Every two years, the Stimson Center Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy, directed by Rachel Stohl, issues a pamphlet of recommendations to the U.S. government on the use of weaponized UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or RPAs (remotely piloted aircraft). Over the course of the past six years, it has become all too clear that no one in the government actually reads these reports, and the tone of the latest installment in the series, “An Action Plan on U.S. Drone Policy: Recommendations for the Trump Administration,” understandably conveys frustration. The first report, issued in 2014, seemed to be filled with optimism…

Bob Woodward, the indefatigable Washington Post journalist who has chronicled several presidential administrations in best-selling books, has his latest subject: Donald J. Trump. Simon & Schuster plans to publish “Fear: Trump in the White House,” on Sept 11. The book reveals “the harrowing life inside Donald Trump’s White House and how the president makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies,” the publishing house said in a statement, adding that the book draws from “hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, contemporaneous meeting notes, files, documents and personal diaries.” Jonathan Karp, the president and publisher of Simon & Schuster,…

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” a saying attributed to Karl Marx, comes to mind in this time of Trump. To those of us raised in the Truman era, when the Red Army was imposing its bloody Bolshevik rule on half of Europe, and NATO was needed to keep Stalin’s armies from the Channel, the threat seemed infinitely more serious. And so it was. There were real traitors in that time. Alger Hiss, a top State Department aide, at FDR’s side at Yalta, was exposed as a Stalinist spy by Congressman Richard Nixon. Harry Dexter White, No.…

    Nostalgia for Barack Obama is in full swing. With each passing day, Donald Trump’s insults and general nastiness are making people increasingly regret the absence of a president who behaved like an adult.   Certainly, the restoration of dignity to the White House is devoutly to be wished. Nonetheless, I find myself more and more irritated with the analyses of the former President’s character by anti-Trump journalists. As a very early critic of Obama, I often came up against my colleagues’ lack of awareness, particularly at the start of his spectacular rise to prominence in 2006. At this late…

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel’s attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship. Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel. Soon more planes…