126 articles
"A year after the war began, Americans are questioning why the administration went to war in Iraq when Iraq was not an imminent threat, when it had no nuclear weapons, no persuasive links to al Qaeda, no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and no stockpiles of chemical or…
EVEN THOUGH ROUGH WINDS do shake the darling buds thereof, I think we can all agree that May is a fabulous month, flush and lusty as the poets say, a time to gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay. It is the month above all of Mother's Day, made doubly so by the decision of the United…
Taipei
LIKE MOST BOYS, I was a comics fan. Everyone has favorite superheroes, and mine were garden-variety: Batman, the Flash, Superman.
[img nocaption float="right" width="540" height="395" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]1136[/img] ONLY A FEW YEARS AGO, two prominent demographers hailed the Dutch family as a model for Europe. Somehow the Dutch had managed to combine liberal family law and a robust welfare state with a surprisingly…
AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE to the new National World War II Memorial in Washington, the visitor encounters this rather ponderous inscription on a formidable chunk of granite: "Here in the presence of Washington and Lincoln, one the eighteenth century father and the other the nineteenth century preserver…
BY AND LARGE, it was a disappointment. The long-awaited report of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, issued in April, mostly repeats familiar themes--the need for more research on the resources of the sea, more regulations to protect them, more bureaucracy to implement the regulations, and of…
A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, who's now promoting an anti-President Bush movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced he'd gotten the goods on me, indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to my…
Little Black Book of Stories
Khost, Afghanistan
Waterfront
Troop Dreams
VIRGINIA CONGRESSMAN Jim Moran looks the part. He's tall, stands up straight, and speaks confidently with a northeastern brogue. He's got the preppy-D.C. thing down. At a Democratic "meet and greet" in Arlington recently, Moran arrived wearing a blue buttoned-down shirt monogrammed at the cuff,…
Some of His Best Friends
AT LONG LAST, after a grueling primary season attacking president George W. Bush as pro-life and too bellicose, the Democrats have come up with their dream candidate. And wouldn't you know, he's a pro-life Republican who's keen on the war in Iraq. Just what they wanted, you might say sarcastically,…
THERE ARE MANY THINGS that can be said against Michael Moore. An odd combination of Howard Stern and Paul Krugman, Moore is the king of all left-wing media, from films to books, who specializes in trashing everything that conservative America holds dear. For Moore, businessmen are always trampling…
Books in Brief Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? edited by Benjamin M. Friedman (MIT, 369 pp., $40). Forty years ago, most experts on inequality believed poverty itself was the cause of poverty--the result of discrimination and lack of money. The solution was, therefore,…
THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press…
IT IS UNHEALTHY when a political movement becomes monomaniacally obsessed with an opponent. The monomania causes them to do strange, self-destructive things. For instance, the movement often rushes to embrace cranks. Guided by the rantings of these cranks, the movement then becomes so obsessed that…
BEGINNING THURSDAY NIGHT, May 27, and continuing through Sunday, Washington's Wardman Park Marriott Hotel will host one of the most remarkable events of recent months: the second annual convention of American Shia Muslims, organized by the Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA). The most…
Update: Among the winners at Tuesday night's Golden Trailer Awards was Return of the King (Best Drama), The Cooler (Best Romance), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (Best Action), A Miami Tail (Trashiest), and The Stepford Wives (Most Original). Northfork took home the Golden Fleece award, while The…
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.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, a little Hollywood glamour was bestowed upon Washington, when an Academy Award-winning actress spoke at the State Department. The drab Loy Henderson Auditorium suddenly became a whole lot prettier as the distinguished guest speaker walked into the room. She flashed her pouty…
MOST VOTERS don't care a fig about polls on the presidential race, and it is obvious why, since the only poll that really matters is the one taken on Election Day.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has lived hard, and it shows. Democrats demand the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and few Republicans in Congress rush to his defense. Pro-Rumsfeld noises come mostly from the White House. Without informing the White House, Attorney General John Ashcroft…
Berlin
Burning Down My Masters' House
SENATOR JOHN KERRY hasn't done much to distinguish himself on health care policy. A look at his voting record shows him to be hesitant on medical savings accounts, although not on tort lawyers' trashing HMOs, concerned about the long-term sustainability of Medicare, yet delighted to expand the…
AT THE VOICE OF AMERICA during the Cold War some of the most troublesome employees were those who broadcast daily to the Soviet Union and its satellite states, in Russian, Azeri, Georgian, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, and so on. These staffers were often émigrés--well-educated, sometimes…
THE SUN and I are in a Mexican standoff. In Cancun, appropriately enough. He glares down from his cloudless perch, unblinking. I am more furtive, peeking out from protective cover to squint up, determined not to let UV rays fry my tender flesh.
THESE ARE TIMES when President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld could probably use some encouragement. They should ponder a short note by Anthony Eden to Winston Churchill. It was May 1941 and World War II was going badly. Churchill was Britain's Bush and Rumsfeld, prime minister and minister of…
Self-Absorption for $100
SINCE KOSOVO IN 1999--through 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq--I've noticed, as the producer of a television program on international affairs, three common assumptions that cloud the minds of some otherwise good journalists and academics charged with reporting and explaining major events as they…
"ARE YOU A MAN or a mouse? Squeak up." Forty years ago, I thought this playground taunt witty. It isn't, really, but it seems apt right now. We're certainly hearing a lot of squeaking.
Europe a Creek
FOR GEORGE W. BUSH, it would be bizarre if the most loyal and gifted member of his cabinet were to be the instrument of his defeat in November 2004. Recent developments on the Iraq front of the war on terror make such thoughts about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld harder and harder to put aside.
Editor's note: In light of further reporting that the Pentagon has sent OPFOR to Iraq, we post Frederick W. Kagan's article of two weeks ago.
Sarge
Books in Brief From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations by Amitai Etzioni (Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pp., $29.95). At one point during the early 1990s, Amitai Etzioni seemed to be everywhere--in Clinton's White House, among centrists on Capitol Hill--promoting the…
AMONG THE COSTS of the Abu Ghraib scandal is the harm it does to America's standing as a champion of human rights--and the distraction it creates, in international circles, from the misdeeds of truly heinous regimes. "Whenever the United States raises a criticism of somebody else, this is…
THE UPCOMING COURT MARTIAL trials in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse cases may have consequences neither intended nor anticipated by the military and civilian authorities who are pushing for a quick and decisive resolution of the affair. These trials--the first is scheduled to begin May 19 in…
WHO KILLED NICHOLAS BERG? His grief-stricken family blames the U.S. government for the appalling videotaped beheading of their son in Iraq. A more fitting object of outrage is the executioner. For the terrorist who claims credit for the killing of the Jewish-American civilian is no walk-on, no…
ACCORDING TO Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, "the humiliating scenes of abused Iraqi prisoners" and the war in general "have turned that country [Iraq] into a model to be feared and avoided in the eyes of many in the Middle East,…
"THE UNITED STATES WILL LEAD, or the world will shift into neutral." Wise words from President Bush on May 20 to congressional Republicans. From the beginning, the president has made clear that we must lead and win the war on terror. To win the strategic war, we must of course win tactical battles.…
THERE IS NOTHING quite as effective as $40 oil to turn merely silly politicians into, er, dissemblers. This past weekend Europe's finance ministers and others, all of whom take a lot more out of their motorists' pockets in the form of gasoline taxes than the OPEC oil cartel can ever dream of doing,…
HERE'S A QUESTION: Do either Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry or his wife, Teresa Heinz, own any foreign property? Certainly the couple have plenty of American residences. There's the $10 million Beacon Hill townhouse in Boston, for example. And the vacation ski lodge in Ketchum, Idaho.…
A NUMBER OF DECISIONS by the Pentagon over the last 10 days leave the impression that it is scrambling to bolster the number of combat-ready, deployable forces in order to compensate for what has become an obvious shortage of manpower.
BUFFALO'S PALACE BURLESQUE THEATER entertained the men of that town for 60 years, and tempted the teenagers for just as long. A young Tim Russert and some of his pals from Canisius High School summoned the courage to try and bluff their way in one day in the mid-'60s, only to be asked their age and…
WHILE READING of the late television maverick Jack Paar in the January obituaries, I became curious about his work. Reputed to be smart and entertaining at the same time, he was also a bit of a puzzle: During the height of his fame--when he was on television, with two succeeding programs, from 1957…
IF YOU'RE THE SORT OF PERSON who reads stories by scrambling feature writers who spackle three anecdotal trends together in order to convince you, the gullible reader, that a movement is sweeping the land, then I probably don't have to tell you that four out of five culture critics agree: Jesus is…
IT'S BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK since the election for president of the Philippines was held and the results are nowhere near official. Not that anyone has demanded a recount (yet) or there's any dispute over chads. And it's not because the courts have intervened. In fact, this waiting game is perfectly…
IF YOU HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING the news about oil prices, you are probably totally confused or seriously misinformed. The situation is both much better and far worse than you have been led to believe.
ON PRESIDENT BUSH'S initial economic team, Larry Lindsey, the head of the White House's National Economic Council, famously didn't get along with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. They needed a referee on policy disputes--deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. The budget chief, Mitch…
THE MILITARY'S TOP OFFICERS and civilians are constrained by strictures against "unlawful command influence" from expressing their true feelings about the members of the 372nd Military Police Company who face charges of conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, indecent acts, and…
"WE WON," an Iraqi militiaman in Falluja crowed to reporters, "We didn't want the Americans to enter the city and we succeeded." The Iraqis there have created a no-go zone every bit as effective as the old no-fly zone imposed by America. Better still from the locals' point of view, a few hundred…
American Music Is
Hard America / Soft America
WHEN I FLEW into Kabul in early February for the second time in five months, my driver hustled me out of the airport. A car bomb had blown up just outside not long before and he was taking no chances. We left so quickly I scarcely had time to take in the terminal's 10-yard-high portrait of…
WE DO NOT KNOW how close the American effort in Iraq may be to irrecoverable failure. We are inclined to believe, however, that the current Washington wisdom--that the United States has already failed and there is nothing to do now but find a not-too-damaging way to extricate ourselves--is far too…
AS IF THE COALITION in Iraq didn't have enough problems, on May 3 most of the staff of al-Sabah (Morning), the daily newspaper published with support from the Coalition Provisional Authority, walked out. Ismael Zayer, the paper's editor in chief, announced that a new, independent daily would be…
LAST WEEK, at the cash register of a sporting-goods store, I saw what looked like a display of baseball cards. It annoys me that in corner stores, where baseball cards ought to be sold, they are less and less present. Why? Because children no longer get allowances to mete out, nickel by nickel, for…
The Road to McCarthy
Blessed Are Those Who Pander
Culture Shock
THE MOST OMINOUS MOMENT for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week came in an exchange with Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Near the end of Rumsfeld's appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Graham suggested that "the worst" of the prison abuse scandal "is…
IN THE CRUSH OF IRAQ EVENTS--abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, tough fighting in Falluja and Najaf, calls for Donald Rumsfeld's head on a pike--it's getting harder to see the forest for the trees.
American Judaism
JUST OVER a quarter of a century ago, the Bakke decision sparked an intellectual quest: How could proponents of affirmative action justify the use of racial preferences in college admissions on educational grounds? Last year, the culmination of that quest was enshrined, fittingly, in another…
A PAPER PRESENTED at last week's American Psychiatric Association meeting demonstrates once again that the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon was one of the great public policy con jobs of all time. Earnest euthanasia advocates--generally abetted by a compliant media--spun the…
New York
Books in Brief Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite by Tibor R. Machan (Rowman & Littlefield, 144 pp., $19.95). Tibor R. Machan doesn't like the animal-rights or radical environmental movements, and with good cause. Both exhibit antihuman attitudes, he writes, for each rejects "the…
THE NEWEST EXHIBIT at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is excellent, largely because of what isn't on display. Norman Rockwell's depictions of the Four Freedoms are presented in the context of the moment of their creation. Though the temptation to use the exhibit as an opportunity to compare Rockwell's…
LET'S STIPULATE that the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were as serious as the pictures suggest. But America now has images of a different kind to absorb.
WE'VE ALL HEARD those classic myths of the Iraq debate that just won't go away. First, President Bush is said to have called Iraq under Saddam Hussein an "imminent" threat and, second, the connection between Saddam and al Qaeda has never been substantiated. Both are laughably false. And now there…
IF YOU SPEND ENOUGH TIME watching Inside the Actor's Studio and listening to DVD commentary tracks, you learn that, since they have very little other work to do, actors are forever agonizing over "choices." Of course everyone involved in the production of cinema makes choices and these thousands of…
IN THE MARCH 2004 issue of Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf profiled three teenagers who spent the seven years between 1982 and 1989 making a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark--using a camcorder, homemade props, and a dog standing in for the Nazi-saluting monkey. (You can view a trailer for…
TWENTY YEARS AGO, Grandmaster Melle Mel commemorated Jesse Jackson's initial run for the White House with a song simply titled "Jesse." The single didn't do much better than Jackson's campaign, barely scraping the lower reaches of the R&B charts, but it nonetheless marked hip-hop's first…
ON MONDAY, Ted Kennedy took to the floor of the United States Senate and made this statement: "Shamefully we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management." Kennedy, of course, is the alter ego of John Kerry, and is his principal backer and original sherpa…
TODAY'S Financial Times carries a front-page story ("US Approaches Insurgents to Help Control Najaf") in which Major General Martin Dempsey, commanding officer of the 1st Armored Division, indicates that he has begun talks with various militia groups, including components of Moqtada al-Sadr's…
OUR DAUGHTER is to be graduated from high school this spring and will go to college this fall. That means, of course, that she applied and was accepted somewhere--actually, a number of places.
PRESIDENT BUSH is fond of implying that anyone who questions whether or not liberal democracy is compatible with the radical Islam prevalent in much of the Middle East is a racist.
"THE ECONOMY IS ON STEROIDS," an administration official told me last week, before the latest jobs report was released. The April jobs report, released late last week, certainly supported that view, at least as to the growth rate. The economy added 288,000 jobs last month, well above the 150,000…
N.GREGORY MANKIW, the delightfully nerdy chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, has experienced a noteworthy public lashing in recent weeks. First he was caught up in the outsourcing spectacle, then a furor ignited when Paul Krugman of the New York Times began a crusade against…
Never Again?
THE BUSH CAMPAIGN has performed well since John Kerry wrapped up the Democratic presidential nomination on March 2. But not nearly well enough. The Bush TV ads have been crisp and clever and have put Kerry on the defensive. Speeches by the president and the vice president and a host of Republican…
Fulton, Missouri
Profiles in Sycophancy
IN THE WAKE of the March 11 Madrid train bombing, Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said, "It is clear that force alone cannot win the fight against terrorism." Prodi was hardly the first continental leader to implicitly criticize U.S. policy as short-sighted and to suggest that…
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN The Alamo, I recommend it. I know the movie is vulnerable to criticism on historical grounds, but that doesn't bother me much. Being a native Texan, I like just about anything that stimulates thinking about Texas history, and The Alamo, directed by John Lee Hancock, did that for…
Halfbreed
A FEW YEARS AGO I went to interview Joseph Estrada in one of his lush Manila mansions. A roly-poly former action movie star gone to seed--with his Errol Flynn moustache and his Elvis bouffant hair--he was, amazingly enough, at that time, vice president of the Philippines.
WE FEW, WE HAPPY FEW
Don Quixote
"NOTHING ILLUSTRATES this administration's anti-science attitude better than George Bush's cynical decision to limit research on embryonic stem cells," declared John Kerry in a December 2003 campaign speech. He was referring to the president's August 9, 2001, decision to permit federal funding for…
Books in Brief
THIS SPRING will see a milestone in American public education: The nation's first federally supported voucher program will be launched in Washington, D.C. The program will offer school vouchers worth up to $7,500 to about 2,000 students in the District of Columbia schools. Thrilled at this…
Madrid
ON AUGUST 29, tens of thousands of delegates, politicians, journalists, and protestors will descend on New York City for this year's Republican National Convention. The convention will begin formally the next day. The event will conclude three days later, on September 2, when George W. Bush…
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.
THERE'S NO QUESTION that America is getting fatter by the day. According to the Centers for Disease Control, next to smoking, poor diet and physical inactivity are the leading causes of preventable death in this country. Two out of three adults and 37 percent of children are considered to be…
THIS WEEK the Council on American-Islamic Relations released its annual report "The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2004." Newspapers (the Washington Post in particular) dutifully gave prominent play to CAIR's claim that hate crimes against Muslims increased 70 percent in 2003.…
WHEN JOHN KERRY took a spill from his bike this past weekend, it triggered thoughts of Jimmy Carter's collapse in a road race, Gerald Ford's much-mocked stumbles, and of Kerry's own misadventures on the ski slopes earlier this year. But it wasn't until the pictures of Kerry on his bike appeared…
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH may be putting the heat on John Kerry, but media coverage of President Bush's religious beliefs has also intensified in the last week. Last Thursday, PBS aired its Frontline documentary "The Jesus Factor," a revealing examination of the roots of George W. Bush's religious…
THE ODDS are still against it, but Democrats now have a legitimate shot at winning back the Senate in this November's election. They've already done two things well: recruit good candidates, especially in Republican-leaning states, and avert costly primary fights. Democrats need to net two seats if…
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.
ALTHOUGH JUST AS MEAN-SPIRITED as the recent spate of Bush-bashing books, Paul Slansky's George W. Bush Quiz Book redeems itself from its author's intentions by being, well, oddly amusing.
"THANK GOODNESS they've left town, whoever they were," sighed Washingtonians after days of traffic mayhem. Not satisfied with the security assured by their anonymity, the G-7 finance ministers roared around Washington in their black SUVs, led by police with sirens wailing, and accompanied by armed…
EVERYTHING WE KNOW about fighting an insurgency like the one in Iraq suggests that a large part of the answer is to crush the insurgents as thoroughly and rapidly as possible. And when it comes to counterinsurgency, there is no substitute for U.S. troops--and lots of them. Why, then, does there…
TWICE IN RECENT DAYS, President Bush has described America as "a hard country to defend." In part, he is prudently lowering expectations that our success in stopping all attacks on American soil after 9/11 will continue indefinitely. At a gathering of newspaper editors on April 21, the president…
"SHOULD THE ARABS abandon their dream of unity and join NATO?" That improbable question came, in a burst of anger over the cancellation of the Arab League summit last month, from Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the league, after Tunisia called off the meeting it was to have hosted.
Jerusalem
WASHINGTON WENT THROUGH one of its Woodward spasms last week. It unwound in the usual manner. First came the faint, premonitory rumors, gaining force as the publishing date approached, about what might be in Bob Woodward's latest book; then the suggestive news reports dribbled out over the premiere…
"I DIDN'T GO to the U.N. to get into a fist fight," said Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba--or, as he is known in Havana, "lackey to the United States, traitor to the motherland, capitalist pig, terrorist, and CIA agent." Calzon went to Geneva to deliver two…
The Verb 'To Bird'
Eternal Verities
Who Are We?
THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE'S spouse refuses to disclose tax returns. Republicans seize the issue, asking what the spouse is hiding. The New York Times calls for full disclosure. Distracted by the controversy, the candidate is on the defensive. The spouse eventually relents and agrees to release five…
MY CUBS TICKETS HAVE ARRIVED. Seven sets of two tickets each. And what seats: eight rows off the field, on the first-base side, right at the visiting team's on-deck circle. I buy them from a friend who has held Cubs season tickets through three marriages. He could get more for my seats by selling…
MOST OF THE Monday-morning quarterbacking done in the wake of the 9/11 Commission has been unfair. One federal agency, however, really could have taken steps to stymie the attacks--the FAA. By simply changing its guidelines on how to handle hijackings, the Federal Aviation Administration could…
Books in Brief The Fall of the Berlin Wall by William F. Buckley Jr. (Wiley, 212 pp., $19.95). This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And not to be missed amid the commemorations and celebrations is the new book in which William F. Buckley admits that though he…
ON APRIL 17, two American women were killed by a Jordanian in Kosovo. With all media eyes focused on Iraq, little notice has been taken of their sacrifice, yet Kim Bigley, 47, of Paducah, Ky., and Lynn Williams, 48, of Elmont, N.Y., apparently fell as casualties in the war on terrorism.
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS have windows. These are periods of a few days, sometimes several weeks, in which the interest of voters is piqued and they take a serious look at the candidates. The first window of the Bush-Kerry race came after John Kerry locked up the Democratic nomination on Super…
SO, what do we do in Iraq? It is obvious that the Bush administration and its distant and sometimes independent offshoot, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, have been knocked off balance by events. It's not the first time, of course. The Baghdad and Najaf bombings of August 2003…
A STAPLE OF DEMOCRATIC RHETORIC these days is the charge that a "Republican attack machine" is smearing John Kerry. Is it really true that Republicans are impugning Kerry's military service in Vietnam and questioning his patriotism? Seeking an answer, my colleague at Fox News, Morton Kondracke,…
APRIL 24 WAS WITHOUT DOUBT the closest the island of Cyprus has come to being one nation in the last thirty years. Turkish and Greek Cypriots voted on a proposal by U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan designed to reunify the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (recognized only by Turkey) with the rest…
"Violent military action by an occupying power against inhabitants of an occupied country will only make matters worse." --Kofi Annan, April 28, 2004 NOW THAT MAY NOT BE the undisputed, going-away, hands-down, dumbest thing ever said, but you have to admit it's close.