The Syria dilemma: Dissecting the leaked diplomats memo calling for Obama to get tougher on Assad
Something smells fishy when a hawkish State Dept. memo “leaks” to the Times on the eve of Sec. Clinton’s nomination It has been clear for some time that the Syria conflict was bound to turn into some magnitude of Waterloo…
Journal Entry #14
MOSCOW—“Information wars,” “alternative media,” “the end of the mainstream media”—my mind rattles with such thoughts after half a week here. I’ve been to conferences in Moscow twice in the past six months, and these have been the topics of my…
Reconstructing the Middle East
How Might It Be Done? There is an odd precision attaching to certain key events in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter’s third and final State of the Union address on January 23, 1980, was his “doctrine” speech and set in…
Journal Entry #13
NORFOLK, Conn.—A correspondent and later an editor named David Watts and I had—please note the tense—a friendship that stretched across the sky, it seems to me now. I treasured it and will say a few things about it here. It…
Journal Entry #12
NORFOLK, Conn.—A moment this morning to share the moments of silence and reflection I and surely many others have spent since Dan Berrigan passed away last Saturday, April 30, at an infirmary for aging and ailing Jesuits on the campus…
Journal Entry #11
NORFOLK, Conn.—A reader sent a note the other day remarking on one of the entries in this Cú Chulainn—an entry dated last October, the latest before this one. It was one more reminder among many that I’ve fallen radically behind…
Making American Foreign Affairs Reporting Great Again
How can the U.S. media more effectively challenge the official D.C. narrative on national security, and why is this so important? During the heyday of print reporting, most major U.S. newspapers had a sizable number of foreign bureaus. The advent…
Brexit=More Democracy for Europe?
The European Union was supposed to mean a continent of nations united by democratic ideals. Instead power and decision making has become more concentrated and centralized. First it was Greece, then Spain threatening to pull out of the EU, now…
Journal Entry #10
NORFOLK, CONN.—When I began the two columns I now produce weekly—four years and some, two years and some ago—they weren’t my first outings in the foreign affairs scene. I had written one for three years at Bloomberg—a (politically) difficult engagement…
Journal Entry #9
NEW PRESTON, CONN.—I wrote about markets this week—the appalling crack-up in global exchanges, wholly irrational—and I wrote about journalism. I’m invested in both. What pennies I have are in some kind of mutual fund, but never mind that. I have…
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