Dispatches

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Amid the celebrations, looting, and horror stories that follow the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, a powerful force could emerge from the chaos – if it hasn’t already been destroyed. If Assad preserved his files, and left them behind when he fled Syria, the …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The images are so gruesome I won’t post them. But they’ve been flooding my inbox, as if I didn’t already know that men are getting chewed up on the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia. These particular images come from a social media account that claims to …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating My post-election inbox is overflowing. Now that a contentious campaign season is over, some of my correspondents fear that the U.S. will implode. One reader, “Freaked Out,” writes: “I saw the story about you in The New Yorker magazine, and you talked about riots and civil …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The work has been called the most dangerous form of journalism. Amid my daily influx of emails, text messages, and phone calls, I frequently am hit up by people who want to go downrange under my name. They approach me with variants on the following actual …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating What happened this weekend when a man was arrested outside a Donald Trump rally in California? Claims vary. The local sheriff says his officers thwarted an assassination attempt against Trump. The man who was arrested says he meant no harm, and was a member of the …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating After Vietnam, the U.S. government should have learned a powerful lesson that it never must abandon its allies. Clearly, the lesson was ignored. Several years ago at a conference in Tampa, I asked Gen. Kenneth Tovo a question that was pegged to the Vietnam War, but …

The first such emergency occurred 24 years ago, when several warheads aboard the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk exploded during an undersea exercise. COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Deep within Kursk Oblast in Russia, a special glass of tea perhaps is being brewed for some  unsuspecting government official. Or perhaps a screen …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The Tim Walz military service brouhaha is an object lesson in two long-established axioms: You can’t plump your record, and you can’t piss off your unit. Veterans are calling out Walz, number two on the ticket with presidential candidate Kamala Harris, for touting an inaccurate military …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz KeatingWhen Vladimir Putin embraced assassin Vadim Krasikov at the airport in Moscow on August 1, the Russian president looked jubilant. He had reason to celebrate. Putin’s operator, the convicted killer, was home. So, too, were the other nine Russians who were released as part of a complex …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The United States and other Western countries are suitably popping the Champagne corks over today’s historic prisoner swap with Russia. But what is the Kremlin celebrating, as its human take includes a convicted hitman, an arms dealer, and a money launderer?  Street creds at home. Affirmation …