National Security

One of the most high-profile appointments President Obama will make in his second term is the director of the CIA. Here's a tip for the president: The time is ripe for the first woman to head the agency.

Choosing a woman isn't just about narrowing the intelligence community gender gap. It's also about drawing from the whole pool of talent to ensure the best national security apparatus and responding to Americans' apparent desire for more women in government. Here are the Top 10 reasons President Obama should name a woman as the next CIA director.

Historians will likely judge David Petraeus to be the most effective American military commander since Eisenhower.

He was, after all, the person who, more than any other, brought Iraq back from the brink of total disaster after he assumed command of U.S. forces there in 2007.

To understand how daunting a task that was, recall that when Petraeus took over in Iraq, the country was embroiled in a civil war so vicious that civilians were dying at the rate of 90 a day.

New York can be as compelling in a hurricane as it is on a starry Saturday night. Some of the thrill of living in the city arises from its combination of majesty and vulnerability. Coming to terms with apocalyptic scenes is easier here than in other cities because the scenes have already been imagined, scripted and filmed by Hollywood’s dystopian directors. We step outside this week as if onto a familiar movie set.

The final Presidential debate, devoted to foreign policy, was the most reasoned and the least polluted by rehearsed talking points of the three. The format and the moderator helped: the candidates sat side by side at a table, close to Bob Schieffer, of CBS News, who conducts interviews of this kind every Sunday morning on “Face the Nation”; his confidence showed, and the roundtable feeling seemed to calm everyone down.

The United States has lost its bearings in the world. Our foreign policy clings to a host of antiquated assumptions and no guiding strategic vision. It’s a bipartisan confusion, judging by this week’s foreign policy debate between President Obama and Governor Romney. The two men may have gotten personal in their sparring, but neither questioned the other’s assumptions about the places that matter most to Washington.

It took barely half an hour for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to change the subject of their final debate from foreign to domestic policy. Responding to moderator Bob Schieffer’s question—“What is America’s role in the world?”—the candidates launched into their respective plans for rebuilding the U.S. economy. Obama talked about creating manufacturing jobs; Romney vowed to support entrepreneurs. Then they sparred over the merits of hiring more public school teachers.

Barack Obama didn’t win tonight’s foreign policy debate. Neither did Mitt Romney. George W. Bush did.

Bush won it because the framework for understanding the world that he put in place after Sept. 11 still holds, even though it wildly distorts the world that the next president will actually face.

After the recent unrest at embassies in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia and the killing of U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, there may be mounting pressure in upcoming weeks or months to permanently shut down embassies or rupture diplomatic relations. Already, there have been significant diplomatic staff withdrawals from many of the embassies.

Mitt Romney came to Monday night's debate with a choice.

He could run to the right of President Obama on national security issues and also differentiate himself on such tricky matters as what to do about Syria, or the United States' complicated alliance with Pakistan.

Or he could essentially endorse Obama's aggressive campaign against American enemies such as al Qaeda and the Iranian regime and his administration's approach to knotty problems such as Syria and Afghanistan.

Last chance! On Monday, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney square off on foreign policy. It will be the final debate and President Obama's last major opportunity to convince American voters to give him four more years.