Can we please stop using the word “embolden” to describe American policies with respect to our enemies?

“Embolden” has become a buzz word to attack the foreign policy maneuvers of political enemies here in the United States.  President Bush used to say that withdrawing from Iraq would “embolden” the terrorists–and many Democrats pushed back by arguing that in fact the Iraq War itself had “emboldened” the terrorists.  Just today Mitt Romney attacked Obama for “emboldening” North Korea by trying to engage with them diplomatically.

But what does “embolden” actually mean?  The dictionary definition is to make bold, to give someone courage or confidence.  But in the context of a strategic environment, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. Continue reading »

 

The thing I love about Newt Gingrich is that whenever he finds himself with one foot in his mouth, he decides that the best way to maintain his balance is to put the other one there as well. In this particular case, I’m talking about comments he made over the weekend regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gingrich had previously created a bit of a stir by calling the Palestinians a “invented” people. During the latest GOP debate, Gingrich refused to back down:

“Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes. Are we in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel? While the United States, the current administration tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process… Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists.”

So, because he asked, let’s look at the history. Continue reading »

 

It is commonly believed that wars are won and lost on the battlefield; that wars have “winners” and “losers” irrespective of their political outcomes. For instance, it is this belief that causes Vietnam vets to claim that “we won the war but were betrayed by the politicians.” This belief is false. Wars are not sporting contests. The winner of a war is not the one who controls the most territory or has killed the most enemy soldiers. Instead, the winner of a war is the one who cause is furthest advanced by the outcome of the war. The Allies won World War II because Germany and Japan were thwarted in their efforts at global and regional dominance (respectively), not because we conquered Germany or forced the Japanese to surrender. The Confederacy killed more soldiers than the Union army, and successfully defended their capital throughout the war, but the Union won the war because the Confederate states were prevented from seceding and slavery was abolished.

Because wars are political tools and their outcomes are measured in political terms, sometimes the winner of a war is not determined until years or decades later. In that sense, I would argue that France lost World War I. In World War I, Germany was not trying to conquer France. They were fighting to continue their expansion of German influence throughout the European continent. France, with the help of their allies, won on the battlefield and forced Germany to surrender, but that victory failed to stop Hitler’s rise (and may even have encouraged it) and failed to stop Germany from pushing it’s expansionist claims again thirty years later.

And in that sense, I think it has become clear that Israel lost the Six Day War.
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The Republican Party is holding their national meeting this winter. This is standard fare for both parties, and these meetings are generally taken up by electing and appointing various people, tweaking the platform in small ways, and generally being an excuse for party leaders to get together and schmooze each other once in awhile.

A group of Republicans, however, just threw a bombshell into their own meeting. Here is a text of a resolution that just met the minimum requirement (signed by the chairperson from ten states) to be debated and voted on at this years convention:
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I normally like a lot of the things that Timothy Egan writes, but today he managed to hit one of my pet peeves:

“In Iraq, some Sunnis have always hated some Shiites, and vice-versa, for more years than the United States has been a country, and they will continue to dismember each other and their children whether we are there or not.”

And no, I’m not talking about the poor sentence structure. I’m talking about the “Sunnis have always hated Shiites, and vice versa… and they will continue to dismember each other” bit.

Here are a list of groups that have “always hated each other”: Continue reading »

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