom President Bush embraced as allies. Conversely, Bush’s rivals in the region are likely to tune in to the occasion in a disgruntled mood. For them the Bush years have been good for business. The menu of grievances on which they’ve fed has become a veritable feast. Opposition to American designs in the region -- deployed with different… more

$3 Trillion Is Just a Part of the Cost (Toronto Star)

. . . "There seems to be a political taboo about questioning levels of military spending," says William Hartung, director of the arms and security initiative of the Washington-based New America Foundation.

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash… more

This article also appears in Star-Telegram.

War is hell -- deadly, dangerous, and expensive. But just how expensive is it?

In a recent interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz asserted that the costs of the Iraq war -- budgetary, economic, and societal -- could reach $5 trillion.

That's a hard number to comprehend. Figuring out how many times $5 trillion would circle the globe (if we took it all in one dollar bills) doesn't really help… more

This article also appears in The Baltimore Sun. 

In the week that oil prices once again crested above $100 a barrel and more Americans than at any time since the Great Depression owed more on their homes than the homes were worth; in the year that the subprime market crashed, global markets shuddered, the previously unnoticed credit-default swap market threatened to go into the tank, stagflation returned, unemployment rose,… more

As George W. Bush enters his final year as president, the struggle to succeed him has revealed deep disagreements about the definition of post-Bush conservatism. Two new books by former members of the Bush administration contribute to this debate.

In “Heroic Conservatism,” Michael Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter now at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written both a memoir and a manifesto, though he adds little to what is already known about Bush. According to Gerson, “Christian faith lies close… more

Just before 4:30 one afternoon last July, calls to prayer echoed from all the mosques in Ayn al Hilweh, a Palestinian refugee camp in the city of Sidon, south of Beirut. First built in 1948 for refugees from northern Palestine, the camp has grown into a ramshackle ghetto. Concrete and cinderblock line tight alleys with cobwebs of low-hung electrical cables. On the walls are layers of faded political posters -- some for Hamas, some for Fatah, and still others for… more