How about an American policy that sets out to repair the rift between Protestants and Catholics? We could rearrange Europe, rewrite its history, heal all the wounds of Christendom. Then we could patch things up between the Muslims and the Hindus.
Meanwhile, we could continue to deregulate Wall Street, cut taxes, and lie to our hearts’ [...]
It is perhaps a measure of the White House’s cockeyed hubris that Russia has seized a moment in history when our armed forces are overextended to bully our ally, neighboring Georgia. Given such hubris, it was inevitable the White House would forget it’s not the only bully on the block.
Read More...The soldiers we see in Iraq, looking more and more like cyborgs with their night vision headgear, and the soldiers who won the great tank battles of Desert Storm because of their night vision capability, could not have carried out their missions were it not for a son of Iraq named Abu Ali Hasan al [...]
Read More...Parallels too closely drawn invite intellectual train wrecks, but it might not be too far a reach to connect yesterday’s Supreme Court decision overturning the District of Columbia’s strict handgun control law to our gunpoint involvement with Arab society.
Every Arab civilization since the advent of Islam in the 7th Christian century has been forced to [...]
(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 42, my regular pod cast for The Student Operated Press).
Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has written a book confirming some of the public’s worst suspicions about the presidency of George W. Bush. McClellan (inset) says, among other things, the White House lied us into [...]
—seriously diminished U.S. standing in the world
—diverted “manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers” from “all other efforts in the war on terror”
—severely strained our armed forces
—made Iraq an incubator for terrorism
—emboldened Iran to expand its influence in the region
[...]
(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 40, Del Marbrook’s regular podcasts for The Student Operated Press)
The most frustrating aspect of journalism is its daily failure to challenge society’s assumptions.
When television reporters say General Motors or Ford have decided to downsize, they say something like, “Heavily unionized General Motors announced a plan to downsize [...]
Calling for Iraq’s militias to disband, whether it’s our call or the Baghdad government’s, may be like King George or the Continental Congress calling on the states to disband their militias. Lots of luck with that.
Iraq’s separate sects, peoples and provinces have far less in common than the original thirteen states.
Seen in this context, [...]
For six days the new American-trained Iraqi army was unable to wrest control of the southern oil port of Basra from Moktada al Sadr’s Shi’ite militia. Then Mr. Sadr suspended the battle and demanded concessions.
That’s the news. We’ve all heard it. But something is buried in the news that calls into question all the claims [...]
The next time a politician or pundit says anything about Iraq, anything at all, ask yourself if you have ever heard him say that Iranians have historically regarded Shi’ism as a deterrent to Arabization?
If you haven’t heard anybody who sounds knowledgeable talking about this, then you have no reason to think him knowledgeable.
We may [...]