Recommended Reading
Thought I’d start with a Point-Counterpoint theme and then go from there:
Top Billing!: Matthew Burton -“Why I Help “The Man”, and Why You Should Too” paired with Michael Tanji -“helping the man”
Food for thought for this community of readers and bloggers in particular. Burton deserves praise for getting the esteemed Tanji out of his usual, eliptical, IC blogger’s shorthand and into something closer to an actual essay 😉
Smitten Eagle at Chicago Boyz -“Thomas PM Barnett, Rule-Sets, and Democratic Sovereignty” and Tom’s response-“What I was trying to say about Ireland and the EU”
Reviving the rule-set theory discussion along with other normative political questions. I was tempted to jump into this one and then just backed away slowly and put the keyboard down.
Abu Muqawama – “Big Gains in Iraq?” (Dr. iRack) and “How Do You Solve A Problem Like the Pashtun?” (Troy)
This one is NOT “point-counterpoint”, simply two good, meaty, posts on Iraq and Afghanistan, the second one one by rookie Troy.
Whirledview – “Cleaning Up the Shenanigans and Reinstituting The Golden Rule” (PHK)
Patricia deftly reviews the extent to how badly the State Department is internally screwed up and beset by bureaucratic favortism in personnel policies. That being said, IMHO any major reforms at State need to be accompanied by increases in funding and personnel so that State can morph into a 21st century institution with effective, operational, IO and administrative capabilities to complement traditional diplomatic skills. A major project for the next president, if they can see the dire need.
John Robb has a book review up at City Journal.
SWJ Blog – Foreign Fighters: How Are They Being Recruited?
Sic Semper Tyrannis – The Oil Meeting at Jeddah
HNN – David Kyvig -“How Presidential Power Became Untouchable”
I’ve attended lectures by David Kyvig on several occasions and found him to be a serious, careful and first rate scholarly mind. Here however, he is falling prey to the same sort of Boomer generational political and Constitutional assumptions that plague Robert Dallek, David Kaiser and many other liberal historians who came of age intellectually in that period. These assumptions do not have traction with people from previous or successive generations, at least not on the scale Boomers imagine they do, because the lack of emotive associations (or more accurately, different ones) cause them to consider other variables than the Boomers do.
Nick Carr – Does my brain look fat?
You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch…..
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