ILF POST

By Linc Bloomfield Regardless of the decision on increasing troop strength in Afghanistan, there is reason to believe that the US may be approaching a new isolationist period that will shun new military interventions except for direct attack like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. This prediction is based not only on shrinking public support for the [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Despite visits to Tehran before the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution, where none of my contacts appeared to have any sense of the impending politico-socio-religious earthquake, my view of Iran remains that of Plato’s cave-dwelling shadow-watchers. They were dependent for a glimpse of reality on the flickering shadows of outsiders caught by the campfire’s [...]

By Linc Bloomfield The crowded conference room fell silent as the first panelist was introduced. It was the beginning of a daylong program of seminars followed by a reception and gala dinner, and if Central Casting had been asked to send over someone who epitomized a senior statesman, this was the man for them [...]

By Linc Bloomfield. Barack Obama has been President of the United States for a little over two months, and it’s much too early to issue a definitive report card. But that hasn’t stopped the cable and radio commentariat from awarding him instant grades of D or even Fail. Typical was the presidential news conference on [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Poor number 44. Each day brings a new crisis at home or abroad that could foul up his big plans for Day One. A sardonic joke captures the Obama problem: a man was hauled before a judge for setting his bed on fire. His defense was that the bed was already on [...]

By Linc Bloomfield The lame-duck Bush administration has been urging NATO members to admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO in a hurry without the normal requirements for membership. If this happens, it will poison US-Russian relations which President-elect Obama must restore if he is not to spend his term fighting another cold war. There is [...]

By Linc Bloomfield The economy may be in the tank, but the rest of life goes on, including the presidential campaign and the other towering problems that will face the new president at 12:01 PM next January 20. Let’s try to forget the Dow for a moment and look at some of those problems, both [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Many Americans worried about the decline of US influence have adopted “multilateral” as a foreign policy mantra. Both Senators Obama and McCain have promised to collaborate more with other countries, and President Bush, in one of his extraordinary deathbed conversions, told a news conference that “one of the things I will leave [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Now that Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration is over, it’s worth recalling how extraordinarily deep the divisions ran on this matter within the US policymaking community.
On May 14, 1948 there was broad American sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, along with guilt at rejecting Jewish asylum-seekers. The years since have featured [...]

By Linc Bloomfield The first mention of the Iraq War may be on page 10 of my newspaper today, but President Bush’s successor will still confront the monumental predicament Bush is leaving behind. In an era of official cheerleading and media sound bites it’s not easy to get a sense of the realities, But from [...]

By Linc Bloomfield “Yes we can” is an inspiring affirmation that can help Senator Obama stretch his lead to become the Democratic candidate and 44th US president. The flaw in that scenario is that plotters in the Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan have it in their power to deliver the election to Senator McCain. The [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Dipping into Christopher Hitchens’ outrageous but readable bestseller “God is Not Great” brings to mind two different but highly relevant instances of the sometimes toxic religion-politics connection.
Whoever planned the brutal death of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto — Al Qaeda operative, home-grown terrorist, undercover agent of the Pakistani intelligence services — the [...]

By Linc Bloomfield The National Intelligence Estimate released last week (and for a change not leaked), stunned people with its conclusion that Teheran had stopped work in 2003 on nuclear weaponry, putting into question the increasingly belligerent White House rhetoric. Many breathed a sigh of relief at this happy ending to a highly troubling development [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Democracy means to us government with the consent of the governed (to the Greeks who coined the word it meant simply rule by the people). Spreading the benefits of democracy is the noblest of political causes, and the best way to bring that about is to hold an election, right? Well not [...]

By Linc Bloomfield There has been much chatter lately about the need for better strategic thinking on America’s role in the world. It grows out of frustration with the president1s lack of any coherent strategic vision beyond the slogan of a global “war on terror” — a kind of Procrustean Bed in which the occupation [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Moscow’s announcement on July 14 that it is suspending its participation on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty was bad news for efforts to stabilize and pacify a continent which for a half-century was split asunder and frequently threatened by catastrophic warfare. But this unwelcome Russian move should come as no surprise [...]

By Linc Bloomfield The situation in Iraq can be summed up in three sentences. The Sunni and Shiite leaders and their foot-soldiers are determined on total victory over, respectively, their historic inferiors and their traditional oppressors. The Kurds always wanted, now want, and will always want independence. The Americans in Baghdad and Washington doggedly hope [...]

By Linc Bloomfield America does certain things marvelously well, ranging from super-productivity and entrepreneurial innovation to graduate education, a do-it-yourself civil society, a Constitution copied by most countries, and a magnet for millions who, however much they may badmouth this country, line up for visas (or escape routes) to share in freedom’s pluses and minuses.

By Linc Bloomfield If you happened to catch NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, March 18 (the First Parish choir had the day off, so I stayed home and watched Sunday talk shows) you saw an extraordinarily unedifying panel discussion on Iraq policy, featuring a display of the kind of rude and contemptuous behavior usually [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Scooter really fell on his sword for me, didn’t he? Of course, all I was trying to do when I sent the attack dogs after that traitor Wilson was to protect national security. Between us, Scooter turns out not to be as bright as I thought. I didn’t tell him to lie, [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Watching the tepid reception received by the president at his January 23 State of the Union address, I thought about Mr. Bush’s concern for his legacy. After all, on the same occasion forty years ago President Lyndon Johnson faced a skeptical Congress, the pluses in his domestic record no match for his [...]

By Linc Bloomfield When the US government makes a bad foreign policy decision or, worse, adopts a disastrous national security strategy, is it because the leaders are stupid or incompetent? Or is it because the machinery of government that nourishes them — the information flow, hierarchical structures, elaborate committee process, organization charts — are a [...]