Austin Bay from Creators Syndicate

Iran in Limbo for 07/01/2009

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

As Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, Iran enters limbo, an uncertain yet perilous period of time separating anger-driven demonstrations from either bloody tyrannical repression or sustained popular struggle producing a liberalizing revolution.

Frustration, righteous anger and bitterness powered Iran's post-election demonstrations. These emotions are also fuel for revolution. Toppli ...

Updated: Wed Jul 01, 2009

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Here Be Dragons: Patrolling Nowhere in the 21st Century for 07/08/2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Six centuries ago, cartographers would scrawl in the blank space on their maps, "Here Be Dragons." Primitive navigation charts often featured sea monsters wriggling at the margins and ships plummeting into oblivion as known oceans met unknown ends of the Earth.

Post-Sept. 11, the Pentagon snapped up Thomas Barnett's Information Age rendition of Known and Unknown Worlds. Barnett ...

Updated: Wed Jul 08, 2009

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China's Strategic Challenges Go Well Beyond the Uighurs for 07/15/2009

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Rioting last week between ethnic Han Chinese and ethnic Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province left 180 people dead and 1,000 injured. Chinese police and paramilitary forces arrested 1,500.

The Beijing government insistently weighs media coverage of China. The ethnic clashes so troubled Chinese President Hu Jintao that he left the G-8 economic summit. Hu's hasty departure, in front of the ...

Updated: Wed Jul 15, 2009

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Mumbai's Surprising Aftermath for 07/22/2009

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In November 2008, a terrorist assault team recruited and trained by the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) terror organization attacked Mumbai, India, and murdered 166 people. The attack — which featured the random slaying of hotel guests, street vendors, and businesspeople by hand-grenade- and assault-rifle-armed killers — was a political and media gamble by the Pakistan-based terroris ...

Updated: Wed Jul 22, 2009

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Remembering a Hungarian Freedom Fighter for 07/29/2009

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"I am now only an American professor," Gen. Bela Kiraly said with a grin.

His grin was a survivor's grin — a charming, elegant East European survivor with a sense of humor about himself and perhaps the end-of-1984 Christmas party. Smile and sip the holiday brew, for we were about to survive George Orwell's ominous year in which The Party prohibits free thought and exerts ...

Updated: Wed Jul 29, 2009

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Russo-Georgia One Year On: From Reset to Repeat? for 08/05/2009

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Is it reset or repeat?

This past week's rhetorical exchanges between Russia and the Republic of Georgia is a definite reminder that the complex political, historical and geographic issues at play in the Russo-Georgia War of August 2008 still plague both nations and affect Russia's relations throughout Europe.

Likewise, the "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations, touted by t ...

Updated: Wed Aug 05, 2009

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Strategic Twitter for 08/12/2009

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Iran's Information Age demonstrators, exploiting the capabilities of the social networking and "micro-blogging" service Twitter, surprised then threatened Iran's tyrannical mullahs. Tehran's thugs in robes suddenly discovered they could not control information within Iran. Kicking out BBC reporters used to separate dissidents from the global megaphone, but no longer. Now that mobile p ...

Updated: Wed Aug 12, 2009

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Mexico's Complex Free Trade Initiative for 08/19/2009

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Credit Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, with vision and guts.

In the midst of the Cartel War's vicious bloodletting, Calderon continues to pursue his "systemic revolution" on multiple fronts, and he's doing so with an enviable cool and steadiness.

Despite his National Action Party's (PAN) political losses in the July Chamber of Deputies election, Calderon's postelect ...

Updated: Wed Aug 19, 2009

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Seventy Years After the Hitler-Stalin Pact for 08/26/2009

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Communazi" became magazine shorthand for their collaboration, dark slang connecting the two totalitarian ideologies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany after they ratified the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

That faux-peace agreement and its secret protocols, signed 70 years ago on Aug. 23, 1939, divided Eastern Europe between the Nazis' swastika and the communists' hammer and sickle. Th ...

Updated: Wed Aug 26, 2009

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Two Septembers: 1939 and 2001 for 09/02/2009

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Unleashed in the early hours of Sept. 1, 1939, Germany's "lightning war" — the blitzkrieg — quickly pierced Poland's border forces and sliced through the Danzig Corridor. As the German Luftwaffe hammered Poland's air force, panzer divisions smashed Poland's army, leaving its units scattered and surrounded.

Yet Poland continued to resist. Britain and France joined th ...

Updated: Wed Sep 02, 2009

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Don't Damage the First Line of Defense for 09/09/2009

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Morale matters — especially in a time of war.

Morale even matters in an "overseas contingency operation," the hazy bureaucratic phrase the Obama administration sought to substitute for "The Global War on Terror." The GWOT is a poor name in my opinion (terror is a tactic), but at least it sketched the wicked problem al-Qaida's 9-11 attack posed — a war foug ...

Updated: Wed Sep 09, 2009

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SOF Targets and Soft Targets for 09/16/2009

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

When American special operations forces (SOF) operating in Somalia killed a terrorist mastermind this past week, media reports focused on the drama and the bombast.

The drama was palpable. U.S. SOF used helicopters to attack a vehicle carrying Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a notorious al-Qaida-affiliated killer currently aligned with the Somali Islamist militia, Al Shabab. After the copter att ...

Updated: Wed Sep 16, 2009

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Obama Lets Sphere of Influence Trump Sphere of Security for 09/23/2009

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

When it came to acting on behalf of peace in the 21st century, the Obama administration weighed "sphere of influence" against "sphere of security" and came down solidly on the side of the Russian czars.

I am referring to the administration's refusal to deploy long-range defensive ground-based interceptor (GBI) missiles in Poland. For an administration that insistently ...

Updated: Wed Sep 23, 2009

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Sudan's Simmering North-South War for 09/30/2009

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Sudan's genocidal Darfur war still attracts international attention, and though large battles pitting national government troops against Darfur rebels are less frequent there, violent anarchy still afflicts that sad region.

A much larger and more dangerous war haunts Sudan, however: a re-ignition of the "North versus South" civil war. This reviving horror has ominous implicatio ...

Updated: Wed Sep 30, 2009

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Afghanistan's Changing Battleground for 10/07/2009

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Eliminate commercial jet transports connecting continents, and the tangled tribal, economic, anarchic and ideological problems vexing Afghanistan become more localized torments afflicting Afghanis and their neighbors.

What? The jets aren't going away? Has Barack Obama failed to apologize for American Airlines, Southwest and United? What an uncomfortable fact: swift jet transportation shr ...

Updated: Wed Oct 07, 2009

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What Kind of Action in the World Justifies a Nobel Peace Prize? for 10/14/2009

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Action in the world ought to trump worlds evoked by words, especially when awarding a global prize allegedly recognizing sustained, courageous effort on behalf of peace in our world's deeply conflicted corners.

We live in an age when the farce of history precedes the tragedy, however, and even a few left-wing media and academic elites realize giving President Barack Obama a Nobel Peace P ...

Updated: Wed Oct 14, 2009

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Building an Army Under Fire for 10/28/2009

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Maintaining a competent military organization is a challenge for wealthy nations, even in times of relative peace. Bureaucrats and politicians hijack budgets as politically connected officers wrangle promotions at the expense of creative, forward-thinking war-fighters. War reveals the organizational corruption, stagnation and decay, and this institutional decline exacts a stiff price in soldier ...

Updated: Wed Oct 28, 2009

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Cracking the Berlin Wall for 11/04/2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

On Nov. 9, 1989, large crowds of German citizens from both East and West Berlin approached the Berlin Wall. At several border crossing points, East Berliners began shouting at the armed communist guards, demanding they open the gates and shove aside barbed wire obstacles.

The confused guards yielded and disappeared. The gleeful crowds from the communist East and the free West mingled and ...

Updated: Wed Nov 04, 2009

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Hasan's Treason for 11/11/2009

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

One word aptly describes Ft. Hood mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan: traitor.

Traitor is a tough word. It doesn't smudge and squish. "Traitor" draws a hard line, one that sharply divides essential life-determining values and marks a defining personal choice between the profound and the profane.

There is no question that the accusation of treason, like accus ...

Updated: Wed Nov 11, 2009

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Al-Qaida's Prospects for 11/18/2009

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Maj. Nidal Hasan's treachery and terror jolted Americans. As Hasan's attack demonstrates, al-Qaida and al-Qaida-influenced fanatics can strike and kill on American soil.

While Hasan serves warning the threat still exists, does Hasan's act forward al-Qaeda's political goals? Indeed, what are al-Qaida's prospects for victory eight years after the Sept. 11 terror attack on America?

Updated: Wed Nov 18, 2009

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