From the Dept. of Silly Things Written About My Employer

Look, my employer does not take institutional positions, but if you are going to ascribe them to us, please do your homework:

1. U.S. News: "Patrick Cronin, a senior director at the Center for a New American
Security, an elite perch for the kind of liberal interventionists who
rallied the nation to war in Libya..."

First off, RTFM: does it look to you like we are brimming with enthusiasm for military intervention in Libya over here at 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue NW? And have you ever read anything Patrick Cronin (Bush Administration appointee, by the way, hardly a liberal interventionist) has ever written?

2. Salon: "Some who supported the Iraq war dissent from the Obama's administration
maneuvers into Libya. The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum, Time's Joe
Klein, the young group of bloggers known as the "Juicebox
Mafia," and the counterinsurgency fetishists at the Center for a
New American Security have all been skeptical or outright hostile to
American participation in Libya. Whether because of concerns of imperial
overstretch, fears of another long-term occupation, or simple post-Iraq
humility, these one-time liberal hawks have traded in their wings."

Dude, if you want to flatter me by blaming me for the president's decision to commit more resources to war in Afghanistan, fine. And the title "counterinsurgency fetishist" is frankly awesome and needs to go on all my business cards. But I don't even know where to start with what else was written. Should I mention that our CEO was a platoon commander in the U.S. Marine Corps when the nation went to war in Iraq and that our president was a battalion operations officer in the U.S. Army? Should I mention that I was a Ranger platoon leader at the time? If by supporting the Iraq War you mean actually fighting then okay. How about I just point out that CNAS was founded four years after the Iraq War began? What the heck, Kerry, did you guys lose all your fact-checkers over there at Salon?

Let me conclude by saying, once again, that CNAS takes no institutional positions on anything except keeping cold beer in our fridge.