March 2003

"IT LOOKS LIKE you've got some competition, Teddy," said Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "I do?" replied a puzzled Theodore White.

Kuwait City

LOST IN THE CRIES of "Vietnam" and "quagmire" yesterday was this short but very interesting exchange between Tim Russert and Mohammed Al-Douri, the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, on "Meet the Press": RUSSERT: Mr. Ambassador, is Saddam Hussein dead or alive?

WHEN THE WAR IN IRAQ began nearly two weeks ago, I should have, ideally, begun boning up on my Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, so as to have something meaningful to say about the conflict. Instead, I found myself sitting in a hotel room in Rome at the beginning of a long-planned and rather ill-timed…

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, often called the Lost Angeles Times or the Left Angeles Times, escapes the sort of scrutiny that Andrew Sullivan and others apply to the New York Times because the "West Coast's leading newspaper" simply doesn't matter much on the East Coast (and increasingly not so much in…

Kuwait City

On the Importance of Awe

ANTIWAR CROWDS are taking to the streets in London and Madrid, Washington, and San Francisco. But what about Ground Zero? No, not New York. That's Ground Zero for terrorism. I mean Berkeley, California, Ground Zero for antiwar sentiment.

THE MICHIGAN AFFIRMATIVE action cases, which the Supreme Court will hear on April 1, have attracted more than 100 friend-of-the-court briefs, a record number. The overwhelming majority of these amicus curiae filings support the university. Among the signatories are more than 300 organizations,…

Paris

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH set aside the Pentagon's strategy for war with Iraq and ordered an attack on Saddam Hussein and his inner circle, it created shock and awe in the media and perhaps in a few offices of Bush's own administration. It shouldn't have. The president behaved, without much ado, as a…

The Mission

FRANCE HAS ALWAYS BEEN a country with a divided soul: on one side, a record of humanistic Enlightenment philosophy and modern art unrivalled by any other nation; on the other side, a record of scandals such as the appeasement of the Nazis from the 1930s until the end of World War II. It was only a…

Jewish Polity and American Civil Society

PIERRE LELLOUCHE, who represents a Paris district in the French National Assembly, did not appreciate being called "Pierre Laval" during a recent foreign policy debate in parliament. A leading defense expert who backed Ronald Reagan's strong stand against the Soviet Union in the 1980s when many in…

Private Memoirs and Confessions

A S I WRITE, a couple of days into the war, the hawks are optimistic and the liberals are bracing to get beaten about with sticks. The hawks are optimistic because the Iraqi regime seems to be crumbling. None of the terrible things the doves predicted has yet come to pass: no mass riots on the Arab…

THREE DAYS before abandoning diplomatic activity about Iraq in the U.N. Security Council and delivering an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, President Bush hastily invited reporters to the White House Rose Garden, where he announced a further initiative for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The…

NOT LONG AFTER September 11, Michael Walzer asked, "Can there be a decent Left?" Watching his fellow progressives greet the destruction of the World Trade Center with "barely concealed glee," he concluded, "the Left needs to begin again." Now, in "Terror and Liberalism" (W.W. Norton, 128 pp., $21),…

IT'S BEEN TOUGH for Democrats to avoid the temptation to badmouth the president. With Senate minority leader Tom Daschle calling him a "diplomatic failure" and worse, reporters seem to be begging prominent Democrats to bash Bush at every press conference, in every interview. Conflict does make for…

Outskirts of Kuwait City

THE BIGGEST NEWS in the 2004 presidential race is the spectacular takeoff of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat and vociferous foe of the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, in an Iraq-related matter, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has set eight goals for winning the war. Boiled down, they consist…

IT SEEMS TO COME as a surprise to some in Washington that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has had a hand in planning Operation Iraqi Freedom. Field Marshal Maureen Dowd declared her shock and awe in her Sunday column, declaring that U.S. ground forces were dangerously "exposed" in their positions…

FOR MOST AMERICANS, the Iraqi missile attack on Kuwait City early Saturday morning represented a new stage in the current war. This one got through. All twelve missiles previously fired from Iraq into Kuwait had been intercepted by U.S. Patriot missiles. That, at least, was the official Pentagon…

"WELL SHEP, that noise you hear is the turret turning. We've engaged the enemy." That was embedded journalist Rick Leventhal reporting live on Fox News with the Marines known as the Wolf Pack somewhere in the Iraqi desert. Welcome to the Second Gulf War which, oddly enough, began with a truce…

IF YOU ASSUMED California's antiwar fetish crested the moment Michael Moore thanked the Academy, dissed the president, and took his Oscar home, guess again.

"THE HISTORY OF WAR proves that nine out of ten times an army has been destroyed because its supply lines have been cut off." General Douglas MacArthur said this in 1950 before his landing at Inchon during the Korean War. It's a thought that is definitely on the minds of Tommy Franks, Richard…

ON THE IRAQI WAR FRONT, Sunday, March 23 was a blood-red day for the terrorist Wahhabi movement, funded by "our Saudi allies" and aiming at control over world Islam.

I DON'T KNOW where the war is ultimately headed or how long it will take or if it will ultimately be judged by history as a success or failure. I do know this: The talk about the campaign in Iraq being bogged down and the coalition being in this for "the long haul" is, if not ridiculous, then…

FROM THE PRO-BUSH sentiments of hockey great Wayne Gretzky to actor Adrien Brody's rousing acceptance at the Oscars, the last few days have finally brought good publicity for the war effort. The patriots are coming out of the woodwork, their confidence in America as visible as the liquid contempt…

A HIGH SCHOOL basketball coach I know has a special approach to those who oppose the war in Iraq. "Oh," he says, "you're on the side of rape, torture, and child abuse." Naturally the antiwar people are offended and angrily insist they're for peace and protecting civilian lives and other noble…

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Law School Professor Erwin Chemerinsky has been my colleague in the commentary business for a decade, and for the past three years a weekly guest, along with Chapman Law School Professor John Eastman, on my radio program. Together we try to make the issues of…

LAST NIGHT American forces discovered atropine stashes in a hospital that was being used as a headquarters for Iraqi forces. The day before, they discovered chem suits and cipro on an Iraqi officer. Why would Saddam spend money on these protections for his military? He knows the United States won't…

WATCHING OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM unfold, one might be left wondering what's going on with the coalition's air operations. Why is it that so many helicopters, several carrying precious human cargo, have crashed? Coming in just the first five days of the war, the crashes have even more of an impact…

FINALLY, a man with some sense: Anyone who would seek to understand Operation Iraqi Freedom beyond the hyperventilation of television rent-a-generals with their telestrators and other Hollywood production values should read Ralph Peters's Shock, Awe and Overconfidence in today's Washington Post.…

Near the Iraqi Border

THE WASHINGTON RUMOR MILL has it that the president's commission to consider bioethical issues such as, but not limited to, cloning, is about to issue its report on the possibility of creating a market for human organs. And the word is that the bioethicists have decided that it is a bad idea to…

SINGERS WITH ENOUGH TALENT can overcome their politics, and Judy Collins has enough talent. So on Oscar night, the wife and I dragooned a younger couple, like the time my parents dragged us to hear Perry Como, and off we went to an auditorium on the campus of Claremont College to hear Judy and…

THE BRITISH always tended to run their empire on the cheap. Even fighting Napoleon, they didn't want to spend much money: Wellington's letters from Portugal are filled with complaints about how hard it is to chisel money out of the Horse Guards and the War Office--and that was to build the Lines of…

A RUMSFELD ANSWER at a press conference revealed an easy-to-fix yet important problem with the administration's view of the war.

HERE'S THE SITUATION: The war in which American forces are advancing on schedule to a victory over Iraq has suddenly been cast in a negative light. What caused this to happen? The answer is unrealistic expectations by the media of a quick, virtually uncontested victory and one important mistake by…

Kuwait City

THERE IS AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE between war and battle. War is large, governed by politics. Very few people experience war, even very few people in uniform. Battle can be large or small, but is almost always chaotic. Battle is what most soldiers know; Clausewitz called it "the engagement."

Near the Iraqi Border

THE WAR has been on for four days (or two years, or twelve years, or a thousand years), and I took the kids for haircuts. It's one of those kid-places with balloons and play areas and horrible music, which, if you're a professional crank like me, means any music at all. For some time now I've…

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS: At the Academy Awards last night Chad Lowe wore a yellow ribbon on his lapel. Going a step further, Jon Voight wore an American flag pin. And Adrien Brody, after a shaky, relativistic start to his speech accepting the Best Actor award, finished by saying, "I have a friend from…

THE FOCUS for the past six months on obtaining United Nations approval for the invasion of Iraq has obscured a simple, logical American strategy based on a clear premise. The premise is that the mass civilian killings of 9/11 triggered a world war between the United States and a political wing of…

New York

LET'S SEE WHERE WE STAND. Over the past six months, while the United Nations has been debating the definition of words like "immediate" and "unconditional," the United States has deployed hundreds of thousands of troops around Iraq. It has done so smoothly, and without the terrorist counterattack…

"I SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM when I had the chance. Now I'm f--d!" said the man as he was driven away in a squad car. He used to spend his mornings at a methadone clinic, but not any more. Not after being charged with stabbing a man in the thigh. He claims the reason he was carrying a knife in his…

LAST DECEMBER, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, former President Jimmy Carter linked the United States' responsibility to lead the world in implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, passed last November, more than a decade after Iraq's unlawful invasion and annexation of…

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE reform is moving steadily through Congress. The House passed President Bush's plan last Thursday, and it now goes to the Senate. The administration is hoping the reforms will head off a national malpractice crisis, which has already closed emergency rooms and trauma centers in…

The Lip-Service Liberators

MILWAUKEE SCHOOL BOARD member John Gardner has a deep voice, a short temper, plenty of enemies, and left-leaning political views. He also has a bevy of support from nationally prominent conservatives and is fighting a broad spectrum of left-wing forces that want to end his political career.

THE CYNICAL VIEW of President Bush is that he exploited the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, for political gain and now is ardently pursuing war with Iraq for the same reason. Many Democrats, including Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, believe this. It's true that Bush is stronger…

Books in Brief The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education by Peter Brimelow (HarperCollins, 320 pp., $24.95). Education these days, someone once declared, is "casting false pearls before real swine." Why are contemporary students so poor? In "The Worm in the…

MUCH OF THE RECENT DEBATE over the Bush administration's Iraq policy has centered on two foolish ideas. The first is that the goal of American foreign policy should be to make certain the United States is "liked" by as many other countries as possible, particularly at that great high school of the…

IN EUROPE, the United States, and the Middle East, it has become commonplace to hear doubts, if not derision, expressed about the wisdom of the Bush administration's abetting the creation of a democratic Iraq. Most of the folks who think Iraqi democracy a lame idea are of course also opposed to the…

DURING ONE RECENT press briefing, a Defense official observed that what America is seeing of the war is a series of scenes, but that they aren't seeing the whole picture.

NOT LONG AGO, on his fifth anniversary as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank Griswold III had a few thoughts to get off his chest. The United States is "hated and loathed" around the world, and for good reason, he said. "They see us as greedy, self-interested and almost totally…

A DAY AFTER war with Iraq began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded with a grin to a reporter who complained the fighting wasn't going the way he'd been led to believe. You don't know the real plan, Rumsfeld said, sounding a bit like Jack Nicholson as a Marine general in "A Few Good Men."…

WITH THE INITIATION of the large-scale air campaign, television is convinced that the war to liberate Iraq has begun in earnest. Until there are fireworks in Baghdad, CNN never quite knows what to do.

Last night, we saw the fruits of the Pentagon's new "embed" relationship with journalists which allows the scribes to live and work freely amongst the troops and cover them in real time as they roll into battle. On-the-scene footage from CNN and FOX showed Army M2 and M3 Bradley fighting vehicles,…

STARDUMB QUIZ: Which famous writer is speaking in the interview below, which took place on September 4, 2002 and focused on the then-upcoming war in Iraq?

ONE OF THE most encouraging developments of the past 72 hours is the fact that most Iraqis are eager to have Saddam Hussein removed is finally seeping into the mainstream. New York Times reporter John Burns said on PBS the other day, "Iraqis have suffered beyond, I think, the common understanding…

FOR MONTHS, ARAB- AND MUSLIM-AMERICAN lobby groups have passionately spoken out against war with Iraq, citing the potential for everything from the mass murder of Iraqi babies to the creation of tens of thousands of baby bin Ladens. Warnings of dire consequences have flooded underground Internet…

Kuwait City

Kuwait City

IT MIGHT BE CALLED Operation Scare and Divide. That's what the American military was carrying out Thursday as the prelude to the full-scale, massive attack on Iraq designed to produce "shock and awe" among the Iraqis and prompt the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. But if Scare and Divide works…

HAS PRESIDENT BUSH done anything right in his campaign to liberate Iraq? You wouldn't think so, judging from some New York Times articles that have run this week. While many informed observers think the war is justified and will be over quickly the Gray Lady has been brimming with negative news…

Editor's note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we'll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you'll want to check back with us often.

Editor's note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we'll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you'll want to check back with us often.

Editor's note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we'll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you'll want to check back with us often.

Editor's note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we'll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you'll want to check back with us often.

Editor's note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we'll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you'll want to check back with us often.

CRITICS of President Bush's Iraq policy will have to give up their favorite line of attack--that he's acting unilaterally against Iraq. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, even before the State Department named 30 countries as members of what President Bush calls "the coalition of the…

En Route to Kuwait City

Kuwait City, Kuwait

AFTER THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS in January, David Tell suggested that some might object to the United States acting "unilaterally" by spending $15 billion over then next 5 years to alleviate the AIDS crisis in Africa. It seemed like a funny joke at the time.

BUSH AND BLAIR, two leaders who have in common monosyllabic names beginning with "B" and spines of steel, are linked forever in history by their decision to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. In the last two days, the one has addressed his nation, the other his parliament about the coming war. For…

THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA has been on foot for some years. Its first manifestation came during the 1990s in the form of militant Islam's sporadic attacks on Americans outside the United States. This was followed by the Pearl Harbor of the new century in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.…

SENATOR TOM DASCHLE'S attack on President Bush on Monday was unprecedented for the leader of the opposition party in Congress, but high-profile Americans have a long history of getting it wrong on matters of war and peace. Most famous among these is Charles Lindbergh, who help found the America…

THIS MORNING I called a press conference to announce where I stand on the issue of the impending war in Iraq. After holding my tongue lo these many months, I decided to stop pretending that the world does not need to know my thoughts, and indeed, that I do not have the moral obligation to reveal…

TONY BLAIR'S PROBLEMS will not end with the unseating of Saddam Hussein. Nor will they end when he crushes the revolt of the loony left in his party. He will still have to face the fact that his foreign policy--indeed, his view of the world in the 21st century--is in tatters.

WHATEVER ELSE HAPPENS in the life of Priscilla Owen, the Texas Supreme Court justice has made history. Of a sort. Two years ago, President Bush nominated her for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate Judiciary Committee finally gave her a hearing in July and then--on a…

I DIDN'T THINK the president was at his best tonight. His reading was not smooth. I'm sure that many French, British, and high-toned American viewers will have their opinion confirmed that George W. Bush simply hasn't read enough books to be president, let alone lead the nation into war.

ASIDE FROM the one you're holding in your hands and a few others, the best magazine in existence is American Demographics. This thin journal serves up on a monthly basis a relentless stream of facts, data, and theories that seem at first glance to be highly significant and culturally revealing. I…

"DEMOCRATS LAMBASTE BUSH ON IRAQ." So declared the front page headline in the Washington Post the morning after the president's press conference. Leading the attack are Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and his House counterpart Nancy Pelosi, who are "escalating their criticism of Bush," the Post…

DANIEL LIBESKIND'S victory in the architectural competition for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site is a victory for what we might call the "permanent institution of the revolution." It looks as though we will never be able to revolt against that revolt--never be able to rid ourselves…

IT'S NOT CLEAR whether the constitutional definition of "advice and consent" will become a casualty of Miguel Estrada's fight for a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the possibility is serious and sobering. In a 55-44 vote, Democrats last week defeated a Republican attempt to break…

UNDER THE ADAGE "save us from our friends," France's president Jacques Chirac has added to his long list of reasons for opposing a U.S.-led campaign to disarm Iraq the desire to "protect" Americans from fighting "angry Muslims." According to a French Defense Ministry official quoted in the Wall…

MICHAEL GERSON, the chief White House speechwriter, was recently asked by a reporter if he understood how the windup to President Bush's State of the Union address in January might have offended some people. Gerson was stunned. What Bush had said was: "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to…

NO SUBJECT gets talked to death more than "diminishing our dependence on Middle Eastern oil." Yet as conflict with Iraq looms, what do we face but another Energy Crisis?

IF IT WERE WORKING PROPERLY, a world organization like the United Nations could offer the United States official sanction for an upcoming bout, and assure the world that the heavyweight champion (no matter what kind of lowlife he is up against) will play by the rules and rein himself in; will hit…

The Agent Who Wouldn't Wear a Wire

"There is an alternative: to open our eyes, to do more than sit and wait for the next crisis, and to shift fundamentally the direction of U.S. policy toward Saddam. Containment is no longer enough. Rather than try to contain Saddam, a strategy that has failed, our policy should now aim to remove…

Editor's Note: President Bush said Friday that the new Palestinian prime minister must have "real authority," which means the power to conduct negotiations on a peace settlement with Israel. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority leader, wants to retain the job of handling foreign affairs. Last…

The Faith of the Fathers

Cad

IN AN ADMINISTRATION full of "unilateralists," many observers expected Secretary of State Colin Powell to be the most reliable friend of the United Nations--and perhaps he was, until French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin sandbagged him on Iraq at a meeting Powell thought had been called to…

"AM I TOTALLY BORING, or what?" asks Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

OVER THE COURSE of the last few months, every respectable argument against war in Iraq has fallen apart. In December the peaceniks insisted that inspections would work; even Hans Blix now admits that they have not. In January the peaceniks insisted that the United States was acting unilaterally;…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH asked Donald Rumsfeld to come up with a plan to invade Afghanistan and kick al Qaeda out of its hiding places, Rumsfeld and General Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he'd have to wait a while. Though the CIA had been pursuing al Qaeda leads in the…

WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT from an ally who disagrees with us? The question arises because of France's strong objection to President Bush's call for disarmament by Iraq--by war if necessary. The French reaction has infuriated many Americans, stirred talk of a boycott of French goods, and generated a…

YESTERDAY, with 64 Senators supporting it, the Senate approved a bill that would ban partial-birth abortion in all 50 states. Congress passed similar bans in 1995 and 1999 that were vetoed by Bill Clinton, but George W. Bush has said he will sign the ban into law. But can it survive Supreme Court…

LAST WEEK, the Supreme Court acted as it often should--with restraint.

BLACKLIST. Censorship. The Constitution. Free Speech. This is what the Stardumb phenomenon is all about: The guaranteed right of every entertainer to make an ass of himself as he rushes to the public square with his fresh-from-the-mouth-of-Bill-Maher pronouncements on the issue of war.

IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO: The CEO of a large corporation calls a meeting of the board of directors to deal with a crisis: The business is losing four dollars for every dollar earned, much of the capacity goes unused, and the customer base, never large to begin with, is eroding at an alarming rate. The…

Smooth and likeable, Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United States, spoke to a roomful of American reporters Wednesday at a hotel two blocks from the White House. And if you thought the differences between the United States and France were many and wide and deep, you were wrong. In…

TERUAKI MASUMOTO is a 48-year-old tuna department manager at the Tohto Suisan Company in Tokyo, Japan. He's soft-spoken and was a bit weary-eyed from traveling when I met him in Washington last week. For more than 20 years, Masumoto has had to live without knowing what happened to his sister the…

THE HARVARD COLLEGE CLASS OF 1978 meets in Cambridge in three months to celebrate its 25th reunion. Among the events, lunches, panels, and dances, I hope time has been allocated to remember the most significant event of the 1978 ceremonies: a commencement address by Nobel Laureate Alexander I.…

LATE LAST YEAR, 16 U.S. congressmen voiced their approval for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Representatives Barney Frank, John Conyers, Chaka Fattah, Jan Schakowsky, Jose Serrano, and others complained in a letter to President Bush that the United States was not adequately protecting Chavez…

SUDDENLY America's consumers are running scared--scared of possible terror attacks, scared that their jobs might not be there when they turn up for work in the morning, scared that the pensions on which they were relying to convert their declining days into golden years will dry up. Most consumers…

NOT TOO LONG AGO I signed up for a correspondence course in fiction and poetry writing from the University of Texas, my alma mater. The idea is to get myself started on a new genre of writing. In the sixth grade, I won a creative writing contest with a story about a cockroach, and in high school, I…

PAT TOOMEY has faced some long odds in his career. A conservative Republican, the 41-year-old congressman has run three House campaigns in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a Democratic-leaning, big labor district, and won every time. Last fall, he even ran on Social Security reform--an issue that terrifies…

FIVE MONTHS AGO, on September 24, 2002, an FBI electronic surveillance team recorded a telephone conversation between two Tampa, Florida, residents: a woman named Fedaa Al-Najjar and her friend Hatim Naji Fariz, the manager of a local medical clinic. The subject was Al-Najjar's husband, Mazen, a…

Jerusalem

ASK ALMOST ANY Arab leader these days and you are sure to hear the same thing: Why don't the Americans just have Saddam Hussein killed, thus sparing everyone the dangers of another war? The answer may be because they cannot find him.

God at the Ritz Attraction to Infinity by Lorenzo Albacete Crossroad, 192 pp., $19.95 MAYBE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OF HIM, since he spends most of his considerable talent reaching out to liberals, but Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete is a unique figure in American Catholicism. A big, jowly smoker, a trained…

WEAR YOUR TRENCH COAT, your coolest shades, dab your gorgeous self with a scent that suggests of mystery and intrigue. You're going to a museum that's more fun than museums are supposed to be: Washington's new International Spy Museum.

Auntie Mame An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis Broadway, 320 pp., $12.95 The Joyous Season by Patrick Dennis Green Mansion, 256 pp., $18.95 Little Me The Intimate Memoirs of That Great Star of Stage, Screen, & Television Belle Poitrine As told to Patrick Dennis Broadway, 271 pp., $15.95…

Frosty the Phallus

WHAT DO CONSERVATIVES think today about History? As President Bush readies the nation for war, an abstract question like this one seems out of place. And yet, having raised this theme himself in recent speeches, President Bush has been faced both at home and abroad with widespread criticism for his…

"AL FRANKEN IS A VULGAR EGOMANIAC." That's the title of the book I'm going to have to write someday--if Al Franken becomes the new Rush Limbaugh. Chances are, he won't. Earlier this month, Sheldon and Anita Drobny, a wealthy Chicago investor couple, announced a $10 million project to fund a liberal…

Dearborn, Michigan

PEOPLE for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has finally and unequivocally come off the rails. Attempting to convince us to become vegetarians, the anti-human advocacy group has mounted a new public relations campaign asserting that the eating of meat is the equivalent of the torture and slaughter…

THE PROTESTS against an American-led war with Iraq seem frivolous, mindless, even stupid. Many of the protesters come off as know-nothings. The messages on their placards are often crude, uninformed, and selfish. The moral element is almost completely absent from their campaign against military…

Code Name Kindred Spirit Inside the Chinese Nuclear Espionage Scandal by Notra Trulock Encounter, 385 pp., $26.95 NOTRA TRULOCK'S BOOK "Code Name Kindred Spirit: Inside the Chinese Nuclear Espionage Scandal" is unique among histories of U.S. intelligence failures. It doesn't just describe what went…

Books in Brief

I BELIEVE MOST AMERICANS, irrespective of their personal views on the matter, expect that we will shortly be engaged in Iraq. In the held breath before this begins, I want to reflect on several minor aspects of major issues before we cross the Rubicon--or the Euphrates--and change our world forever.

THE AMERICAN COMMENTARIAT is gravely concerned. Over the past week, George W. Bush has shown a disturbing tendency not to waffle when it comes to Iraq. There has been an appalling clarity and coherence to his position. There has been a reckless tendency not to be murky, hesitant, or evasive.…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING President Bush said during his press conference--just about the only significant thing he said--is that regardless of the whip count, he will put a second resolution up for a vote in the U.N. Security Council.

ON THE FIRST semi-drivable day of the mid-February snowstorm here in Washington, I got a reminder of how membrane-thin can be the line that divides private property from public. My neighbor, Otto Snowden, called to complain that our babysitter was parked in his space. By "his space," Mr. Snowden…

THOSE OPPOSED to military action in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, destroy his weapons of mass destruction, and liberate the 24 million Iraqi citizens under his control cite at least 10 objections to going to war now. These objections range from the arguable to the totally absurd. Let's examine…

IN A TIME OF WAR AND TENSION, the reality show has become America's great escape--a vicarious adventure into others' quest for fame and fortune. Shows like "Joe Millionaire," "American Idol," "Married by America," and "The Bachelor" appeal to the most banal human desires by parading a tawdry crop…

REMOVING SADDAM HUSSEIN from power would eliminate the direct and growing threat he poses to the United States. That alone is justification for war against Iraq. Our security is at stake. Yet we wouldn't be the only ones to benefit from Saddam Hussein's demise. So would the Iraqi people.

WAR IS SUCH a foregone conclusion that the interesting debates now revolve around postwar Iraq. Time magazine's cover story this week reports that the Bush administration has decided on an immediate course of action for the days and weeks following Saddam's fall: A wave of humanitarian aid will be…

THE CAPTURE OF Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may bring a bit of cheer to anxious New Yorkers, and make nervous Wall Streeters take a rosier view of the prospects for the economy and their favorite shares. But I rather doubt that the relief will endure, especially when New Yorkers realize that bin Laden's…

UNDOUBTEDLY the Turkish parliament's rejection this weekend of basing U.S. troops on their soil was a blow to Washington's Iraq game plan. Contrary to pundit's predictions that Turkey would join the "coalition of the willing," the motion to allow a foreign presence fell short by three votes of an…

RONALD F. MAXWELL, the screenwriter and director behind the sprawling, $70 million Civil War epic "Gods and Generals," has devoted the last twenty-five years to dramatizing what Winston Churchill once described as the noblest and least avoidable of all the great conflicts. It has been ten years…

Woodstock, Virginia

Singapore

WE INTERRUPT the latest bout of hand-wringing over the fate of the Atlantic Alliance with an important news flash: The United States won a significant victory last week in its long-term quest to ensure that Europe remains a friend, not a competitor.

A FLYER innocuously entitled "Q & A on Islam and Arab Americans" was recently mass-mailed to a list including journalists in Washington. Conspicuous at the top of the first page, the USA Today logo readies the reader to ingest bite-sized morsels of information, simple but reliable--and only then…

An Improbable Life Memoirs by Robert Craft Vanderbilt University Press, 560 pp., $39.95 Memories and Commentaries by Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft Faber and Faber, 336 pp., $35 WHEN IGOR STRAVINSKY died on April 6, 1971, the composer George Perle remarked that "this is the first time in six…

The University of South Jihad

A FEW WEEKS BACK, a Washington-based "investigative research" outfit called the Center for Public Integrity announced that it had recently "obtained" a large and significant set of confidential legal papers from someone inside the Justice Department--a someone whose name the Center for Public…

DEMOCRATS--some, not all--are playing a cynical game on homeland security. At their instigation, Congress passed a $5 billion expenditure last August supposedly for homeland security. It came with a hitch: President Bush was required to spend all or none of the money, but only about half the funds…

THE MATISSE/PICASSO exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art reminds us that modern art is already more than one hundred years old. It began as an anti-establishment movement in France in the middle of the nineteenth century, with such post-impressionist painters as Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and…

YOU KNOW YOU'RE NOT A KID ANYMORE when you find yourself hoping it won't snow. The last time a major snowstorm hit Baltimore, where I live, back in 1996, I was only 15. The night before the storm arrived, I watched the late news with my younger brother and sister--and our parents, who grumbled as…

Books in Brief

"ONLY A DEMAGOGUE would say, 'Don't buy German' or 'Don't buy French,'" says Norbert Quinkert, chairman of Motorola Germany.

EVER SINCE President Bush announced his willingness to undertake "preemptive" or "preventive" wars, the chorus has grown of those who insist that war must invariably be the last resort. At the core of this argument is the conviction that war is terrible and, therefore, ethically unjustifiable…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

IT'S 10:32 ON SATURDAY MORNING. The temperature hovers around 35 degrees, and the wind fans a hard, beating rain across the snow-covered field where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. Donna Wilt has just put on her badge and pulled her information kit together when three carloads of visitors pull…