National Security

The Conference featured some of the world's leading experts on Al Qaeda, Islamic fundamentalism, and transnational terrorism. The meeting took place in the historic and beautiful Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.

In his book The Fourth Power, Gary Hart demonstrates the linkage between a principled foreign policy and national security in the age of terror. He argues that when U.S. sanctions on the world stage are inconsistent with established democratic values, America is made more vulnerable. Stating that policies that erode America's image weaken our fight in the war of ideas, Hart argues there may be no more important arena going forward.

In 1990, Stephen Covey published The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A business-oriented self-help book, the volume was a huge bestseller and is still in print today. During the same decade-and-a-half, the American economy grew hugely. A coincidence? Perhaps not.

George W. Bush and John F. Kerry have more in common on Iraq than is generally believed, or than either acknowledges.

Evil has a reputation for resilience. And rightly so. Banishing it from Middle Earth alone took three very long Lord of the Rings movies. But equally deserving of this reputation is the concept of evil -- in particular, a conception of evil that was on display in those very movies: the idea that behind all the world's bad deeds lies a single, dark, cosmic force. No matter how many theologians reject this idea, no matter how incompatible it seems with modern science, it keeps coming back.

When you fly over the icy peaks of the Hindu Kush, which march in serried ranks toward the Himalayas, dividing Central Asia from the Indian subcontinent, you get a sense of the scale of the problem: Osama bin Laden may be hiding somewhere out there. Wherever he is, bin Laden continues to give substantial ideological direction to jihadist movements around the globe -- and so American forces are scouring the Hindu Kush to find him.

What do we mean when we call a president a "great communicator"? Maybe we mean he's a great storyteller. But whether or not he's a stirring orator or charming raconteur, we mean that he's a teller of great stories. In presidential politics, the man is a metaphor. The candidate who can tell a story about himself that's deeply in sync with a story about the country -- and who can make the stories equally compelling -- is most likely to win.

What do Al Qaeda and General Motors have in common?

This may seem an odd, even perverse question when the Department of Homeland Security's orange alert has police in combat gear and with automatic weapons patrolling the perimeters of the complexes that house multinational corporations in New York City and New Jersey. Not to mention that Al Qaeda does not exactly exalt large corporations, which it sees as symbols of Western -- particularly U.S. -- power and carriers of values that threaten to spiritually disarm the Islamic world.

John Kerry, tough-talking war hero, cut an impressive figure at last week's convention, maybe impressive enough to threaten the Republicans' time-honored dominance of the manliness issue -- that is, national security. But you can already hear the Republican reply taking shape: O.K., you've shown us your muscles, but where's the beef? What exactly is your strategy for the war on terrorism?

At a congressional hearing July 7, the Army's new vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard A. Cody, answered the rhetorical question of whether U.S. military forces were stretched too thin with a resounding "absolutely."

It doesn't take the genius of Clausewitz to figure out what's obvious: With 135,000 troops assigned to the war in Iraq, 17,000 in Afghanistan, 37,500 in South Korea, 47,000 in Japan and 100,000 in Europe, saying that we are overstretched is putting it mildly. In all, there are 368,900 U.S. troops in 120 countries.