To defend our way of life abroad we may need to reconsider how much junk food it involves at home.

It’s not every day that former generals and admirals speak out about children’s health and education. But last Thursday was one of those days. According to Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit, bipartisan organization led by retired senior military leaders, 75 percent of 17 to 24 year olds cannot enlist in the military because they fail to graduate high…

The most significant parallel between Afghanistan and Vietnam isn’t the potential quagmire abroad.

Comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam are popular these days, as worries of another “quagmire” mount. But the most significant parallel might not be the wars themselves, but rather the divisions they cause among Democrats in Congress. As with Vietnam, Congressional divisions could set the public narrative on Afghanistan and leave the President with a political quagmire at home.

Democrats won big in the 1964 election,…

America doesn’t need a missile defense system in Europe, or this new fear-mongering film.

With the relative silence of Dick Cheney in recent months, American political debates have been disturbingly absent of abject scare tactics (besides the occasional invocation of “death-panels”). Thankfully, the Heritage Foundation—a conservative think tank—has filled this vacuum with a “documentary” on missile defense. Entitled 33 Minutes, the soon to be released film purports to tell the “brutal” “truth” that a ballistic missile, launched…

There’s one bright spot in Afghanistan’s election debacle: The fraud investigators are taking their job seriously.

America’s war in Afghanistan isn’t going well. The problems in Afghanistan range from a basic lack of government services—particularly security—to some of the lowest human development indicators in the world. As if the country didn’t have enough to deal with, Afghanistan is now wrestling with the fallout of a deeply flawed election.

The ongoing debacle of the August 20 elections has only…

The president of Iran says the darndest things—but that doesn’t really matter.

This week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be in New York to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. As with previous such appearances by the Iranian president, the event promises to inspire little substantive debate about Iran ’s role in the world, its internal political divisions, or its controversial nuclear program. Instead, the Iranian delegation and its tireless critics here in the United States…

When it comes to American foreign policy, The Simpsons might just provide the lens we need to understand our own history.

For 20 years The Simpsons has satirized the banalities and foibles of American life. From Lisa’s precocious insights to Bart’s antics, the show emerged as Generation X’s reply to Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Brunch. Unlike Mike Brady or Ward Cleaver, there is no wise paterfamilias at the show’s core. Instead, there is Homer Simpson. Whether…

Turkey has quietly held NATO tactical nuclear weapons since the Cold War. Removing them will be a critical step towards a safer world. But it won’t be easy.

On April 5, 2009, President Barack Obama made a speech in Prague outlining his intention to make nuclear disarmament, with the eventual goal of elimination, the organizing principle of U.S. nuclear policy. Now the task is to figure out the how to actually get to zero nuclear weapons.

There…

Albania’s young voters try “Yes we can!”—but can’t quite yet.

I was invited to Albania to help the newly formed G99 party fundamentally change the way Albanians thought about and conducted politics. G99—developed out of Albania’s youth-driven democratization movement—began in 2003 in response to rampant government corruption. Inspired by the “yes we can” attitude in America, G99 wanted to try its hand at Obama-style organizing in advance of their June 28 parliamentary elections. Having spent the…