The Fromson File

Dear Mr. President, After three hours of watching television Monday evening that began with another of your polite and reasonable appeals to the nation, it’s clear that the talk, the debates, the interviews about the financial crisis engulfing most Americans assuredly is doing nothing to excite your supporters and in fact is making most of [...]

The United States has never before had a Foreign Legion like the hired guns the French used as enforcers during the days when the tri-color flew over their colonial empire in the 19th and 20th Centuries. They were soldiers of fortune, cherry-picked from some of the most ruthless military resources anywhere in the world. In [...]

Those were the dying words uttered by Colonel Walter Kurtz, the half-crazed Special Forces officer portrayed by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, the classic war film about Vietnam. It could have been a precursor to Afghanistan or Pakistan. From my encounters in all three countries going back more than 50 years the future is not [...]

For years, Washington has turned the other cheek while Israel pursued a policy of unflinching resistance to any compromise or outright withdrawal from the West Bank. However, the lesson learned from unilaterally pulling out of the Gaza Strip may be affecting continued reluctance to deal with the status of the West Bank. But with his [...]