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President Obama's Address to the Nation

By bslev on Tue, 09/09/2014 - 9:07am |

Tomorrow evening This evening at 9 a.m. eastern time,  President Obama will address the nation and is expected to focus on ISIS, the threat he believes ISIS poses, and the the outlines of a strategy going forward to deal with any threat he identifies.  It is a difficult speech, both for political reasons, but more importantly because he will be speaking to a number of very different domestic and international constituencies in this one address.  Notably, many of the president's base supporters, people who have stayed with him from the beginning, have done so in large measure because they have trusted him to avoid the urge to solve the world's problems through the barrel of a gun. As to the president, whatever one thinks of him overall, I think it is fair to say that he does not look to involve the nation's military unless he determines that there really are no other viable options. 

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Tough Choices -- Facing Genocide in the Levant

By bslev on Thu, 08/28/2014 - 7:34pm |

There has been more debate among dagbloggers discussing ISIS, Syria, Iraq -- the Middle East -- than there has been in the Congress over the past couple of weeks.  It is election season and folks are back home raising money and kissing babies.  

The president is on the job still but today, with commendable candor, stated that the United States did not yet have a strategy for dealing with ISIS.  Commendable yes, but not entirely reassuring when you hear it from the commander in chief.  That is not the point of this piece.

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Testing

By bslev on Tue, 07/15/2014 - 9:12am |

Testing

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The War to End all Wars -- Lessons Learned, Lessons Pondered

By bslev on Sat, 06/28/2014 - 7:16pm |

One hundred years ago to the day, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot and killed along with his wife Sophie, while touring the city of Sarajevo.  The assassin was a 19 year-old Serbian nationalist, and of course this was the spark that precipitated the First World War.  Austria responded with a series of demands that Serbia could not comply with, Germany stood by Austria, Russia by Serbia, and France by Russia (the latter alliance prompted by France's humiliation in a war against Germany back in 1870).  

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Please Forgive Me, But Please Respect Me Going Forward

By bslev on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 7:04pm |

I want to thank the Michaels for their patience and kind words after I lost it last week, and particularly I would like to thank Michael M. for our private correspondence today on the issue of dog whistles and anti-semitism.  He is a gentleman and I am honored to participate on his blog.  

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