Tim Fernholz

Obama’s big Iraq speech today was good, if a bit listless in delivery — he was in professor mode — but all in all it laid out a foreign policy liberals can believe in (while not flip-flopping). Matt notes the woulda-coulda-shouldas, but one of the more interesting developments was Obama’s description of what victory in […]

Both this poll of American military officers and Nick Kristof‘s latest column suggest that we need to focus much more on development in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, the U.S. has devoted a decent amount of money allready to rebuilding in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but not enough to prove decisive in changing facts on […]

Obama’s Iraq op-ed is all the news today, and it clearly establishes that he’s not changing his position. John Judis doesn’t buy it, but his argument isn’t there. Contra Judis, Obama does acknowledge the drop in violence caused by the surge, but continues to make the correct argument that it has had little effect on […]

The latest entry in the Obama-moves-to-the-center ledger comes from the Times, quoting a woman who switched her Green party registration to support the senator in the Oregon primary: “I’m disgusted with him,” said Ms. Shade, an artist. “I can’t even listen to him anymore. He had such an opportunity, but all this ‘audacity of hope’ […]

The International Criminal Court plans to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide. It’s damn good news, especially coming after a week in which his government was likely complicit in an attack that killed seven peacekeepers. Although the ICC’s decision to call al-Bashir out could negatively affect diplomatic negotiations, the peacekeeping mission has never been […]

Steve Clemons has a post about his envy of China’s super fast MagLev train. I’ve been seeing a lot of these “boy-foreign-infrastructure-is-so-nice” posts around and, while I sympathize, it’s worth wondering if the glitz of the MagLev is really the right model. What we need isn’t the fastest monorail in the world, it’s simply an […]

A former State Department official writes in the Times today about an underappreciated issue, human trafficking and forced prostitution in America. Apparently, the Justice Department isn’t interested in doing much about it, rejecting nearly every provision in a bill that would increase prosecution and penalties. The disagreement creates some interesting bedfellows: In this case, the […]

This post has been updated. Ezra recommends this conversation between Matt Yglesias and Peter Beinart, and their speculation about conservative attempts to make China and Russia, like Iraq, out to be foreign enemies, thus giving the Right an excuse to stand in the way of a multipolar world. What is the left’s response to this […]

Conservatives have lately developed a new genre: making Barack Obama out to be the third coming of George W. Bush. They’re kidding, right? The goal may be to associate Obama with Bush in the eyes of the public (unlikely to stick) or just to make him seem like a pandering flip-flopper (more likely) but it […]

This article is just an excuse to mention the first thing that came to mind two days ago, when I read David Plouffe’s mass-emailed announcement that Obama would leave the convention hall and move to “a huge, free, open-air event and deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.” Is Obama going to be live […]