Let’s hope for cooler heads and serious reflections — Other than its 1948 war of independence, the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist governing authority of Gaza, has been Israel’s longest and arguably the most complex. The 1956 Suez conflict lasted a bit more than a week, and the 1967 war takes its name from its duration…

Not according to presidential history — When you are a young Army officer reporting to your first battalion, a major determinant of your new career will be your first commander. Battalion commanders are Lieutenant Colonels, much more senior officers. If they are good leaders, you learn from them and are likely to make the military a…

These mindless and horrific spasms have to end — An old foreign policy sage was speaking at an event in Washington a few years back and made an interesting observation. Having devoted much of his diplomatic life to the Middle East, he said with a deep sigh, “The final phase of foreign policy dementia is the belief you can…

Because it has no principles and stands for nothing constructive — For those who believed the Republican (aka “GOP/MAGA) “Speaker Circus” last January was an unprecedented political spectacle, the on-going effort to elect a new speaker after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy by a gang of governmental juveniles shows that when it comes to almost anything Republican the use of…

But he’s certainly a worthy contender — The leader of self-diminishment resulting from an association with Donald Trump is certainly former New York City Mayor and former U.S. Attorney Rudi Giuliani. Along with Trump, Giuliani has been indicted in the election racketeering case brought by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis. …

Figuring out who are the dummies and who are the ventriloquists — When I was a relatively young Army Major in the Pentagon, one day I was informed that (for whatever reason) I had been selected to be one of the Military Assistants to the Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John O. Marsh, Jr. …

How? After all — it’s always been led by Republicans — In July 2021, the heavily opinionated, always verbose, and invariably hypocritical Senator Ted Cruz published an intriguing piece on — you guessed it — Fox News. The topic was defunding the police. In Cruz’s unsurprising view, “Republicans support the police and Democrats have led a campaign to defund the police…

Make his the same as Jimmy Carter’s — Is anyone but me enormously irritated by the lavish security protection being provided to Donald Trump? I thought what was done when he flew for his arraignment in Washington, D.C. …

Such as Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and you know who — A normal wall decoration in government facilities is a grouping of pictures starting with the president and usually going down to the person running the office being visited. This is especially true in the Department of Defense where almost every organization shows the “chain of command.” …