Eugene Robinson's Blog, page 111

How the use of drones may haunt the U.S.

In our growing reliance on armed drones as instruments of war, how slippery is the slope we’re sliding on? Imagine that Vladimir Putin began using drones to kill Ukrainians who opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. If Putin claimed the targets were “members of anti-Russian terrorist groups,” what credibility would the United States have to condemn such strikes?

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The ‘ungrateful volcano’ of Iraq

Iraq is shattered and 300 U.S. military advisers can’t put the pieces back together. So now what? An old saying about the Middle East comes to mind: Things can always get worse.

The aim of U.S. policy at this point should be minimizing the calamity, not chasing rainbows of a unified, democratic, pluralistic Iraq — which, sadly, is something the power brokers in Iraq do not want.

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The ‘beautiful game’ of World Cup soccer

Henry Kissinger was wrong to dismiss Chile as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.” On Wednesday, the South American nation was a scalpel that excised the soul of Spain.

As a lifelong soccer fan, Kissinger doubtless understands what I mean: A particularly delightful and surprising World Cup tournament — the world’s greatest sporting event — is in full swing.

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Obama got it right on Iraq

President Obama’s instincts about Iraq and Syria have been sound from the beginning: Greater U.S. engagement probably cannot make things better but certainly can make them worse, both for the people of the region and for our national interests.

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Overdosing on tea

The Republican Party’s reliance on tea party support is like an addict’s dependence on a dangerous drug: It may feel good at first, but eventually it eats you alive.

No House majority leader had ever been ousted in a primary before Eric Cantor’s shocking defeat on Tuesday. Republicans who tell themselves it was Cantor’s own fault — he lost touch with his Virginia district, he tried to have it both ways on immigration, he came to be seen as part of the Washington establishment — are whistling past the graveyard.

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Hillary Clinton’s pre-campaign campaign

The curse of inevitability isn’t likely to ruin Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions, assuming she has them. Not this time.

Playing the role of president-in-waiting is the most precarious high-wire act in American politics. Clinton found that out in 2008, when a charismatic young senator from Illinois launched a wildly improbable campaign and somehow caught the wave of the zeitgeist and, well, you know the rest. Clinton made mistakes during the campaign that she seems determined not to repeat.

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Six points concerning Bowe Bergdahl

Bringing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl home was the right thing to do, and President Obama did it in a mostly reasonable way.

The high-volume “debate” about Bergdahl’s homecoming sounds like the raving heard around the water coolers of Crazytown. Here, in descending order of importance, are the issues the Bergdahl affair presents — and a rational way to think about them.

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EPA coal plant proposal is the right step

Even for people who don’t believe in it, climate change just got real. It’s about time.

The Obama administration’s proposed new rule for existing power plants — reducing heat-trapping carbon emissions by up to 30 percent by 2030 — is ambitious enough to get anyone’s attention. No, this one measure will not halt or reverse human-induced warming of the atmosphere. But the rule is necessary in the context of seeking international consensus on solutions — and also significant in its own right.

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Sending drones, not divisions

In the post-Cold War era, it was possible to hold grand illusions and chase utopian dreams. As President Obama understands and his foreign policy critics fail to grasp, that time is past.

We live now in a post-post-Cold War world. At West Point this week, Obama attempted to sketch a different kind of U.S. leadership — less messianic and martial, more cautious and collaborative — designed to deal with things as they are, not as we might have hoped they would be.

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Talking about race is no black-and-white matter

When Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) remarked last week that some of the opposition to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is “maybe he’s of the wrong color,” he was just saying out loud what many people believe. And no, he wasn’t calling Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) a “racist.”

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