Robert Farley

MORE RUBBLE, LESS TROUBLE. While I suppose that this article on Islamic justifications for the massacre of civilians was interesting enough, I do wish that the authors had taken a bit more time providing context. For example, Moss and Mekhennet describe in some detail the jihadist thinking that allows the killing of children (God will […]

KOSOVO. No doubt intoxicated by the enthusiasm of the Albanian crowds, President Bush has decided to throw caution to the wind and call for the formal independence of Kosovo: U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday the United Nations should grant independence quickly to the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, and if Russia continued […]

IN ALL OF CREATION… Following up on J. Goodrich‘s post, Jon Gitlin recently visited the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky: There were posters explaining just how coal could be formed in a few weeks as opposed to over millions of years, and how rapidly the biblical flood would cover the earth, drowning all but a […]

OUTPLAYED. I’ve got to agree with Yglesias and Djerejian; Putin played the Azerbaijian hand well (that is, offering to build a joint missile defense system with the U.S. there). Greg points out another implication: Meantime, and under-reported, the Azeri option would likely also have significant implications for Iranian-Azeri relations — keeping in mind there is […]

LACKLUSTER. Way back in spring 1993, in the very first international relations seminar I ever took, one of the main texts was Stephen Walt‘s Origins of Alliances. Now I am to understand that Walt’s career, which includes two additional books and stints at Chicago, Princeton, and Harvard, has been “lackluster.” If only I had known […]

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT. I guess that I’m a little bit unclear on the administration’s political strategy for maintaining a U.S. presence in Iraq. The Korea nonsense and this latest from Ryan Crocker seem to be part of a campaign to convince someone that the United States ought to stay in Iraq for twenty or […]

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION. David Wescott, a columnist for Business Lexington, wrote an article last Friday on the Patterson School’s latest policy simulation: Fidel Castro suffers a stroke and dies a day later. Pro-democracy demonstrators immediately organize outside of Havana. Brother Raul Castro assumes the presidency, and fearing infiltration of “invading forces from the north,” places the […]

MRAP REVISITED. This is not surprising. New military vehicles that are supposed to better protect troops from roadside explosions in Iraq aren’t strong enough to withstand the latest type of bombs used by insurgents, according to Pentagon documents and military officials. As a result, the vehicles need more armor added to them, according to a […]

DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION. Hilzoy points to another in the endless series of empirical studies and professional testimonials indicating that torture is useless for the purpose of intelligence-driven interrogation. There’s no value trade-off here; torture is both bad and useless. So why do Republican presidential candidates have such a hard time condemning the practice? Torture is domestic […]