Latest in Campaign 2012
Ben and I wrote this article for Commonweal magazine, entitled "Two Parties, One Policy: Washington's New Consensus on Terrorism." It begins:
In Ben's non-Lawfare life, he runs the Brookings Institution's Campaign 2012 project, an event and paper series focusing on major issues the next president will face. Most of these papers are not relevant to this blog.
My Brookings colleague Daniel Byman and I have a paper out on the Brookings web site on terrorism as an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. The paper is high-altitude and not chiefly about law. It is is part of a larger Brookings project, which I direct, on the critical issues the next president will face. The introduction opens as follows:
At the dawn of the Obama administration, counterterrorism seemed to be one of the new president’s biggest weaknesses.
President Obama, at his press conference yesterday, in response to republican candidates’ hawkish calls for a more aggressive posture toward Iran:
Now, what’s said on the campaign trail -- those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities. They’re not Commander-in-Chief. And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war. I’m reminded that the decision that I have to make in terms of sending our young men and women int
Last week Charlie Savage had an interesting follow-up to his well-known 2007 questions to the presidential candidates about their views on executive power. The most important line in Savage’s story is that Barack Obama’s “record in office shows how circumstances and the assumption of power can alter views e
The Republican presidential candidates debated national security and foreign policy issues last night in Washington. Ritika teed up the debate here with links to the Post’s preview of issues to watch and a synopsis of the candidates’ positions from CNN’s Security Clearance blog.
The eight Republican candidates for president will gather tonight for their trillionth twelfth debate at 8 PM tonight, in an event that will focus on national security and foreign policy.
Today the Romney campaign issued a White Paper on Foreign Policy and National Defense. I have only had time to skim it, but this passage stood out as of particular interest to Lawfare readers:
Update the AUMF: The chief source of statutory authority for the war on terrorism — the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress shortly after the attack of September 11, 2001 — is only a few sentenc
I often disagree with Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, but this column strikes me as right on. Thiessen bewails the lack of serious debate in the Republican primaries on national security issues, and he suggests a series of questions the candidates should address. While the specific questions he proposes reveal his own views, and his own critique of current policy, he has a real point. It is not acceptable, given the level of U.S.