194 articles
(The Euston group formally launched on May 26 in London. Several members have also written op-eds -- see here -- as part of the roll out. Norman Geras, a government professor at the University of Manchester, has been particularly insightful, including this piece in the Guardian: Within the large…
A staunch U.S. ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe cruised to re-election winning by an astounding 40-point margin. A recent cover piece in The Economist reported on "The Battle for Latin America's Soul." Will the region go the way of Venezuela's Chavez and Bolivia's Morales or choose the path…
I doubt it's a coincidence that on the day before the UN Security Council meets to discuss Iran's nuclear enrichment activities Tehran announces plans to build two more nuclear reactors -- and that the Russians will likely be the lead contractor. And at least one powerful Republican, Senate Armed…
THE BURMESE JUNTA has repeatedly exposed the weakness of the international community. One organization in particular, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has had its reputation besmirched by its inability to bring pressure on a regime which has a record of brutal repression and…
SO GOES AN OLD KURDISH ADAGE. On a recent visit to Turkey's southeastern city of Van, a Kurdish businessman told me that, "America has just one friend in the Middle East and that is the Kurds. Kurdish people like America because of protecting Kurds in north Iraq. But if America fights Kurds, it…
Jay Lefkowitz, Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, argues in a speech to the Asia Society that promoting human rights is very much in the American national security interest. Government conduct at home naturally influences conduct toward other nations. The 20th century shows us numerous…
Let's hope they become good world citizens.
Splitting the Sunnis from Zarqawi has been a high priority for the U.S. in Iraq. But as in Tal Afar and other towns, it's difficult to have enduring success if Sunnis watch those who help us get assassinated and believe that Zarqawi's henchmen control the ground. Today's Washington Post story on…
ALAN GREENSPAN'S REPUTATION for perspicacity mounts by the day. The former Federal Reserve Board chairman could easily have persuaded the president to extend his term by a few months so that he could break Truman-appointee William McChesney Martin's record as longest serving chairman. He didn't.…
Iraq veteran Owen West has an excellent piece in today's New York Times. West is vice chairman of Vets for Freedom, "a group of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans who believe in the mission of freedom in the Global War on Terror, but who have become frustrated with the way the operation has been…
In eastern Ramadi, U.S. Army Capt. Joe Claburn visited a house beside an alley from where four guerrillas . . . had attacked a guard tower on a U.S. base. . . . Claburn asked the man if he was willing to signal U.S. troops when insurgents turned up. "I'm telling you sincerely, I cannot cooperate…
Boston Comments
China's Trapped Transition
ON JULY 7, 2005, in London, shortly before 9 a.m., three suicide bombers blew themselves up and destroyed the subway cars they were riding in, killing 39 and injuring nearly 700 commuters. About an hour later, another suicide bomber got on a double-decker bus--crowded with men, women, and children…
In Our Hands
PRESIDENT BUSH AND REPUBLICANS are staring political disaster in the face on immigration. The problem isn't that they might enact a bill allowing illegal immigrants living in America to earn their way to citizenship, inviting foreign workers to come here, and beefing up security on the 2,000-mile…
Defining the World
AS A RECENT COLLEGE GRADUATE, I had the typical young-male fantasy of what my first adult residence should be like. But even I knew that living upstairs from a bar could have lethal consequences. So I decided my first apartment should merely be located near a good bar, within walking (or crawling)…
HARRIED DESIGNERS, and the number crunchers breathing down their necks, are hacking away at plans for the World Trade Center Memorial, struggling to fit this bloated, billion-dollar, largely subterranean leviathan into the $500 million budgetary straitjacket prescribed by Governor George Pataki and…
London
WILL THE UNITED STATES declare war on the Islamic Republic of Iran? For months, this question has been the theme of diplomatic and public discourse--with horror usually expressed at the idea. But it now seems that we have this backwards. For the import of the letter that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,…
"HAVE YOU SEEN Keeping Up With the Steins?" asked my friend, a sophisticated and well-to-do New Yorker with high-toned literary tastes, of a new movie about a 13-year-old boy and his family preparing for his bar mitzvah in Los Angeles. "I loved it. I just loved it."
IMAGINE YOU ARE HOOKED UP to a machine three times a week for hours at a time. The machine extracts deadly bodily toxins from your blood that your kidneys can no longer clear themselves. You come back from these dialysis sessions exhausted and depressed; meanwhile, dialysis itself takes a toll on…
I JUST GOT BACK from three weeks in China. So I'm a China expert--by Bush administration standards. Of course, by Bush administration standards, I'm an expert on Iraq strategy, Social Security privatization, and hurricane relief. But even a fellow with a Bush administration level of expertise can…
Ward Churchill's Comeuppance
U.S. MIDDLE EAST policy is undergoing an identity crisis. The giddy days of roll-back seem like a distant memory now, as a president who staked his historical legacy on Arab democracy grants Gamal Mubarak an audience at the White House while his father's government is beating and arresting…
On June 6, 1984, President Reagan delivered a remarkable speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings. This Memorial Day we remember "the boys of Pointe du Hoc" and all the other American heroes who gave their lives for our freedom. Remarks at the U.S. Ranger Monument Pointe du…
Today's Hotline reports on an internal RNC poll showing strong support for comprehensive immigration reform: RNC senior adviser...Matthew Dowd urges Republican Nat'l Committee members to favor a "comprehensive" solution to immigration, which the public believes is "unifying -- not polarizing."…
John Kerry's running mate has never stopped running for president. He tried to get Kerry to fight on in Ohio even after it was clear there weren't enough uncounted ballots to put Kerry over the top. Kerry was smart enough to realize that delaying the inevitable may have excited the party's base but…
Last time I checked Sens. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) aren't moderate squishes. Craig: Is this bill perfect? No. But it realistically addresses the immigration challenges facing America today by delivering in each of the three critical areas of reform: better border security,…
TERRORISM TAKES MANY FORMS. Recently, animal-rights terrorists have unleashed an organized campaign of violence and intimidation against animal industries and their service companies--such as banks, auditing companies, and insurance brokers.
THOSE OF US SADDENED by the declining fortunes of the newspaper industry had hoped that shrinking newspaper staffs would have at least one salutary effect: fewer journalism-school graduates. This has not proved to be the case. In 2005, newspapers cut 2,000 jobs; this spring more people graduated…
With an eye toward North Korea, the US Navy has accelerated its missile defense capability in the Pacific region. From the Associated Press: For the first time, a Navy ship at sea successfully shot down a long-range missile in its final seconds of flight, the military said Wednesday. The test was…
Here's an interesting nugget from the latest Economist: For many, perhaps most Americans, the question is not "Should we welcome immigrants?" but "How many?" A moderate influx may be economically helpful and culturally invigorating; a huge one would be disruptive. It is not easy, however, to look…
Wired News has the story of a 25-year-old's contribution to world civilization.
Today's Wall Street Journal editorial weighs in: The most urgent need is for leaders in both Iraq and Washington to do more to improve security in Baghdad. The White House has been right to point out that the media have missed many good news stories in Iraq, but current coverage probably…
The Imperial Japanese Navy tried to burn down Oregon. It failed. Sixty years later, radical environmentalists almost succeeded.
THE INAUGURATION of a coalition government suggests that the situation in Iraq is not as gloomy as some opponents of the war claim. But the aftermath also shows that the situation is not as sunny as some supporters of the war believe.
Yesterday, during his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, the president gave an interesting answer to this question: Q The U.S. has the most powerful military in the world, and they have been unable to bring down the violence in any substantial way in several of the provinces. So…
Signs of life are stirring in the White House. Here's what the vice president had to say in a speech yesterday at a Bilbray for Congress event in San Diego: Issues of national security will clearly be at the top of the agenda in this election year. The President and I welcome the discussion,…
(Just a thought but Republicans may want to remind voters of British intelligence failures leading up to the July 7 bombings and note the return in force of the ACLU Democrats -- see here and here.) Posted on May 22, 2006: The British government has released two reports -- here and here -- on the…
The Pentagon has released its latest report on the status of the Chinese military, the Washington Post reports today. Its findings: China's military buildup is increasingly aimed at projecting power far beyond its shores into the western Pacific to be able to interdict U.S. aircraft carriers and…
AMERICA'S IMMIGRATION DEBATE is fraught with demagoguery and suspect analogies. Witness Rep. James Sensenbrenner's recent description of employers who exploit illegal immigrant labor as "21st-century slave masters."
Sen. Harry Reid and Company have sent a letter to the president asking for a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. "In order to avoid repeating mistakes made in the run-up to the conflict in Iraq," they write, "we must have objective intelligence untainted by political considerations and…
I don't agree with everything in this piece but Richard Cohen is right about a few things: A trial that was supposed to "highlight the many crimes of Saddam Hussein" has instead obscured them and those anti-Iraq War folks calling for action in Darfur face a moral contradiction of their own. On most…
YOU ASKED FOR IT. You've got it. We are at the beginning of the adjustment of the worldwide "imbalances" that have so troubled policymakers. The U.S. budget deficit, complained the seers, is a testimonial to the profligate ways of Congress and the president and must be eliminated now that America…
AS THE IRAN DEBATE has progressed, a somewhat disturbing trend has emerged in which those who have previously warned of the dangers posed by Tehran have now sought to ignore or downplay these earlier statements. Perhaps this is because they are fearful of the prospect of a military confrontation…
Montenegrins have voted for full independence from Serbia. The last time an independent Montenegro existed delegates were gearing up for Versailles following The Great War. Serbia, which annexed Montenegro in 1919, will also likely watch Kosovo become an independent state in the not-to-distant…
Given the UN Security Council's dithering ways, it's good to see the Bush administration steadily building a parallel structure to deal with threats that doesn't go through the slog of Turtle Bay. Next week, the US will conduct military exercises with Turkey as part of the Proliferation Security…
The British government has released two reports on the July 7, 2005 terrorist bombings in London, which killed 52 and injured over 800. In the current Weekly Standard, Gary Schmitt reviews what the British learned and notes the following: If there is any smoking gun when it comes to the failure of…
Ahmadinejad "Is Making Sense"?
LAST DECEMBER, I DEDICATED the Agency for International Development's new building in the Green Zone in Baghdad. The facility houses a staff of 150, who run AID's $5.2 billion program of aid to Iraq. The building has no windows, the outside doors are as thick as the doors of a bank vault, and the…
Le Livre noir de Saddam Hussein
Annapolis, Maryland
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN AMERICA, I am the biological product of a variety of waves of immigration to this continent, including some pretty early ones. Some of my ancestors were the first Europeans to cross the Hudson River from New Amsterdam and settle in the wilds of what is now New Jersey. But more…
THERE'S A MOMENT LATE IN Mission: Impossible III in which Tom Cruise runs like hell down a crowded riverside street in Shanghai. Ethan Hunt, the secret agent played by Cruise, has located his missing wife and is trying to get to her before the villains decide to take her life. And Cruise isn't just…
F.R. Leavis
Wang Sounds the Gong
[img nocaption float="right" width="318" height="330" render="<%photoRenderType%>"]1247[/img] Oh, sorry, it's not 1942. It's 2006, and these three phone giants are about to be excoriated for cooperating with the war on terror. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter has demanded that ATT,…
The Hudson
AT LUNCH THE OTHER DAY, someone asked me what I thought about The Charlie Rose Show. I answered that I didn't think anything about it, because by the time it comes on in Chicago I'm usually waking up for the first time. I appear to be entering the stage in life where sleep is topic number one for…
Jefferson City, Missouri
PORTER GOSS'S TENURE as director of central intelligence began with a public spat between the new reform-minded CIA leadership and an intransigent bureaucracy. Now, 18 months later, it is ending in a cloud of confusion. Goss is gone and so are his agents of change. Two of the CIA officials at the…
IT'S TOUGH TO BE a moderate Democrat. Hatred of George Bush has changed the loyal opposition into the bitter opposition, less interested in policy than in punishing their bête noire. It's particularly tough for Democrats who supported the invasion of Iraq, the defining George Bush moment, and who…
WHEN A BELEAGUERED BRITISH PRIME MINISTER fired a bunch of his closest cabinet colleagues in the 1960s, the grubby desperation of the move was well captured by an opponent's quip: "Greater love hath no man than this," he said--"than to lay down his friends for his life."
J.M.W. Turner
ON TUESDAY MAY 9, the United Nations elected members to the new Human Rights Council, among them China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. Of the Council's forty-seven members, Freedom House considers almost one out of five to be "unfree." These member countries are: Algeria, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, China,…
From 2003 on, there were many officials pushing for a heavier "footprint" in Iraq. Powell, for example, pressed early on for more combat troops and advisors to, as he put it, crush the insurgency before it could get off the ground. And according to this New York Times piece, Powell and others also…
"WHO ISN'T A 'VALUES VOTER'"? asks George Will in his most recent Washington Post column. Will's debating point is a familiar one: all voters in some sense are "values voters." A similar argument could be deployed against the terms "liberal" and "conservative," which Will uses throughout his piece.
(And these are the clowns the Democratic Party is taking its marching order from.) I know it will come as a shock that a number of "open-minded progressives" at The New School acted like fools today during Sen. McCain's commencement address. They don't like his views on just about everything --…
(As I mentioned last month, the Iranian economy is highly vulnerable to international sanctions -- particularly those that would hinder its crude production and ability to sell oil on the world market. Today's Washington Post notes: "Experts on Iran point to a number of reasons it might be…
Charles Krauthammer, who can't be accused of being an "amnesty" squish, writes in today's Washington Post that a final bill that includes rigorous border enforcement and a path to citizenship for those already here "would make sense." I am not against legalization. Admittedly, legalization is…
In his speech a few days ago, the president said that no matter what your position is on immigration we should strive to conduct the debate in a "reason and respective tone." Yesterday, the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid (NV), did his best to keep the dialogue civil. During debate on an…
WHEN WATCHING Baghdad ER, it is important to remind yourself that it's been worse. For every soldier instantly killed in combat during the Civil War, two died in the hospital from battlefield injuries. It is also important to put into perspective the number of fatalities suffered by the United…
THE MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT in the immigration reform debate occurred not in the Senate's debate on immigration, but rather in the Senate's debate on prescription drugs.
Ned Lamont is running against Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary. He's got a new ad out featuring the creator of the lefty blog Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. According to the National Journal, [The] second ad begins like an ordinary campaign commercial -- with the…
Here's what Roll Call's Morton Kondracke had to say about Qwest's trumpeting that it refused to cooperate with the National Security Agency: In the beginning, Qwest, this other company, to its discredit, said it was not cooperating with the NSA and specifically decided not to cooperate. Now if we…
Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large for the liberal American Prospect, has some nasty things to say about the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. He writes: A MODEST PROPOSAL. The new issue of Blueprint, the bimonthly journal of the Democratic Leadership Council, which went up online today,…
WHEN VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CH VEZ met with the Pope earlier this week, he assured Benedict XVI that he is a Christian. And he told the press that has a special friend who is one too. Sort of.
Euripolix.com reports, European officials are stepping up counter terrorism measures following threats against Denmark, Norway and France. EU member states have strengthened security following the reputed risk of jihadists arriving through Turkey. Le Monde reports that radical Islamists are…
Amr Hamzawy, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote an interesting piece recently in Beirut's Daily Star on the "ideological crisis" facing al Qaeda. He notes that in the Arab world there seems to be an "emerging public consensus that democracy is the only…
Too many conservatives have short memories. When the Clinton White House and the media falsely portrayed GOP efforts to slow the growth of Medicare spending as "cuts," conservatives complained bitterly. House Republicans even put out a 39-page press kit to rebut the "the lies the Democrats and…
LAST WEEKEND MARKED the first anniversary of the horrific events at Andijan in Uzbekistan, a market town in the Ferghana Valley near the border with Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia. There, a year ago, a protest by local folk against the antidemocratic policies of Uzbek ruler Islam Karimov--a classic…
It's disappointing (and in some cases very surprising) to see some on the right turn their backs on the vision of Ronald Reagan on immigration, as today's Wall Street Journal editorial argues, and seek to purge the GOP of dissenters. "The GOP is losing this one for the Gipper," the editors note, as…
THOUSANDS OF MOROCCANS were expected to join demonstrations today marking the third anniversary of the May 16 terrorist bombings in Casablanca. The explosions, linked to al Qaeda, killed 41 people, injured 100, and sent shock waves through the small North African nation. Americans ought to pause…
Today, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen lectures ("Straight Talk Unexpressed") Sen. McCain on Iraq. He writes: "I supported the decision to go to war in Iraq," McCain said at Liberty University. "I stand that ground because I believed, rightly or wrongly, that my country's interests and…
THE ECONOMY avoided two looming problems last week. First, the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy committee decided not to bow to pressure from the housing industry and some investors. Ben Bernanke and colleagues refused to announce a halt in its series of interest rate increases. Instead,…
The president struck the right tone tonight but has a lot work ahead of him to get to a signing ceremony. His call for a "reason and respective tone" obviously didn't make it to the ears of Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) who said after the speech (via Hotline blog) that "a guest worker program is…
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF BOSTON made the announcement on March 10: It was getting out of the adoption business. "We have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve. . . . The issue is adoption to same-sex couples."
White Flight
Auden and Christianity
JEAN-FRAN OIS REVEL, who died at 82 on April 30, was a rarity in the landscape of leftist intellectuals turned conservative. Revel became the first French neoconservative not over policy matters, but as a defender of intellectual nonconformity and of a radical vision of personal freedom.
Paris
THE MASS MARCHES, stay-away-from-work, boycotts, and other demonstrations by Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, have been extraordinarily effective. They have persuaded me to reexamine my steadfast support for immigration. Me, a guy whose father came over from Poland at the age of nine, with a…
Andrew Jackson
Cartoon Goes South?
SWITZERLAND'S NOMINATION OF ITS NATIONAL, Jean Ziegler, to membership on the U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights illustrates in a nutshell (and a nut) why there is so little hope for meaningful reform of the world body.
Writings on Art
Rumsfeld's "Heckler"
LATE FRIDAY MORNING, MAY 5, the White House called the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees with urgent news: CIA director Porter Goss would announce his resignation at the White House in a few hours. The news came as a surprise. Although insiders knew that Goss was increasingly…
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Vancouver
OF THE THOUSANDS OF FILMS I've seen in my life, the one that had the greatest impact was, of all things, The Poseidon Adventure. I was 11 years old when I first saw it during its initial release in 1972, and it haunted me for years.
Minneapolis
PRESIDENT BUSH IS A CONSERVATIVE politician, not a conservative ideologue. This explains why Bush sometimes does things that aren't conservative. He does so to survive and, if all goes well, to prosper politically. Or he does so because he actually favors some nonconservative policy or position.…
Agence France Press notes that in a tight oil market a successful attack on a major oil installation would have major repercussions. Consider this: On February 24, Saudi security forces foiled an attack on oil installations in Abqaiq, which account for 70 percent of the country's output, and 10…
Opponents of President Evo Morales say his energy nationalization plan and cozying up to Hugo Chavez could greatly constrict foreign investment in Bolivia and push current investors to flee. The AP reports, Bolivian opposition leaders warned Evo Morales' tough stance on foreign energy companies…
Is the Washington Times using the same journalistic standards of the liberal media? How many times have conservatives pointed to misleading headlines in the New York Times or taken apart the numerous anti-Bush Associated Press pieces that read more like editorials than hard news pieces? I know I…
IN SEPTEMBER of 1984, an ABC/Washington Post poll asked registered voters whether they preferred a Democrat or a Republican to represent their congressional districts. By a 15-point margin, respondents favored Democrats. On Election Day 1984, Democrats lost 14 seats in the House. In 1996, a similar…
D. QUINN MILLS is worried. The respected Albert J. Weatherhead, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School fears that America may be headed toward calamity.
Commissioned in 1950, the aircraft on the carrier Oriskany launched attacks on North Korean forces and supply lines, conducted thousands of combat missions against North Vietnamese targets and even played a major in the film "The Bridges of Toko Ri," starring Grace Kelly and William Holden. Now,…
From the Washington Times (via The Frontrunner): "Europe faces a growing threat of ballistic missile attack from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea and needs missile defenses to counter the threats, a NATO report says." The 10,000-page report, commissioned four years ago, sees a "growing"…
General Wesley Clark's presidential aspirations peaked the day he announced his candidacy for the 2004 Democratic nomination. Smart and articulate and armed with the perfect resume for the Commander-in-Chief's job post-9/11, Clark has managed to transform himself from soldier-statesman to just…
DURING HIS FIRST four years in office, President Bush made impressive strides toward achieving the improbable goal laid out in his second inaugural address--"ending tyranny in our world." American troops liberated 50 million people and midwived representative governments in Afghanistan and Iraq.…
The Iraqi News Agency reports: High-Ranking Al Qaeda Leader Detained in Iraq Karbala. High-ranking leader of terrorist organization Al Qaeda was detained today in Iraqi province of Karbala during military operation, Iraqi news agency INA reports. Abdel Fatih Isa, a.k.a. Abu Aisha, was arrested in a…
I have to make a correction related to one of the many postings I have done on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. A while back I wrote, As to foreign policy, though, Warner has been virtually content free. For example, on Iraq he won't say how he would have voted on the war…
The editors of the Wall Street Journal and Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council are of one mind on what to make of Ahmadinejad's missive to President Bush. The Journal observes, The letter also contains repeated references to what Mr. Ahmadinejad imagines, with some justification,…
Stars and Stripes reports on the operations of the 1st Battalion, 68th Regiment in Iraq: BAQOUBA, Iraq - Troops with the 1st Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment have their own saying for laying the smack down on the enemy: "bringing the Scunion on them," said Staff Sgt. Art Hoffman, 30. The phrase comes…
AMIDST ALL THE WRANGLING over our troubles in Iraq, on one point there is surprising consensus: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pro-democracy Shiite leader, has been an indispensable anchor for Iraq's fissiparous political system. In March of 2005, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went…
AFTER THE FINANCIAL CRASH of 1998 and the political disintegration of president Boris Yeltsin, the question in foreign policy circles was, "Who lost Russia?"
From Agence France-Presse: The top Iranian nuclear negotiator praised Russia and China on Tuesday as taking a "realistic" approach after talks among major powers failed to resolve differences over the Tehran nuclear program. "We feel that certain countries have been acting in a more realistic…
From Agence France-Presse: The top Iranian nuclear negotiator praised Russia and China on Tuesday as taking a "realistic" approach after talks among major powers failed to resolve differences over the Tehran nuclear program. "We feel that certain countries have been acting in a more realistic…
Castro has given the green light to China and other nations to drill for oil in the Florida Straits. According to the New York Times, In 1977, the United States and Cuba signed a treaty that evenly divided the Florida Straits to preserve each country's economic rights. They included access to vast…
From the Associated Press: GW skipper extends hand to Venezuela ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON - The captain of a U.S. aircraft carrier leading a two-month deployment to the Caribbean said Venezuela, whose leader said the naval exercises were intended as a threat, was welcome to participate in an…
We haven't heard Porter Goss's side of the story but I'm sure we will. I doubt he and his staff are going to let all the stuff being dumped on them -- from Dana Priest in the Washington Post, an anonymous administration source, and the Democrats -- go unanswered. Of course, as this Washington Times…
SENATOR PAUL SARBANES and Rep. Mike Oxley are both retiring from Congress at the end of this year. The business community will be delighted to see them gone--and to get on with the task of pushing through changes to the law that bears their names, and is better known as SOX. That legislation was…
(Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos, is an example of why Senator Clinton may not have an easy run to the nomination. His piece in yesterday's Washington Post is also a reason Democrats would have been better off nominating Howard Dean in 2004. The ensuing electoral blowout…
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright distances herself from the foreign policy "realists" in today's Washington Post. She rightly argues, "if all America stands for is stability, no one will follow us for the simple reason that we aren't going anywhere." Her Clinton-era colleague, former UN…
Today's New York Sun reports on a growing protest at the New School, located in New York City, against Sen. McCain's pending commencement address. They don't like his views on just about everything -- Iraq, Iran, the War on Terror, abortion, gay marriage, blah, blah, blah -- and they're angry that…
ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2001, ABC News president David Westin decided that his network would no longer air footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center only a week before. The constant repetition of the images of the planes crashing into the buildings had become "gratuitous," a spokesman said.
Edvard Munch
Al Anbar Province, Iraq
Every Book Its Reader
THE USUAL WAY OF ANALYZING the collapse in polls of public approval of the Bush administration is to make a list of all the things the analyst believes are going wrong and attribute the decline to those things. The polls provide plausibility for this method, because the president's performance…
EVER SINCE THE SOCIALISTS came back to power, the Spanish government has been monkeying around with some venerable traditions--not only the institution of marriage but also the definition of "person." Last month, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's Socialist Workers' party introduced a…
Mulling over Mullahs
"We are committed to a diplomatic course [to stop Iran's nuclear program] that should, with enough unity and with enough strength and with enough common purpose, make it possible to convince the Iranian government [to change its course]. . . . "Let me go right to the crux of the question. The…
With the Beatles
TIMES OF GREAT NATIONAL STRESS can create tensions between the senior civilian leaders of the nation and the general officers who serve them. This tension sometimes leads to open conflict, as between Lincoln and McClellan; Truman and MacArthur; and the "revolt of the admirals" in 1949. When…
Charlottesville
Darwinian Conservatism
Newsweek Copies Slate
NOT LONG AGO RICHARD COHEN of the Washington Post wrote a column about Iraq headlined "As in Vietnam, dereliction of duty all over again." The Vietnam analogy has been part of the Iraq war story since the fighting started (in fact, since before it started). The Bush administration often deals with…
THOUSANDS OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS) patients got an all-too-familiar message recently: Their lives are ruled by experts. The issue was their access to Tysabri, a breakthrough biotech drug with a unique ability to slow down the debilitating progression so feared by MS patients. The manufacturers…
Baton Rouge
Europe Central
REAGANAUTS FOUND THEMSELVES IN MOURNING again last week as another of the Gipper's loyal servants unexpectedly passed away. Hard on the heels of the deaths of Caspar Weinberger and Lyn Nofziger came the sad news that Robert B. Carleson, architect of Reagan's welfare reform, had succumbed to…
ON APRIL 19, 2006, security personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency escorted a senior CIA official from her office, withdrew her Top Secret clearance, and terminated her employment. The CIA did not name the officer. She was fired after she "acknowledged having unauthorized discussions with…
Pittsburgh
WANG WENYI, the woman whose shouts disrupted the welcoming ceremony for Chinese president Hu Jintao on the White House lawn on April 20, is a middle-aged pathologist and a follower of Falun Gong. That spiritual movement was outlawed in China in 1999, and since then Falun Gong has become a focal…
I doubt you will. From the Associated Press: First Iraqi Graduates Army Ranger School FORT BENNING, Ga. - A former lieutenant in Saddam Hussein's army on Friday will become the first Iraqi to graduate from the Army's Ranger School, a 61-day training ordeal that pushes soldiers to their physical and…
HIGH ABOVE THE EARTH, the Aries missile streaked toward its target, creasing the thermosphere at two miles a second. Launched at 8:12 a.m. Hawaiian Standard Time, the 30-foot long solid-fuel rocket had weighed in at more than six tons and had generated 200 kilonewtons of thrust. But now, high…
(Today's Wall Street Journal editorial weighs in on the latest peace initiative. The editors doubt it will hold given the track record of the criminal regime that resides in Khartoum. They also have a message for many of those demanding action to stop the brutality. "There's a lesson here for all…
Take the case of Ray McGovern, the retired CIA analyst who made today's headlines by challenging Secretary Rumsfeld during the Q&A following his speech last night in Atlanta. In its coverage of the exchange, the Los Angeles Times, for example, described (reg. req'd) McGovern as "a 27-year CIA…
Marshall Wittmann's takedown of the Left on his blog today reminds me of Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous "San Francisco Democrats" speech in which she took on the "blame America first crowd." In fact, Wittmann's take is so good (especially coming from a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership…
ON THE RELIGIOUS LEFT, the great hope these days is that the Religious Right is melting down over Global Warming. Liberal evangelical activist Jim Wallis rejoiced about the crack-up in a recent column, claiming that "the Religious Right is losing control" thanks to environmentalist evangelicals.…
Today's Hotline reports on the election advice Rush Limbaugh offered yesterday to the GOP: Rush Limbaugh: "There are" GOPers "planning to abandon" Bush "in droves, particularly during this election year." Bush is "an albatross around their neck." GOPers, "I'll just give you some advice right now.…
From Reuters: US says hot on heels of Zarqawi The U.S. military said on Thursday it was close to capturing the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, after discovering documents and the unedited copy of a video he released last week. Zarqawi was throwing all his resources into attacks in…
From the Marine Corps Times: High schoolers suspended after protesting recruiters Marine Corps recruiters in Frederick, Md., are worried that anti-military sentiment may be growing at a local high school following an on-campus protest of Marine recruiters that ended with five students suspended, a…
Valerie Plame Wilson, the NY Times reports, "is shopping a book proposal among a small group of publishers, according to two people familiar with the project." It will be interesting to read the book's acknowledgements.
"Between the increase in armor and the changes in tactics, techniques and procedures that we've employed, the number of attacks . . . that have been effective has gone down, and the number of casualties per effective attack has gone down." --General Peter Pace Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff…
SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD if your enemy thinks you are crazy. That's one reason why the recent talk of possible military strikes against Iran is smart. The chatter may not be 100 percent effective in scaring the mullahs away from uranium-enrichment, but even the prospect of no benefit is outweighed by…
(The far Left despises Democrats like Rep. Steny Hoyer -- see here and here -- and Sen. Lieberman -- see here. That's why it seems a bit odd that the chairman of the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council, Gov. Vilsack, and the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, will be speaking here -- a…
Five months ago, Vance Serchuk, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote the following in the pages of the Weekly Standard: While American politicians spent the ast months of 2005 arguing over the U.S. military presence in Iraq, their counterparts in the Netherlands were…
Here's what MSNBC's Chris Matthews had to say last night: Somebody is responsible for this war. Is it the president, the politicians in Congress who voted to authorize the war, the military who saluted Bush three years ago when the war was popular who are now calling for Defense Secretary…
Here's what MSNBC's Chris Matthews had to say last night: Somebody is responsible for this war. Is it the president, the politicians in Congress who voted to authorize the war, the military who saluted Bush three years ago when the war was popular who are now calling for Defense Secretary…
IS GOOGLE GOOD OR EVIL? In Silicon Valley, Google's moral code is a contentious issue. To its local boosters, Google can do no ill; but to critics on both the left and the right, Google epitomizes all the worst hubris, hypocrisy, and greed of the dot.com era.
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD has taken a serious beating recently. His critics, including several retired Army and Marine Corps generals, have accused him, in essence, of being personally responsible for perceived failures in Iraq. His critics charge that he ignored military advice and…
"A new atmosphere of increased religious tolerance has spurred a resurgence of Sufism and brought the once-underground Sufis and their rituals out in the open," today's Washington Post reports. Where has this happened? Of all places: Saudi Arabia. Over a year ago, Stephen Schwartz wrote an…
Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner released the following statement this morning: The Senate emergency spending bill represents a huge spending spree, but the big losers will be the American taxpayers stuck with the tab. President Bush requested $92 billion for the War on Terror and some…
(Connecticut Democrats haven't been reading the Daily Kos blog site. They're supposed to dump Lieberman. A new Quinnipiac poll of Democratic voters finds Lieberman trouncing his primary opponent, Ned Lamont, 65 - 19 percent. The poll also found that "only 15 percent would vote against a candidate…
From today's International Herald Tribune: PARIS Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of France said Monday that he was determined to stay in office despite mounting pressure on him to resign in connection with a dirty-tricks campaign targeting his chief rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. A…
THE ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS of investors and market watchers has been converted into advanced paranoia by the business media's preference for bad news. Consider this headline in the Wall Street Journal: "Economy's Surge Stirs Questions About When Slowdown May Come".
(From the Toronto Star: "Stephen Harper's government has quietly committed Canada to 'indefinite' participation in NORAD and agreed to give the military alliance new responsibilities to watch for a terror attack by sea. Fresh off his softwood lumber truce, Harper's government yesterday gave another…
Barely pausing to take a breath, Iran announced with defiance that it is pursuing further nuclear capabilities and that it wants Israel wiped off the map.
Though little reported, U.S. diplomacy with the former East Bloc nations has been quite successful. American investment has poured into a region that Business Week recently profiled in this piece, "Rise Of A Powerhouse." Of course, the region's continued economic vitality may get clipped if some of…
Apparently, Peru isn't interested in being a satellite state of the Caracas regime. From the Associated Press: Peru recalled its ambassador from Venezuela on Saturday over what it called President Hugo Chavez's "persistent and flagrant interference" in its upcoming presidential elections. Chavez…
"WHO TODAY IS CALLED a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?" Harvey Mansfield asked this question almost 30 years ago in the preface to his Spirit of Liberalism, and the answer was almost self-evident. This was during the Carter administration, and things haven't gotten better…
Rome
THE CHINESE ARE BIG ON SLOGANS: "Four Modernizations," the "Three Represents," "One Country, Two Systems," and more recently, the "Three Transcends," "Building a Harmonious Society," and "Peaceful Rise." While they don't trip off the American tongue, they serve the same basic purpose as slogans…
"WE ARE THE PARTY OF IDEAS," says President Bush. And he has been right, at least until now. But, as he refreshes his team, he faces three years that might prove a dreary descent into irrelevance unless he also refreshes his domestic economic policies. The fact is that what worked for compassionate…
MURIEL SPARK died April 13 in Tuscany, her home for the last 30 years. The Scottish novelist lived to the ripe old age of 88. But she had been thinking about death for years. It was the subject of one of her most accomplished novels, Memento Mori (1959). In this wildly funny black comedy, a group…
HERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT aren't very funny, though they might have been once upon a time: Jokes about how dumb President Bush is, and parodies of television shows that are already parodies of themselves. The blithering-idiot Bush hit its high-water mark with Will Ferrell squinting into the camera…
Mao
Judicial Foreign Affairs
The King's Reformation
Dada
THIS MONTH IS SUPPOSED TO see the shuttering of a Washington institution, Fran O'Brien's Steak House. For ten years, in the Capitol Hilton at the corner of 16th & L Streets, just a short distance from the White House and two blocks from the offices of The Weekly Standard, Fran O'Brien's has been…
God gave Noah the rainbow sign No more water, the fire next time! --Epigraph to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963) GALLIC REASON has succumbed to French revolutionary reaction. At length President Jacques Chirac, who withstood U.S. pressure on Iraq, surrendered to marching unions, students,…
"EVER SINCE THOSE CARTOONS in Denmark, the rules have changed. Nobody shows an image of Muhammad anymore." When a character on the animated TV show South Park made that avowal a few weeks ago, he could easily have been speaking for media outlets across Europe and North America. This past winter's…
Pulitzer Fashions
THE SINO-AMERICAN AGENDA includes the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, trade, energy, simmering disputes over Taiwan and Japan, and democracy. Why, then, was the most newsworthy event of the Bush-Hu summit last week the protests of a Falun Gong member on the White House lawn?
THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT has witnessed a stunning turnaround over the past 10 years. A decade ago, on the heels of a 1992 election season dubbed "the year of the woman," the movement was deeply engaged in the fight on Capitol Hill to stop passage of the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation that would…
NOW THAT HE'S BACK IN the elections business, Karl Rove has a huge task on his hands: assuring strong Republican voter turnout. At the moment, Republicans are in a funk. And their dejected mood may presage a low turnout in the midterm election on November 7. Should a large number of Republican…