For the United States, the Iraq war ranks as the most consequential foreign policy failure since Vietnam. In neither instance did U.S. forces succumb to outright defeat, of course. In both, with victory proving elusive, Americans wearied of the fight and simply walked away, abandoning the people for whom their troops had ostensibly fought.In terms of outcomes, however, these two conflicts differ in crucial respects. In Vietnam, we quit and got away with it. Lyndon Johnson’s recklessness in expan

The recent local elections gave both parties a mixed result, which has become the norm in Korean politics. The ruling Saenuri Party avoided expected heavy losses, and the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy held onto a number of important positions and expanded its share of the vote in ruling party strongholds. The most interesting story, however, was the election of 13 progressive heads of local boards of education. Conservatives won only four of the races, thus shifting leadership o

In the mesmerizing Hollywood film “Ocean’s 13” Daniel Ocean gathers his 13 deft partners to ruin the wicked capitalist Willy Bank on the opening night of his hotel-casino, appropriately named “The Bank.” The reason is simple; Rueben Tishkoff, one of Ocean’s partners-in-crime, was conned by his former business partner Bank, and Ocean wants to get revenge for Rueben. Thus Ocean and his partners conjure up two plans. One plan is to prevent The Bank from winning the prestigious Five-Diamond Award, a

Funny how everyone thought China would get old before it got rich. The opposite seems to be true.A new Boston Consulting Group study shows America’s lock on the most-millionaires title may be in jeopardy after a surge in Chinese wealth. The Middle Kingdom surpassed Japan and Europe in the most recent survey, boasting 2.4 million millionaires. That’s still far off the U.S.’ 7.1 million, of course. But the absence of transparency in China and the vast networks that exist to spirit wealth into bank

Will Washington make the same mistake on Iraq twice?We tried to evade it, and pretend the crisis is over or never really existed. But as John Adams said: “Facts are stubborn things.”Iraq, a war-torn country that preoccupied all of our minds throughout the first decade of the 21st century, but that we tried to forget in the last few years, is now at a serious turning point and with it the West is once again at a major geopolitical crossroad.While the world was focusing on some other troubled area

WASHINGTON ― As al-Qaida splits and morphs into different affiliates and offshoots, U.S. counterterrorism officials worry about what one calls a “potential competitive dynamic” in which different factions ― including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now sowing civil war in Iraq ― seek to bolster their credibility by attacking the United States. This new danger of attacks on the U.S. homeland is what concerns the Obama administration most about the splintering process that has created ISIS, a

The world is gripped by soccer fever with the World Cup underway in Brazil. During the next few weeks, about half of the world’s population will be riveted to their TVs to watch the planet’s biggest quadrennial soccer event.Many Korean soccer fans are having sleepless nights to watch all the live action from the opposite side of the globe. They have to stay awake until the early morning, as all games start after 1 a.m. But World Cup fever here is more subdued than in previous years. One factor i