This issue: December 13, 2010 (Vol. 16, No. 13)

Window of Opportunity

BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI

Did America hold an election last month? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Congress is back in town, and the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate are acting as though the shellacking of 2010 never happened. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, oblivious as usual, have stuffed this Christmas turkey of a lame duck session with votes on side issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the DREAM Act immigration amnesty, and a resolution “supporting the goals and ideals of National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day.” Meanwhile, back in the real world, unemployment climbed to 9.8 percent, the debt is piling up, and the economy is struggling.

How the Worm Turned

Stuxnet versus the Iranian nuclear program.

BY JONATHAN V. LAST

Last week Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged that Iran’s uranium enrichment program had suffered a setback: “They were able to disable on a limited basis some of our centrifuges by software installed in electronic equipment,” the Iranian president told reporters. This was something of an understatement. Iran’s uranium enrichment program appears to have been hobbled for the better part of a year, its technical resources drained and its human resources cast into disarray. The “software” in question was a computer worm called Stuxnet, which is already being viewed as the greatest triumph in the short history of cyberwarfare.

Stuxnet first surfaced on ...

The Gates Legacy

The Pentagon is not ready for the 21st century. But it’s not too late to change course.

BY JIM TALENT

No one questions the contributions to national security of Defense Secretary Robert Gates or his skill at getting his way within the Department of Defense and with Congress. Gates is intelligent, strong-willed, and well-schooled in the ways of Washington. Early in his tenure, he put those talents to good use in implementing the “surge” and reestablishing confidence in our Iraq policy. Gates has concentrated since then on Afghanistan, and to good effect. Though President Obama made a huge mistake in imposing a timetable there, his decisions probably would have been worse without the influence of his defense secretary.

History Man

The adventures of Hugh Trevor-Roper.

BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN

Hugh Trevor-Roper
The Biography
by Adam Sisman
Weidenfeld ...

Polyepoxide Conservatism

Joseph Bottum, polyepoxide conservative.

BY JOSEPH BOTTUM

The conservative mood starts with a skepticism and a suspicion about change. Revolution! shout the revolutionaries, and conservatives expect the new boss to look a whole lot like the old boss. Make It New! demand the modernists, and conservatives wonder why they have to make anything at all. Hope and Change! President Obama promised us, and hope and change we got, although the hope was that the Democrats would lose the 2010 midterms, and the change was mostly of the Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? kind.

Anyway, to be a conservative is to know, way down in your gut, that no ...

The Kazakh Follies, Tweeting the Prince, & More

The Kazakh Follies

Fans of Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 film Borat, a “mockumentary” about the misadventures of a young Kazakh visitor to the United States, won’t be disappointed by the Wiki-Leaks diplomatic cables. The American diplomats assigned to the former Soviet republics of the North and Central Caucasus report on events there with sharp wits and ...