Mario Loyola writes a big picture article about what is happening in the Persian Gulf. He ties together the seizure of those British Marines by the Iranians with the Western military build-up (which includes the French aircraft carrier Charles DeGaulle, as well as U.S. and British ships) and the recent speech by Iran's Supreme Leader. I might also include the decision by President Ahmadinejad to cancel his upcoming visit to the United Nations in New York. The pot is beginning to boil.

In Afghanistan, a U.S. Marine Corps special operations unit has been ordered to leave the country, after some of its members were involved in an incident that may have included violence against civilians. I need a lot more information before I can make any kind of judgment about this story, but my gut tells me that we cannot expect to send our fighting men and women into a counter-insurgency and not involve them in morally ambiguous circumstances. All wars are about killing, and all wars are made more difficult by the so-called "fog of war" that obscures every situation, but counter-insurgencies are even more obscure.

In Somalia, a Russo-Ukrainian cargo plane is shot down over Mogadishu. The situation appears, once again, to be deteriorating in that country.

Bill Kristol and Frederick Kagan write in the Weekly Standard that the Democrats in Congress are wrong to set timetables for our military in Iraq.