Ask Americans to name World War II battles in the Pacific and you will likely to hear places such as Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. You aren’t likely to hear anyone mention Attu. But it was the only land battle fought on U.S. soil during World War II. And in proportional terms, it also was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Pacific theater. Read more »

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is out with a new poll on what Egyptians think about politics a few weeks ahead of their historical presidential elections. Some of the results are interesting:

• Egyptians like the idea of democracy. Two-thirds say it is preferable to other forms of government, and six-in-ten Egyptians say democracy is the form of government best suited to solving their problems. Read more »

Wednesday marks one year since Navy Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden. He won’t be missed here in the United States. And according to the latest poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, he won’t be missed much in Muslim-majority countries either.

Pew asked Muslims in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Turkey whether they had a “favorable” or “unfavorable” view of al-Qaeda. Read more »

Americans love generals. We have elected twelve of them president. But for a president, generals can be an enormous pain—and a political threat. James K. Polk worried (rightly) that Winfield Scott was hankering after his job. Abraham Lincoln couldn’t get George B. McClellan to fight, finally relieved him of command of the Army of the Potomac, and then beat him decisively in the 1864 election. Read more »

I noted in a post this morning that Americans have less confidence in Mitt Romney than Barack Obama when it comes to foreign policy. Moments after that post went up the Pew Research Center released a new poll.  It shows the challenge Romney faces in closing the gap with the president on foreign policy. Read more »

I’ve spent most of my time the past two weeks discharging my administrative responsibilities rather than following the news. With the stack of papers piled in my inbox now looking to be just daunting rather than terrifying, I decided to catch up on the news. So far most of what I have read has been unsurprising. The Syrian government agreed to a cease-fire and then broke it. North Korea promised not to launch a long-range missile and then did just that. Iran offered to talk about a nuclear deal while continuing to intimidate its neighbors.  People behaved badly when they went abroad or visited Las Vegas.  All are essentially dog-bites-man stories. Read more »

Above the Fold. Despite warnings from President Obama that there would be “consequences,” North Korea went ahead and launched a ballistic missile to honor the 100th birthday of the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung. The test was a dud; the missile broke up a minute into flight and fell harmlessly into the Yellow Sea west of Seoul. The launch violates a series of UN resolutions and means the end of the so-called Leap Day deal in which Washington promised to send food aid to North Korea in exchange for good behavior. Read more »

Above the Fold. Tuareg rebel fighters in northern Mali today declared the independent country of Azawad. The announcement comes on the heels of the rebels’ rapid success in driving government forces out of Northern Mali in the two weeks since Malian soldiers overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, Amadou Touré, a former general who first came to power in a coup two decades ago. (Touré oversaw Mali’s transition to democracy and then stepped down from power, earning him the nickname “the soldier of democracy.” He was elected president in 2002 and again in 2007.) The new ruling junta justified its coup on the grounds that Touré had failed to put down the Tuareg rebellion. Tuaregs, a semi-nomadic people spread across Niger, Mali, Libya, Algeria, and Burkina Faso, make up an estimated 10 percent of Mali’s population. They have been fighting for their independence since even before Mali won its own independence from France in 1960. Read more »