Robert Farley

TACTICAL SHIFT. Good stuff this morning on shifting insurgent tactics and attacks on helicopters. As Josh Marshall notes, the cause seems to be a shift or development in tactics, rather than the acquisition of new weapons. Most of the reports of the crashes have concentrated on small arms fire as the cause. However, Defense Tech […]

REPRINT. The Los Angeles Times, for all intents and purposes, has reprinted the Halevi and Oren New Republic article on Israeli fears about the Iranian nuclear program. Citing both of the TNR authors as authorities on Israeli public and strategic opinion, the Richard Boudreaux-penned article demonstrated no noticeable effort to find any diversity in Israeli […]

MORE ON THE WAGGING. This is a debate that I’ve allowed to lay fallow, but there’s still something useful to be said. Originally, Brad Plumer argued that the U.S. defense establishment should be constrained in order to constrain the foreign policy options of our leadership; without a sufficient military establishment, we would consider military action […]

AND JUST A BIT MORE… on Iranian nuclear diplomacy. Alex at Fistful of Euros has a good discussion of what an Iranian nuclear weapon might mean for proliferation in the Middle East. Nuclear weapons are well within the capability of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and might conceivably be pursued in response to the Iranian program. […]

WE MAY BE NEEDED, BUT WE’RE NOT WANTED. In the comments to Tom’s post below, David asserts: Working-class southern whites need the Democrats, and it should be the job of Democrats to figure out how to reach out to them while maintaining their socially progressive commitments — not throw them to the sharks. David then […]

INSTABILITY. Dan Nexon has a good response to my article on Iranian nuclear diplomacy: First, if Iran does achieve an effective nuclear deterrent that might, in fact, make it easier for Iran to pursue certain kinds of aggressive actions. This risk reflects B. H. Liddell Hart’s stability-instability paradox (PDF): mutual strategic deterrence might make it […]

TOMCAT SUNSET. The United States Navy no longer flies the F-14 Tomcat, not because the plane isn’t combat capable (it remains an excellent platform) but rather because the maintenance costs are very high compared to the F/A-18. Consequently, the Navy now has a vast surplus of spare F-14 parts. DoD is in the habit of […]

THE PLAN. Obama’s plan seems reasonable enough to me. As Matt points out, there’s little reason to get tied up on symbolic differences. Jason Sigger writes: Obama is creating a carefully crafted congressional bill that could actually succeed because 1) it doesn’t screw with the president’s commander-in-chief responsibilities, 2) exercises Congress’s actual responsibilities to participate […]

PLAYING TO THE BASE. The Bush administration is stretching its legs: President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights, and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the […]