Tzipi Livni has taken on leadership of the embattled Kadima party and, for now, is Israel's Prime minister. Girl Spy has some background on the former Mossad agent.
Presidential hopeful Senator John McCain has envisioned a League of Democracies. Eddie of Hidden Unities has two posts on what will be a four part analysis and discussion of the proposal.
Phil of Pacific Empire discusses the kneejerk reactive policies of New Zealand in light of the death of a police officer. Policy should be well thought out and designed not driven by emotional reaction, however tragic the circumstances might be.
Simply Jews brings us both the latest 9/11 conspiracy nut and an article discussing the tedious mess that Arab intellectuals have become.
The Whited Sepulcher on how to teach creationism. A great quote from the post:
"Evolution is no more atheistic than linguistics and optics are atheistic. It's like saying that gravity is libertarian, or that death is illiterate."Fabius Maximus disagrees with the latest strategic development in Afghanistan that sees American forces crossing the border into Pakistan's virtually ungoverned western territory. His concern regarding the domestic fallout in Pakistan, especially considering the nascent reign of "Mr. 10%" is warranted. But Pakistan's backbone has long been it's military, so from where I stand the whole "Jihadi's get control of nukes" deal is a bit overstated.
Does FM envision the action as a declaration of war on Pakistan (hence the reference to congressional approval?) Is his skepticism regarding the Taliban being an American enemy born of the supposition that the Taliban, beyond the current theater of war, presents little threat to American security? Or is it a reference to the majority of the Taliban's theocrats not at all wanting OBL's sorry ass in their country despite the assertions of Mullah Omar prior to 9/11? Or is it something else all together?
The commentary was brief and appears to be all but over and so we, perhaps, will never know.
At any rate, good stuff.
9 comments:
Jay@SOOB : forgive my ignorance, but I can't understand the significance of that logo on the right. Ya know, the horsey in the red sphere. What do those words in Latin mean? & what's with the initials SOOB? They don't spell "Politics, Foreign Policy, Current Events and Occasional Outburst Lacking Couth".
Enlighten me.
Hello your truly. Indeed, not an acronym of any sort. Okay, here's the shortest version of the history behind Soob I can offer.
Once upon a time in a land not really all that far away I joined my first political forum (the first of many to come and eventually all to go; forums are dull and not usually very productive) and in doing so went through the irritating process of picking a screen name and having it refused. After several variants of my own name I settled on a name obscure enough that likely nobody else had considered it but still interesting. The choice was Subadei (there are plenty of variants of spelling this name that one I believe is my own) a Mongol general who served Genghis (and Ogadei) Khan.
Another member of the forum began referring to me as Soob, which sort of caught on.
When I started this blog a few years back I never expected anyone would read it and so really didn't give much thought to the title. I blogged as "subadei" and called the blog Soob and gave it something of a halfassed Mongol motif. The current layout is the third (and final) layout I've used. The seal (horsey in the red sphere) is something I carried over from the last layout. The Latin translates roughly to "may barbarians invade your personal space."
Jay@SOOB : jesus, I've got A$$HOLES INVADIN' MY PERSONAL SPACE near everyday. Had it with 'em.
Thanks for all of the above. "dujour"? French? What's it mean?
Oh yeah, Subadei was renowned for his tactical prowess, wasn't he? One of my associates was so freakin' fascinated with Mongol warfare, even though he's chinese.
dujour = "of the day." It's a play on soup du jour which would be a restaurant's soup of the day. Like I said, I hadn't expected much of a readership.
Heh. I suppose there is some irony in your Chinese friends fascination with Mongol warfare.
"But Pakistan's backbone has long been it's military, so from where I stand the whole "Jihadi's get control of nukes" deal is a bit overstated."
Which is increasingly riven by ethnic conflicts and power struggles and has a younger officer corps packed with fundamentalists.
And who decides which of the officer corps attains rank and file?
That is the problem. There is zero civilian accountability of the military (or the intelligence agencies at this point).
More than 10 years ago warning flags were being raised by writers like Ahmed Rashid & William Darlymple about the mid and junior levels of the Pakistani officer corps. How much longer before they are in charge? The old hands can't stay in power forever.
The ethnic problems are also getting progressively worse as Pakistani society is breaking down along economic, religious and political lines.
Eddie, I'll have to look for the writings of the mentioned authors. Any helpful links off the top of your head?
My understanding of the military's vision (especially under Mush) for Pakistan is that it's much more in line with Ataturk than that of Wahab.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/pakistan_and_its_army
http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2370188
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/31/opinion/edharrison.php
A bit of a start, the best reads are within Rashid's work.
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