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Missile Defense Is for Wimps

May 17, 2012  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Last week, the major media focused on issues of global consequence — like whether Mitt Romney and his "prep school posse" engaged in forcible hair-cutting almost a half-century ago. Most journalists had little time or patience for the issue preoccupying the majority on the House Armed Services Committee: whether Americans should have the right and capability to defend themselves from missile attacks.

Of course, the Associated Press covers just about everything, no matter how trivial, so it did produce a brief dispatch, emphasizing — in typically objective fashion — what it saw as the real news: "Republicans injected presidential politics into the debate, questioning President Obama's commitment to missile defense."

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The Real Palestinian Refugee Problem

May 10, 2012  •  Scripps Howard News Service

After World War II, the British left India, which was to be partitioned into two independent nations. One of them would have a Hindu majority, the other a Muslim majority. More than 7 million Muslims moved to the territory that became Pakistan. A similar number of Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. Today, not one remains a refugee.

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The Foggiest War

May 3, 2012  •  Scripps Howard News Service

The "fog of war" is a concept derived from the writings of Carl von Clausewitz, the great 19th-century Prussian military theorist who recognized that those leading troops into battle often lack data, perspective, and situational awareness. Enveloped within this "fog of uncertainty," they may not know whether they are winning or losing, and they may take actions that weaken their position and strengthen their enemies.

Would Clausewitz not be fascinated by the war dominating the 21st century, a conflict so murky we can't even agree on its name? Is it the "War on Terrorism" or the "Long War" or the "War Against al-Qaeda" or just "Overseas Contingency Operations"?

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Law Games

April 26, 2012  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri is charged with organizing three al-Qaeda attacks including the suicide bombing that killed 17 American servicemen aboard the USS Cole in 2000. Reed Brody, counsel with Human Rights Watch, is concerned about him. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Brody argues that it is unjust and outrageous that Nashiri is to be tried by a military tribunal in Guantanamo rather than in a civilian court in America. Brody claims he's concerned for America, too. The U.S., he asserts, "needs a trial that is accepted around the world as a fair search for the truth."

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Liberate 'Zones of Electronic Repression'!

April 19, 2012  •  Scripps Howard News Service

"The fax shall make you free."

Albert Wohlstetter, the great Cold War strategist, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, said that back in 1990. He was right: The advent of fax machines, photocopiers, and other then-cutting-edge communications technologies was an enormous boon to the free flow of information. In Communist countries, the Samizdat was transformed: Dissident self-publishers, who previously would sit at typewriters copying banned books page by page, could now, with the push of a button, create dozens of copies and transmit them almost anywhere.

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