Tag Archives: Iraq

The Audacity

12/10/2009 – 10:14 am

The need to address the co-option of Newsweek and the Washington Post was so strong last week that I left hanging President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today, Mr. Obama spent a good portion of his speech addressing war in general and the Afghan war specifically.
So, [...]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Condemned to Repeat It

9/3/2009 – 9:24 am

The actual quote from George Santayana is, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Those who cannot remember the quote are condemned to misquote.)
Today’s New York Times has a story about Ted Kennedy’s posthumous memoir, in which he says President John Kennedy’s “antenna” was up over the misbegotten situation in [...]

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Who’s Anti-War Now?

4/2/2009 – 1:49 pm

I am. Principles aren’t principles unless they’re consistent. Now that the White House and Congress have changed hands since 2006, it’s interesting to see politicians and pundits on both sides of the ledger flipping and flopping.
Still, the world is not two-dimensional and those who pretend it is do an injustice to reality. [...]

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Follow-Up Questions

4/10/2008 – 9:00 am

Before the New Hampshire primary, John McCain had his now-famous colloquy with a voter in which he said he doesn’t care if American troops are in Iraq for 100 years, provided those troops are not getting killed or wounded.
There are a number of Republicans running around now, saying Mr. McCain never said that, but he [...]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion | Also tagged , | Comments (1)

Blood and Treasure

3/27/2008 – 8:49 am

Less than a week later, Adrienne and I headed back out for the vigil. The half-dozen senior citizens and nuns who have been there every day for nearly seven years were happy to have us back, even if it meant one of our infrequent thresholds – in this case, the 4,000th American death in [...]

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Tet Again?

1/31/2008 – 11:39 am

Happy New Year. Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Tet, short for Tet Nguyen Dan, is the Vietnamese new year. Based on a lunar calendar, Tet will begin on 7 February this year.
I’ve been thinking about the Tet Offensive because 1968 was an election [...]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Fortunes of War

1/29/2008 – 3:29 pm

Conventional wisdom holds that today’s Republican primary in Florida will narrow the race to two candidates – John McCain and Mitt Romney. Further wisdom from the convention holds that next Tuesday’s multiple primaries will determine which of the two men will receive the nomination.
I won’t disagree with that wisdom, whether or not it proves [...]

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