Center for a New American Security

...CNAS interns Isadora (aka "The IZA"*) and Steve (aka "Steve") for fixing the links on the Counterinsurgency Reading List, which I am planning to update in the next month with the latest and greatest papers and books.

*For serious, you should see her Wu-Tang Sword Style. I am not even kidding. The other day she came into the office in full fencing gear and went all Kill Bill on Richard Fontaine.

I have been tying up some loose ends here at CNAS, putting the final touches on my new Afghanistan paper as well as finishing up a research proposal with LTG (Ret.) Dave Barno, a longtime mentor of mine who starts work at CNAS next week. Starting this weekend, though, I will be gone for about 10 days on a trip to the Persian Gulf, which is a) the one area of the Arabic-speaking world in which I have not spent a lot of time and b) the area of the Arabic-speaking world in which the United States arguably has the most interests. So this research trip is long overdue.

I have been crashing on a new paper on Afghanistan, which just went to the copy editor last night, and have not been blogging (or answering phone calls or emails) as a result. I have, though, been reading in my spare time, and if you are not one of the nearly 1,000 people who subscribe to this blog's Twitter feed, here's the best of what I have read recently:

Dorothy Rabinowitz has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal arguing that we need to stop coddling American Muslims, who really, Rabinowitz reasons, haven't had such a bad go of it since the September 11th attacks.

From Lee Smith's The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations:

I picked up the paper this morning to see that Bing West has written a fantastic review of Matt Gallagher's new book, Kaboom, for th

I am crashing on some writing assignments, so I do not have much time to blog. Or to read much, alas. But I figured I would share with you the books that I am currently reading and those that are on my shortlist, competing for my attention.

Currently Reading:

So a typical cycle for this blogger is to get annoyed by some criticism, write something snarky and mischievous, and then get all Presbyterian about it and feel guilty for having written something snarky and mischievous. I wrote something snarky and mischievous about Dan Drezner yesterday and now feel kinda bad about it because it's really not cricket to write such things.

"The Iliad is ever mindful that war is about men killing or men killed. In the entire epic, no warrior, whether hero or obscure man of the ranks, dies happily or well. No reward awaits the soldier's valor; no heaven will receive him. The Iliad's words and phrases for the process of death make clear that this is something baneful: dark night covers the dying warrior, hateful darkness claims him; he is robbed of sweet life, his soul goes down to Hades bewailing its fate.

Today we have a special interview with NPR's Deborah Amos. Deb is a longtime reader of this blog and an even longer-time student and observer of the Arabic-speaking world.