Campaign '08: McCain's Foreign Policy Advisers | Newsweek The Council on Foreign Relations

Motley Crew
Katie Connolly 10/7/2009 12:00:00 AM
If President Obama decides to endorse Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plan to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, he'll find an unlikely assortment of allies. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin wrote a note to her Facebook followers stressing her belief that the additional troops were integral to success in Afghanistan. In September, she joined Karl Rove, William Kristol, David Frum, Robert Kagan, and more 30 other conservatives in signing a letter that urges the president to "give our commanders on the ground the forces they need to implement a successful counterinsurgency strategy." On Tuesday, Sen. John McCain told reporters that he was "very convinced that General McChrystal's analysis is not only correct but should be employed as quickly as possible." Possible GOP 2012 contenders Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney, both supportive of McChrystal's assessment, concur. And Obama would also receive the blessing of hawkish Democrats like Evan Bayh of Indiana and House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, who said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation that he supported additional deployments. All these voices—representing vying factions across the political spectrum—have a shared chorus: "Give the general what he needs."
The Stakes? Well, Armageddon, for One.
Jon Meacham 10/3/2009 12:00:00 AM
On Nov. 2, 1945—All Souls' Day in the Catholic tradition—J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke to scientists at Los Alamos. "It is clear to me that wars have changed," he said. "It is clear to me that if these first bombs—the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki—that if these can destroy 10 square miles, then that is really quite something. It is clear to me that they are going to be very cheap if anyone wants to make them." Oppenheimer basically had it right: nuclear weapons are not particularly cheap, but the knowledge, once unleashed, could not be contained. This was a persistent concern among the scientists who made the Manhattan Project come to life, including Albert Einstein, who wrote FDR in 1939 about "extremely powerful bombs of a new type." (The Pulitzer Prize–winning book American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is essential reading about the beginnings of the bomb.) Those present at the creation feared what has come to pass: the steady proliferation of the means of Armageddon.
FACTCHECK.ORG
Seven Falsehoods About Health Care
Brooks Jackson 8/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
But on the other hand, has Congress figured out how to pay for this overhaul? Not yet. Or will it really save families $2,500 a year as the president keeps claiming? Good luck on that one, too.
Dollars and Sense
Anna Quindlen 3/21/2009 12:00:00 AM
Come on, be honest: you never really understood most of this stuff. Not just the more complex terms, like credit swaps or derivatives, but the basic material. Compound interest. Balloon payments. You pretended. We all did. You would read about a hedge fund, and nod. You had no idea what a hedge fund did.
POLITICS
Promises, Promises
Joseph Epstein 2/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
On Tuesday, this past Nov. 4, I voted for John McCain for President of The United States. On Wednesday morning, I woke feeling glad that he lost. Had McCain won, a spirit of gloom would have spread over the land, a deadening feeling of "Oh, God, business as usual," part of that business being that a man tied to failed economic policies was once again at the helm and a nonwhite candidate for president still hadn't a chance. But Barack Obama was our new president. Great day in the morning; a new age in American politics is upon us.
GLOBAL LEADERSHIP FORUM
The Realist
Christopher Flavelle 4/30/2008 12:00:00 AM
When John McCain outlined his foreign policy platform in a speech in Los Angeles on March 26, part of the credit went to Robert Kagan, an adviser to McCain's campaign and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In his new book, "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," Kagan argues that the apparent triumph of liberal democracy in the 1990s was fleeting and that an era of renewed great power competition is upon us.