Adam Serwer

Andrew Sullivan responds to my post on the legality of drone strikes in Yemen: There must come a point, however, when you are not targeting a one-off specific figure or cell, but launching round after round of drone missiles into a country, as into the Af-Pak border. The drone attacks into Pakistan are mighty close […]

I know everyone’s sick of people using the “death hug” euphemism in politics, but this, from John Yoo, looks a lot like a death hug. Yoo attacks Republicans for “holding hands with isolationist Democrats out of political convenience.” Republicans returned to power in the House of Representatives on a promise to take the Constitution seriously. […]

This New York Times story, in which former CIA official Glen Carle says that he was told by Bush officials to gather information to help discredit Juan Cole, who had emerged as a prominent war critic at that point, is pretty astonishing. In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council […]

Justin Elliott has an amusing post up with the definitions of Islamophobes most frequently cited Arabic words and Islamic concepts, combined with an explanation of what those they really mean in context: The term: madrassa How it’s used: To refer to a place where Muslim youth are indoctrinated into radicalism and, often, terror Example: “I […]

The latest Gitmo “controversy” is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for a couple of Iraqi terrorism suspects arrested in his state of Kentucky to be transferred to Gitmo and tried by military commission. “A few years ago, we set up military commissions for the specific purpose of trying foreign terrorists,” Mr. McConnell said. “The perfect […]

Andrea Stone finds that plenty of Bush types aren’t so happy with Republican candidates sounding more realist notes in their criticism of Obama‘s foreign policy: “We will be in a stronger political position for a political outcome for this if we sustain relatively constant force levels through this fighting season and for at least the […]

Andrew McCarthy defends Rep. Peter King‘s Muslim hearings, mostly because he thinks Islam is inherently bad (“What “radicalizes” Muslims is Islam”) and so anything that paints Muslims broadly as dangerous is a good thing. In the course of offering the necessary rhetorical excuse that “not all Muslims” are bad, he brings up “taqiyya” again. Moreover, […]

My piece on Rep. Peter King‘s latest Muslim hearings focused on prison radicalization is up, noting that despite all the hype, American prisons haven’t turned out to be a fertile breeding ground for Islamic extremists: According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), only one terrorism plot since 9/11 has involved individuals who became radicalized Muslims […]

Robert Chesney offers another reason why the Obama administration is pushing an increased role for the CIA in Yemen–if President Ali Abdullah Saleh goes, with him goes the consent necessary to operate drone strikes conducted by the military, but thinks this is unnecessary from a legal perspective: The thing that jumps out as potentially relevant […]