Bookworm Room

First, let me say that I am absolutely delighted that Qaddafi is no longer with us. Good riddance! For me it’s personal, as I had many Libyan college mates that were refugees from and victims of the early days of his dictatorship. I wish them well in building a bright future for their country. Still, [...]

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My daughter is taking a required class at high school:  “world cultures.”  My first instinct was to scoff, since I prefer a more classical curriculum, but as I thought about it, I decided it is a very good idea.  That is, of course, assuming it’s taught correctly.  I’m inclined to doubt that it will be, [...]

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At it’s most basic level, the War Powers Act of 1973 gives a president sixty days of latitude to start a war.  At that point, he has thirty days to obtain Congressional permission to continue the war.  For purposes of this post, I’m going to assume (correctly, I think) that the United States’ involvement in [...]

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I’ve been quiet about a lot of the revolutions in the Middle East.  The only one as to which I was really vocal was the attempted revolution in Iran — and that was because I thought the uprising could only benefit America.  That regime is so evil, that destabilizing it for awhile, even if would [...]

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I’m with Sadie, that there’s something deeply off-putting about Obama casually applying the ancient Passover story to the uprisings in the Middle East: Passover recalls the bondage and suffering of Jews in Egypt and the miracle of the Exodus, but U.S. President Barack Obama says its message is reflected in Muslim uprisings. In his annual [...]

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After neatly exposing Obama’s deeply flawed thinking when getting the US into Libya, VDH dissects the differences between Iraq and Libya.  Whether one supported the Iraq War or not, it’s obvious that Bush at least had a rationale that conceivably benefited American interests; Obama does not.

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Looking back over the past few weeks, one can see a little history play out: People rose up against Gaddafi.  The West dithered. The tide was in favor of the Libya rebels.  The West dithered. The tide turned in Gaddafi’s favor.  The West — i.e., a few NATO states plus Obama — intervened. Obama was [...]

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I told my son the same thing today (and he got it), but I sorely lacked Steyn’s wit: According to the New York Times, “Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians as they push against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.” We dropped bombs on Qaddafi’s [...]

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My question earlier this week about military happiness with the Libya mission was directed at the rank of file heading to Libya.  What we do know now is that leadership is unhappy.

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Does the administration’s decision to arm the Libyan rebels remind you of anything?  It does me.  It reminds me of the Reagan administration’s decision to arm the rebels in Afghanistan. Back then, the rebels were not our enemy, and they were fighting a sworn enemy against whom we’d been engaged in myriad proxy wars for [...]

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Under George Bush, our troops were told that they were going to Iraq and Afghanistan to protect American interests.  One can, of course, quibble with whether those wars have served American interests (which is not a quibble I want to have at this post).  But the point I want to make is that our young [...]

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Ed Morrissey has put together a very useful post summarizing various liberal media attempts to understand the Obama doctrine.  Morrissey concludes at the end that, try as hard as one likes, “There really is no doctrine.” Morrissey is correct that there is no doctrine if one is looking for a verbally articulated doctrine.  Obama says [...]

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As I said yesterday, part of my blog silence has been that I was very actively engaged in wrapping up my book for e-publishing.  It’s been an amazing amount of work.  Starting last August, I went back and reviewed all 6,500+ of my old posts.  A lot of them are little nothings (“Hey, look at [...]

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The whole thing is good (of course), but I enjoyed this bit especially: “That’s why building this international coalition has been so important,” [Obama] said the other day. “It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally.” That’s great [...]

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Glenn Reynolds has been enjoying himself pointing out the hypocrisy of many of those on the Left when it comes to Obama’s new war (“Watching the people who savaged Bush and called his supporters warmongers and so on now faced with watching the Lightbringer doing basically the same thing, only less competently, is too good [...]

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