Matthew Yglesias

DEPRESSING MIDEAST ROUNDUP. Say what you want about the Bush administration, but they sure know how to pull off a good media stunt like Condi Rice‘s surprise visit to Beirut, conducted via helicopter from Cyprus since Israeli airstrikes have closed Lebanon’s airport. Fortunately for Rice, she managed not to be hit by any stray bombs […]

NEGROPONTE BLOCKS IRAQ EVALUATION. Considering that the United States is fighting a major war in Iraq, it’s a bit curious that it hasn’t been the subject of a National Intelligence Estimate since 2004. Ken Silverstein reports “that some senior figures at the CIA, along with a number of Iraq analysts, have been pushing to produce […]

YOU COULD HAVE IT SO MUCH BETTER. My colleague Harold Meyerson has analogized the current Mideast crisis to the crisis set off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914: “Nobody wanted global conflagration, yet nobody knew how to stop it, and the American president (Woodrow Wilson, who was not yet a […]

“SPECTACULAR CHALLENGE,” VAGUE SOLUTION. Okay. I don’t really want to revisit the mean-spirited blog-feuds of yesteryear. Nevertheless, I’ve read The New Republic‘s editorial on the Israel/Lebanon/Syria/Iran situation, and I don’t understand what it’s trying to say about American policy: The ascendancy of Ahmadinejad’s perfidious Iran is a spectacular problem for the United States, and a […]

AGAINST ILLUSIONS. To continue with the theme of the day, I�ll point out that the absolute most dangerous thing that can happen to a country is for it to fall prey to pleasing delusions. It would be nice if Lebanese people regarded Israel’s military action as a nice way to help them build democracy, but […]

A LITTLE BOMBING WILL BE GOOD FOR YOU. Also funny, but more in a sad way, is The Washington Post‘s stated rationale for opposing the idea of the United States talking to Syria in order to broker an Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire: “The result will be to restore Damascus’s influence in Lebanon and destroy the new independent, […]

OUTSOURCING HUMOR. I’ve been trying for days now to write something funny about the right wing’s new take on the “Freedom Babes” of yore, but I don’t seem to have the requisite skills. Fortunately, Tim Cavanaugh and Dave Weigel have the goods at Hit and Run. –Matthew Yglesias

LOSING JOE-MENTUM. Jon Chait, no Joe Lieberman fan but still a leading proponent of anti-anti-Liebermanism, seems to be edging closer to the Nedhead position since “[t]he view that Lieberman is unique is starting to seem more persuasive to me.” –Matthew Yglesias

INFRASTRUCTURE AND JUSTICE. Highly trained moral philosopher Michael Walzer has a nice piece up at TNR that, conveniently enough, is in line with my take (which, in turn, is pretty much based on Walzer’s book, so it all comes around) — attacking Hezbollah rocket installations or stockpiles or what have you is fine, bombing Lebanon’s […]

EDGING TOWARD COMPROMISE. Via Rich Lowry, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni seems to be looking to back away from Israel’s previous hostility to a multilateral solution to the border problem: Speaking after a meeting with a United Nations delegation headed by special envoy Vijay Nambiar, Livni said that while Israel would prefer the deployment of the […]