An Alternative Strategy for 9/12/2001
You’ve heard the platitude that hindsight is 20/20. It’s true enough and, though I’ve been a regular skeptic about what policymakers used to call the Global War on Terror, it’s always easier to poke holes in the past than to say what you would have done. My conservative father was the first to ask me...
Read MoreWhen I was a kid learning to play chess, I couldn’t wait to move my queen. She was the most powerful piece on the board, so I wasted no time using her to attack. Guess what? On his next turn, my opponent captured her. It hurt my little feelings, but those were the rules. I...
Read MoreAt certain moments, you realize with stunning clarity how empty and absurd our political clichés really are. “Democracies don’t start wars,” Condoleezza Rice repeated the other day. What can that possibly mean in the real world? Taken literally, this simple formula implies that any time a democracy is at war with a nondemocracy, the nondemocracy...
Read MoreAmerican sportswriting has changed a lot since the 1920s. It’s less lyrical, hyperbolical, and moralistic than in the days when Grantland Rice and others set its lessons in rhyming verse. Schoolchildren used to memorize “Casey at the Bat” — the tragic story of Mudville’s great slugger striking out in the clutch. But American optimism demanded...
Read MoreBack in 2000, candidate George W. Bush described himself as “a uniter, not a divider.” If we didn’t all remember that, you’d think I’d made it up. Now Bush has dubbed himself “the decider.” Well, things change, people change, and our perceptions of them change; but with Bush, everything has changed, and in the most...
Read MoreI don’t watch television much anymore, but I gather that Stephen Colbert is the hottest comedian on the tube this month. I missed his latest achievement, an act of lese majesty at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, where he ridiculed the chief guest, President Bush, without mercy. Bush and his wife had to take...
Read MoreThe Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has caused a stir by arguing, in Rolling Stone magazine, that George W. Bush may be the worst president in American history. Of course you have to bear in mind that Wilentz, as a good liberal, ranks Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt among the greatest. Still, he has uttered a judgment...
Read MoreThings are getting messy. Before I address today’s headlines, let me offer my simple, comprehensive peace plan for the Middle East. First, give Palestine back to the Brits. Then adopt a reverse Monroe Doctrine: the United States will stay out of the Eastern Hemisphere. Think about it. Okay, now to today’s headlines. Abdul Rahman, the...
Read MoreIn the 1979 movie The In-Laws, Peter Falk plays a dotty former CIA man who awes his sidekick, Alan Arkin, a timid dentist whose daughter is married to Falk’s son. “Were you involved in the Bay of Pigs operation?” asks the fascinated Arkin. Falk replies proudly, “Involved in it? It was my idea!” “Success has...
Read MoreWhat’s the proper form of address for a terrorist with a long record of mass murder? Emily Post doesn’t cover this one, but in the state of Israel his title may be “Mr. Prime Minister.” The political career of Ariel Sharon, successor of such democratic leaders as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, appears to have...
Read MoreNothing looks as dated as yesterday’s futurism. If you watch the old sci-fi film Things to Come, made in 1936 and based on an H.G. Wells novel, you’re struck by the naiveté of what it prophesied for 1970. It envisioned all sorts of marvelous new inventions, huge shiny stainless steel gadgets, but it didn’t foresee...
Read MoreThe debate over the Iraq war is essentially over. “I think there’s a fair chance we’ll win,” says Brent Scowcroft to Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker. “But look at the cost.” Scowcroft was the first President Bush’s national security advisor, his best friend, and a hawk in the first war on Iraq. But that...
Read MoreSharansky, Weissglas,
and the Inaugural address
The major media have had much to say about George W. Bush's Inaugural address, in which the president pledged that American foreign policy would be oriented toward promoting world democracy. However, their analysis — whether pro or con — focused on the meaning and intent of the actual words themselves. Most mainstream accounts provided only...
Read MoreThe January 30 elections in Iraq confounded those who predicted that they would be a bloody disaster. They weren’t. This illustrates why it’s unwise to stake your principles on predictions. If your predictions are wrong, you risk discrediting your principles. Members of the outnumbered, outvoted, disgruntled Sunni minority were unable to deter or discourage most...
Read MoreAfter the banquet comes the indigestion; after the Lord Mayor's parade comes (or came, in the days before internal-combustion engines took over from horses) the man with the shovel. I've been on a victory high the past few days. As a principled conservative, though, I have had my discontents with George W. Bush's presidency. Now...
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After the American electorate wades through the scintillating debate about which presidential candidate is less patriotic than the other, some voters may display an interest in picking one of them to vote for. Many have already decided, and the bad news for President Bush is that a lot of them are the people who voted...
Read MoreSince the eight Clinton years already seem like the good old days, we shouldn’t be amazed at the huge, affectionate reaction to Ronald Reagan’s passing. Reagan himself was a symbol of the good old days even while he held office. In our nostalgia, we forget how contentious the Reagan years actually were. President Bush is...
Read MoreOnce you’ve killed a certain number of people, even with the best will in the world, it becomes awkward to make the cheerful admission, “I goofed.” Halfway through his river of blood, Macbeth reflects that going back would be as tedious as going all the way across. Actually, it turns out that he hasn’t even...
Read MoreLast week they didn’t know who Richard Clarke was, if they’d even heard his name. This week they’re all attacking his character and motives with utter certitude. “They” are the Bush defenders in the media, the ones who insist that their president has never told a lie, so that those who suggest otherwise must be...
Read MoreBAKU - The Christmas blockbuster from the Pentagon studios was a dream. This was the new Roman Empire at its peak - better than Ridleys Scott's Gladiator: a real, captive barbarian emperor, paraded on the Circus Maximus of world television. The barbarian was not a valiant warrior - but a bum. He was not hiding...
Read MoreMany years ago I heard the first lady of the United States give a speech. I didn’t fully approve of her, and I was determined not to be easily impressed — my usual wary attitude toward the high and mighty. My resolution lasted about five seconds. Her opening sentence was a one-liner Bob Hope would...
Read MoreThe question has become a roar: Did the Bush administration lie about “weapons of mass destruction” to get the country into war with Iraq? Republican royalists resent the very idea that their president could lie. It seems to them what the awful French would call lese majesty. Of course our (lower-case) republican institutions are based...
Read MoreI had a history minor in college, so listen up. I know what it is to stay awake long nights boning up on why World War I started — the world war nobody talks about — and to remember the facts long enough to pass an exam. In a nutshell, some archduke got shot in...
Read More“Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” This is the Bush “doctrine,” and it is dangerous nonsense. It’s a piece of moral blackmail, designed to force the people of the whole world to choose between false alternatives. It means that if you refuse to play ball with America — George W. Bush’s America,...
Read MoreTo read the conservative and neoconservative press, you’d think that President George W. Bush combined the military genius of Napoleon, the courage of Coriolanus, and the moral wisdom of Confucius. My own view is that he confirms the truth of the adage “Never send a boy to do a man’s job.” Actually, the presidency is...
Read MorePresident Bush on Mexican immigration.
President George W. Bush, speaking on August 24th: This little nugget of Compassionate Conservatism calls for some close textual analysis. Calls for it? It fairly shrieks for it. Where's my scalpel? There are people in Mexico … For "Mexico" you could equally well subsitute any one of a hundred or so other countries in that...
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