Category: Uncategorized
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Putin’s fleeting moral superiority
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, August 28, 2016. Remember when Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote a sanctimonious rant about U.S. foreign policy for The New York Times? “A Plea for Caution from Russia” was a manifesto against American exceptionalism, unilateralism and “military intervention in internal conflicts…
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Stop calling Trump a fascist
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, August 20, 2016. “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” – George Orwell Over the past year, I’ve heard Donald Trump described as a “neo-fascist,” “Euro-fascist,” “proto-fascist” and, my personal favorite,…
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U.S. wasted countless opportunities in Syria
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, August 13, 2016. A week ago, Syrian rebels seized a major military installation in Aleppo and ended a month-long siege of the city. Afterward, citizens of east Aleppo rushed into the streets to celebrate, rebels captured a large stockpile of weapons…
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How Trump is ruining the national security party
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, August 6, 2016. When it comes to foreign policy, the GOP better hope the 2016 election is an aberration. As Michael Hirsh observed in a recent POLITICO column: “For the first time, perhaps, since Vietnam, the Democratic Party is now the…
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Democrats should embrace Clinton’s hawkishness
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 30, 2016. “Hillary Clinton is a hawk.” This sentence keeps popping up in columns and interviews as if it’s an election-shifting revelation. For example, according to the New Republic’s Jeet Heer, ” … liberals are facing the grim realization that…
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Trump’s oblivious praise for Saddam Hussein
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 23, 2016. In a massive, ever-expanding field of absurdities, Donald Trump’s recent comments about Saddam Hussein and terror may have been the worst: “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? He was a bad guy — really bad guy. But…
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Significance of Taliban leader’s death shouldn’t be diminished
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 16, 2016. When Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was killed by a U.S. airstrike in May, President Obama called it “an important milestone in our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan.” This statement seemed uncontroversial to me —…
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Obama’s failure to withdraw from the Middle East
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 9, 2016. Barack Obama didn’t want to be a foreign policy president. He wanted to pass health care reform. He wanted to guide the U.S. toward energy independence and combat climate change. He wanted to extricate his country from a…
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Trump’s dangerous plan to dismantle our alliances
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, July 2, 2016. When Donald Trump delivered his first major foreign policy speech in April, he called “America First” the “overriding theme of my administration.” Two sentences later, he celebrated the United States’ triumph in World War II: “In the 1940s…
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Biden is wrong about Libya
*This article was originally published in The Topeka Capital-Journal, June 25, 2016. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Vice President Joe Biden touted his opposition to the NATO-led intervention in Libya and the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi: “My question was: ‘OK, tell me what happens. He’s gone. What happens?…
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