Michael E. O'Hanlon - Mentions and Appearances

[There] weren't great hopes right now for peace talks [with the Taliban in Afghanistan] at the moment in any case.

To see the president emphatically state as a matter of wartime leadership that we are really working closely in a committed way with our Afghan partners I think it was an important message. He made it pretty clear that, if he's reelected at least, he'll see the mission past 2014 as important but very limited and very focused.

I tend to think we have two outstanding candidates, two honorable men who are pragmatic and fairly centrist in a lot of their views of the world. But their campaigns are already in overdrive, even on an issue that you would consider to be relatively non-divisive, like the death of Osama bin Laden. And I think both campaigns need to look in the mirror a little bit and ask just where they want to take the country these next six months.

[Clinton’s] not the one with the sweeping vision… But she's pragmatic and sensible. I'd say that she has a solid, workmanlike record.

If Assad has…really made headway against [Syrian] insurgents, …there is a good chance he will 'win' without too much American pushback.

[On Iran] Obama pushed the Bush agenda better than Bush did…Now Israel has…[the] capability to bomb Iran and Iraq controls its own airspace.

[W]hile there is a distinct possibility of a prisoner exchange [with the Taliban]…[t]hat would take a fair amount of progress…

Infantry forces, which take the brunt of a lot of the casualties, do tend to draw predominantly from…[rural] regions [in the United States].

Obama hasn't yet proven that he's going to avoid [in Libya] the problem George Bush faced in Iraq: the problem of catastrophic success.

If you want to cut the defense budget, the technical accounting side is in some ways simpler than the political side.