1) Should/must Hamas be part of any Mideast peace talks? 2) Should the US keep permanent bases in Iraq, and should US companies get ‘first rights’ to Iraqi oil contracts? 3) Is decreasing violence in Baghdad because a) the surge is kicking ass, b) forced religious segregation/killing is almost complete, c) they just [...]

The best book reviews are those that avoid the easy shots, the type of superficial critiques that can be made of any book, and go straight for the gut. Such reviews don’t quibble with details, or point out obvious biases, but rather go after the central thesis of the work. They challenge the [...]

… move by the Harper government. First the good. Along with other Commonwealth members, and in notable contrast to Bush’s recent statements, Canada has led the way on suspending Pakistan from the Commonwealth.
Now the bad. The current government is trying to shut down the supervised injection site in Vancouver. The [...]

Haven’t read Belgravia in a while, but dug in on a flight this morning.  Aside from all but endorsing Obama on foreign policy grounds, he is really quite good and calling out bullshit.
He decimates Bush’s “demagogic tactics” of listing specific attacks supposedly stopped through torture.
He gives folly to the hypocrisy of presidentialists who at once [...]

In theory, I am sympathetic to Sullivan’s thesis that Obama is a post-boomer candidate. In fact, I am sympathetic to most post-boomer theses. Including, recently, this one. Which is awesome. In practice, however, my sense is that it is at least one election too early for a successful post-boomer run. Not least of [...]

In light of recent developments in Pakistan, this might be a good time to post an exchange I had with Jeff Weintraub a few months ago on the subject of democracy promotion as a foreign policy meta-narrative. The first is his response to this blog post of mine. He is in Italics. [...]

Dave and I had the following op-ed in the Globe today:
Kandahar deal breakers: The Afghan poll is not a blank cheque
TAYLOR OWEN AND DAVID EAVES
Special to Globe and Mail Update
November 2, 2007 at 1:03 AM EDT
The results of the poll of Afghans by Environics on behalf of The Globe and Mail, the CBC and La [...]