A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

War & Peace

  • Will the real Reinhold Niebuhr please stand up?

    There’s been much made of the “Niebuhrian” nature of President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech: its frank recognition that dealing with evil sometimes requires the use of force; its rejection of non-violence; its anti-utopianism with respect to ending violent conflict, etc. And that’s all fair enough. But there was one key Niebuhrian theme that was conspicuously Read more

  • A day of anger and horror

    Various bloggers have been offering reminders of the original meaning of Armistice Day, the reason for the season, if you will. See Jim Henley, John Quiggin, and Jacob T. Levy. Levy in particular gets to the heart of the matter: A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a Read more

  • The trouble with “humanitarian advocacy”

    Wow, this is a pretty damning post on the Save Darfur Coalition by Conor Foley, an international human rights worker and author of The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War: for the last five years the Save Darfur coalition has been pumping out a message about an ongoing genocide which is essentially untrue. Read more

  • This is your country on war

    I don’t usually describe things as “must read,” but this article on returning Iraq vets (via Jim Henley) surely qualifies. Read more

  • On killing innocents

    Two links: Michael Jackson’s Death Means Little to Me McNamara’s Evil As I’ve pointed out before, one condition of any war being “just” according to traditional criteria would require a rigorous accounting for all the innocent lives lost and an equal weighing of those lives against any purported good that the war accomplishes. (And that’s Read more

  • Torture, truth, and the war

    Jonathan Schell connects the dots and makes some observations about the use of torture as a characteristic of declining powers. Read more

  • Republican demagoguery and Democratic pusillanimity

    Well, what else is new? The American Conservative‘s indispensable Kelley Vlahos on the Gitmo mess. Read more

  • The other war

    Liberal Democrats in Congress, starting to get uncomfortable with President Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan: […]American troop levels and war costs in Afghanistan will soar in the coming year, and party leaders, including Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, have warned that Democrats will most likely give the administration just one Read more

  • The psychology of torture

    Marvin made the point in comments here that it’s depressing to even be arguing about the morality of torture. After all, the wrongness of torture is something we should all simply take for granted, and the fact that it’s become a contested topic says something really bad about where we are as a country. Personally, Read more

  • A two-phase Iraq withdrawal

    That’s what it looks like anyway, based on Obama’s speech and the analysis I’ve seen. “Combat troops” will withdraw in 2010 with “residual” forces engaged in training and counter-terrorism activities (which, make no mistake, will involve at least some combat). But full withdrawal is supposed to occur by the end of 2011. Not ideal, by Read more