44 articles
THE WAR ON TERRORISM IS GOING to be "a different kind of war," we're told over and over again by the administration and commentators. Are they right? To some degree, of course they are. Every war is different from the last one. World War I was different from anything before it, as was World War II.…
LIKE HERPES SIMPLEX, Jesse Jackson never really goes away—he just lies dormant. Clearly, the present national crisis was too much for him to resist. So Jackson last week announced he had received an "invitation" from the Taliban to lead a "peace delegation" to Afghanistan. Of course, Jackson,…
If you've been to our site before, you’ll notice it’s undergone change. Quite a lot, in fact. Here’s a guide to what you’ll find here.
EVERYONE HAS A FAVORITE Michael Jordan story. Mine is the one where, as a college student, he loses three consecutive games of pool to North Carolina assistant coach Roy Williams and then refuses to speak to him the next day. Or maybe it’s the one from 1998, when Jordan asks ESPN anchor Dan Patrick…
IT DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT, really--romanticizing catastrophe instead of just confronting its grim particulars head-on. Still, they cut quite a swath at Sir Harry's Bar in the Waldorf-Astoria, these brave men with forearm tattoos and walrus mustaches--firefighting volunteers who have swooped in from…
Since his speech to Congress last Thursday, virtually every major political figure has gone out of his way to support the president. Except for his secretary of state. On the Sunday talk shows, Colin Powell revised or modified many of his boss's remarks. The president devoted a good chunk of his…
September 20, 2001 The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States Washington, DC Dear Mr. President, We write to endorse your admirable commitment to "lead the world to victory" in the war against terrorism. We fully support your call for "a broad and sustained campaign" against the…
Cambridge, England THE TERRORISTS wanted a war with America and they will get one, though they erred if they thought it would be the kind of pin-prick, slap-on-the-wrist war the United States has waged of late. Rather it will be the sustained, root-and-branch kind of war the United States tends to…
IN THE DAYS following the terrorist attack on New York and Washington last week, an employee of a major U.S. airline read to Florida congressman John Mica the procedures his carrier instructs its pilots to adopt in the event of a hijacking. The chairman of the House aviation subcommittee calls them…
AT 8:45 LAST TUESDAY MORNING, I was sitting in a plane at Kennedy airport waiting to take off when my cell phone rang. A very worried spouse said that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, and she was checking to be certain that it wasn’t mine. Cita also said that…
WHAT RUDY GIULIANI DID last week in the aftermath of the attack on New York was not all that different from what he has done in the midst of any crisis during his mayoralty. In each case—a terrible fire, a water-main break, the crash of TWA Flight 800, a neighborhood blackout—he dons the garb of an…
HAS ANYONE NOTICED that we are not having a discussion about war powers? No one is talking much about the War Powers Resolution, nor is anyone proposing that President Bush may not initiate military action unless Congress formally declares war. The almost complete silence on these matters…
PRESIDENT BUSH was right Wednesday morning when he looked up from his cabinet meeting to announce: "The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war." But war to what end? What do the initiators of this war…
PRESIDENT BUSH did not become a war president on the day of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. It happened the next morning. Bush was sitting in the Cabinet Room at the White House between Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell. At 10:53 A.M. the president,…
EVEN AS THE SKY was falling Tuesday morning, September 11, visitors to the Nation magazine’s website could find a freshly posted essay by Edward Said on the intellectual’s role in the modern world. A true intellectual, Said declared, now makes it his mission to publicize those injustices that are…
There was much talk in Washington last week of the need for the government to reassure the nation. But it is not just reassurance the American public seeks from its leaders. To talk to people on the street, to listen to friends and relatives across the nation, is to hear something not heard in this…
They Shoot Photographers, Don't They? Perhaps the most disgusting images following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the ones of Palestinian men, women, and children dancing in the streets in east Jerusalem, celebrating the death of thousands of Americans, yelling, "God is…
On Sept. 17, 2001, a panel of Yale professors, moderated by Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, met to consider the implications of the terror attacks on New York and Washington Sept. 11. I was not there nor, apparently, was any professor whose primary concern is to devise a practical plan to…
The first thing that must be said is this: The nation has reacted magnificently to the horrific events of September 11. True, there has been some of the usual hand-wringing, on editorial pages and in Congress. To listen to some commentators, you’d think the Bush administration was about to embark…
SHORTLY AFTER KOSOVO leapt into the headlines worldwide and war crimes became the international subject of the hour, the Palestine Liberation Organization, ever quick to exploit political trends, set about likening Israel to Serbia. Spokesmen for the Palestinian cause demanded that the…
WE WILL ADJUDICATE who’s at fault in a moment. We will begin, instead, simply by noting that today, nearly eight months after Inauguration Day, it remains unclear whether the "Bush administration" actually warrants that designation. The president’s Social Security Administration has no…
I WAS SURPRISED TO READ in the newspaper the other day that the movie star Russell Crowe has just concluded a month-long tour with his rock ’n’ roll band, a group of Australians called "30 Odd Foot of Grunts." I was surprised for reasons that had nothing to do with the stupid name. I didn’t know…
PRESIDENT BUSH’S PLAN to expand the role of religious charities in providing social services got a boost with the passage of House legislation in July endorsing much of his agenda. But it faces a ferocious battle in the Senate, where Democrats are objecting to provisions allowing faith-based groups…
LONG AGO, the Republican party was nicknamed the Stupid Party, and at times Republicans have done their best to live up to the label. But after the past week, it is perhaps time to acknowledge that when it comes to brainless, self-destructive behavior, the Democratic party has achieved a level of…
THE NOVELIST JAMES ELLROY once described Joe Queenan as "half-Calvinist, half-nihilist." But, for most of the 1990s, the nihilist seemed predominant. From The Unkindest Cut to Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler, Queenan continued to double back on his own well-trodden steps, making a living by…
THIRTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD WALTER KIRN is an uncommon writer—the only American novelist of his generation who has also done serious work as a book critic. He has offered careful and nuanced criticism of such efforts at serious and ambitious fiction as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Russell…
YES, ANOTHER REASON TO HATE ISRAEL Irving Kristol famously remarked that a neoconservative was a liberal who had been "mugged by reality." He later added that a neoliberal is a liberal who, having been mugged by reality, refused to press charges. Tom Wolfe’s fictional bond trader Sherman McCoy…
IT HAS NOT BEEN A HAPPY YEAR for Senate Republicans. First there was the disappointing showing in last fall’s elections, when they almost lost their majority; then came the defection of Jim Jeffords, when they did lose it. Now, the announced retirement of Jesse Helms and speculation that other old…
IT HAS BEEN A BUSY SUMMER for European diplomats and for the human rights activists who dance to the Euro-beat. They have been much exercised about dangers to global stability. The main danger, they seem to think, comes from the United States. Europeans want to stop global warming and stand up for…
HOLLYWOOD HAS ALWAYS RUN ON THE PRINCIPLE that what worked before must work again—and again and again and again, in movie after movie, until theatergoers reach the point of throwing things at the screen. The most recent example of mindless repetition is gravity-defying martial arts. And the time…
WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH embraced Social Security reform as a key issue in his presidential campaign, everyone knew it was a gamble. Sure, polls showed majorities of the public supported the concept of limited privatization. But these polls were untested in the real world of electoral politics, and they…
BETWEEN 1950 AND 1970, two battles of the Cold War raged across Western Europe and the United States. The first was the fight against the Soviet Union’s effort to control the world of ideas and letters. The second was the struggle to overcome the anti-Americanism of European intellectuals. These…
IS THE UNITED STATES A RELIABLE ALLY, one that can be counted on in time of crisis to assist close friends it has promised to defend? If the answer is yes, then it is now time for the United States to stand unequivocally with Israel. President Bush deserves credit for resisting calls for more…
IN AN AFFAIR OF STATE, his 1999 analysis of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Bill Clinton’s resulting impeachment, Richard A. Posner, a judge on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, set out to prove that, almost without exception, the leading characters in that drama were "fools, knaves,…
THIS TIME OF YEAR always brightens education with the optimism of fresh starts. Classrooms are clean, teachers rested, children eager. There are new textbooks on the shelves, new hardware in the computer labs, perhaps a new menu in the cafeteria. Some of this year’s innovations are even more…
BECAUSE I GOT MY MTV WATCHING THE CULTURE for signs of decline is usually a volume business, but sometimes an item cries out for individual attention. This week it’s the phenomenal success of "Because I Got High," a disarmingly cute song about smoking pot by a Mississippi rapper who calls himself…
IN 1997, WHEN PRESIDENT CLINTON named then governor William Weld of Massachusetts ambassador to Mexico, Sen. Jesse Helms declared the nomination dead on arrival. Not only that, but Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he wouldn’t even allow a hearing on it. Washington was…
WASHINGTON, D.C., HAS COME OF AGE. The affairs of representative Gary Condit, like those of the more illustrious politician he emulates, have at last shown the world that the American capital is a sophisticated town, the rival of its European counterparts. Just turn on the TV or read a major…
ONCE AGAIN, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has wormed its way into the news. Rousing himself from the sweltering torpor of his Texas vacation, President Bush earlier this month made his customary visitations to a classroom or two, where TV cameras as usual recorded him perched before an array of…
FINDING A NEW BOOK by the political philosopher Leo Strauss more than a generation after his death in 1973 is as startling and unexpected as discovering a lost manuscript by Bach in some dark and remote German basement. Strauss has become famous among American conservatives as an opponent of…
FOR FIVE OF THE SIX YEARS that Floyd Spence chaired the House Armed Services Committee—six years ending just months before the congressman’s death on August 16—I served on the committee staff, doing policy work and writing speeches for the chairman. My role involved me in the wrangling over policy…
EVERYONE WHO WATCHES the financial news channels and reads the generally depressing economy stories in the daily press knows one thing: Trillions of dollars of wealth have been destroyed as the stock market continues its descent from the stratosphere. What they can’t figure out is why American…
UPON BEING NAMED DIRECTOR of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, John DiIulio Jr. made clear that he expected to be in the post for only a short while. Notes of my January interview with DiIulio begin: "Do at least six months." DiIulio, as it turns out, will have done…
I. PEACEKEEPING?