Matthew Duss

Let’s all just take a moment to thank our lucky stars that Rudy Giuliani, a man who relentlessly tried to capitalize on the fear and confusion that Americans felt, and still feel, about 9/11, who tried and tried to sell himself as the embodiment of America’s rage and the instrument of its unreasoning vengeance, and […]

Noah Pollak has a follow-up smear to his earlier smear of Samantha Power, in which, among other delights, he interprets Powers’ suggestion (in a 2002 interview, during one of the most violent periods of the second intifada) of the possible necessity of an American-led peacekeeping force in Palestinian areas as advocacy for “an American ground […]

Over at Contentions, Noah Pollak writes “there has been an awakening in recent days to the presence of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel.” As evidence of this “awakening,” Pollak offers a couple of articles by Ed Lasky, the substance of which hovers somewhere […]

Maybe if Peggy Noonan tried to avoid writing things like: This, truly, is a good man. And that is a rare thing. Agree with Mr. Bush’s stands or disagree, there can be no doubting the depth of his seriousness and the degree to which he attempts to do what he is convinced is right, and […]

Following on A.J.‘s post about the gossamer threads upon which the surgeniks continue to hang their claims of victory, Spencer Ackerman has an article on the ironclad ties that bind us to our new Iraqi Sunni “allies”: One of the signature achievements of the surge, according to General David Petraeus and the White House, has […]

Just what the Middle East needs, more high-tech weapons floating around: The Joint Direct Attack Munition is a kit that, when added to the back end of a 500- or 2,000-pound “dumb” bomb, turns it into a lethal, all-weather “smart” weapon. The bomb can hit within four feet of a target when launched from a […]

I haven’t finished reading Jeffrey Goldberg‘s new article on “the next phase of Middle East history,” but this anecdote is worth sharing: Just before the “Mission Accomplished” phase of the war, I spoke about Kurd­istan to an audience that included Norman Podhoretz, the vicariously martial neoconservative who is now a Middle East adviser to Rudolph […]

Jonah Goldberg, from a recent interview: When Barack Obama is on the stump, his whole point is that if we can just be unified, public policy issues don’t really matter, what really matters is unity — that sort of thing. There’s also a sort of contempt for Democratic values that also comes out of this […]

Eric Martin has an excellent couple of posts on how the mainstream media, having spent the last few years shrugging furiously over their complicity in selling the neocons’ “9/11WMDAlQaedaSaddamOMG!!!1!!” argument for the Iraq war, now seem intent on repeating that mistake by accepting the neocons’ “SurgeSuccessAnbarVictoryOMG!!!1!!” story. One really has to marvel at the discipline […]

Eli Lake comments on my post about takfir: I did not say that all Islamic Supremacists opposed elections. Nor did I say that Shi’ia Islamic Supremacists adhered to Salafi Takfir. I simply said that the doctrine of Takfir and its analog for Khomeinists sanction activities normally proscribed by Islam for unbelievers due to the dire […]