Bush-Cheney Really Are Planning to Attack Iran!
Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
War on Iraq: Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, demonizing another Muslim nation -- and the Dems are supporting it. We've got to shut them down.
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Bush-Cheney Really Are Planning to Attack Iran!
Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
War on Iraq: Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, demonizing another Muslim nation -- and the Dems are supporting it. We've got to shut them down.
Kucinich on Bush, Cheney: "Don't Wait, Impeach Them Now!" [VIDEO]
Post by Adam Howard
Video: In one of the best moments of the Democratic Debate in Las Vegas, Kucinich took his fellow candidates to task for approving the Patriot Act and for giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt. More »
What's Worse? Fox News' Bias or CNN's Irrelevance?
Howie Klein: I mean where do they find such low-grade anchors and questioners? It must be difficult.
Coming Around the Far Turnby Jennifer RubinConservative voters are split in five directions for a Republican nominee. In the end, who will cross the finish line?
Democrats Talk Peace, Love and Abortionby Jed Babbin Progressives? Bah, Humbug: This Crowd is 99.9% pure liberal.
Bush Takes on The ABAby Michelle Oddis President Bush and Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito spoke at last night's Federalist Society black tie gala celebrating the society's 25th anniversary...
Jed Babbin on FOX Business (Video) Human Events Editor Jed Babbin talks military contracting with Neil Cavuto...
With Key IRS Deadline Looming Tomorrow, Democrats Set to Delay Tax Refunds for 50 Million Americansby Rep. John Boehner The Democratic Congress isn't looking out for the American people
Waving the White Flagby Michael Reagan Pelosi and Reid won't acknowledge the progress in Iraq, no matter how many outlets report it
Bush Takes on The ABAby Michelle Oddis President Bush and Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito spoke at last night's Federalist Society black tie gala celebrating the society's 25th anniversary...
Jed Babbin on FOX Business (Video) Human Events Editor Jed Babbin talks military contracting with Neil Cavuto...
With Key IRS Deadline Looming Tomorrow, Democrats Set to Delay Tax Refunds for 50 Million Americansby Rep. John Boehner The Democratic Congress isn't looking out for the American people
Waving the White Flagby Michael Reagan Pelosi and Reid won't acknowledge the progress in Iraq, no matter how many outlets report it
Pentagon Cover Up
15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?
By MIKE WHITNEY
The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.
CBS's Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and "submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense". After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007-- there were 2,200 suicides among "active duty" soldiers.
Baloney.
The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the "suicide epidemic". Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans' suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone "there were at least 6,256 among those who served in the armed forces. That's 120 each and every week in just one year."
That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.
If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the "official" 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.
That's right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.
CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, "There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem."
Maybe Katz is right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it's perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it's normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm's-way for their country.
It's not normal; it's is a pandemic---an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one's friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.
The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of the U.S. war on Iraq. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.
Check it out the video at: CBS News "Suicide Epidemic among Veterans"
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
Averting World War III, Ending Dollar Hegemony and US Imperialism
by Rohini Hensman / November 16th, 2007
Introduction (Full article …)
Complaints Flood CNN After Beck Smears Ron Paul Supporters As Terrorists
( Published on Friday, November 16, 2007 )
Neo-Con and ex-Marxist demonize founding fathers, Ron Paul supporters as terrorists in outrageous attack on free speech, urge use of U.S. military against domestic enemies
( Published on Friday, November 16, 2007 )
Neo-Con and ex-Marxist demonize founding fathers, Ron Paul supporters as terrorists in outrageous attack on free speech, urge use of U.S. military against domestic enemies
Hornberger’s Blog
Friday, November 16, 2007
Bush, Musharraf and Enemy Combatants
by Jacob G. Hornberger
We mustn’t forget one of the most important aspects of the Musharraf crackdown in Pakistan — that the post-9/11 “enemy combatant” doctrine assumed by President Bush and the Pentagon empower the feds to conduct the same types of “emergency” round-ups and incarcerations here in the United States that Musharraf is conducting in his country. Plus don’t forget that Bush and the military also wield the power to torture and sexually abuse detainees, even though they falsely deny exercising such power.
“No way!” some naïve Americans might exclaim. “America is different from Pakistan. Here we have freedom of speech and freedom of protest. There is no way that Bush and the military could round up and incarcerate protestors, dissidents, lawyers, government critics, and newspapers editors, as Musharraf is doing. After all, this is America we’re talking about, not Pakistan.”
Well, that was pre-9/11 America. Like it or not, in post-9/11 America the president and the Pentagon wield the card that trumps freedom of speech and freedom of protest. That card is the “enemy combatant” card. It empowers the president and the military to label any number of Americans as “enemy combatants” and treat them accordingly.
Suppose some American political dissidents find themselves labeled as enemy combatants and carted off to some secret CIA center in the dead of night. As they are being tied down to the water board, they exclaim, “You can’t do this to me. I’m an American. I have the right under the First Amendment to criticize President Bush and his policies. I have my rights!”
The federal agent would simply respond, “Well, of course you have your rights. But we have our rights too. And among our rights is the right to label you an enemy combatant. Just ask the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative court in the country. Now, stop your chattering, take off your clothes, lie down on the water board, and start drinking.”
How did the president and the Pentagon acquire their enemy combatant power? Did they secure a constitutional amendment to acquire it? No. After the 9/11 attacks, they simply declared that they now possessed such power. Then they later got a terrified and intimidated Congress to ratify it. They cowed a frightened American public into accepting it.
So, if President Bush and the Pentagon have the same round-up powers that Gen. Musharraf and his military goons have, why aren’t we witnessing round-ups here in the United States? Because they isn’t a sufficiently serious terrorist “emergency” here, yet, as Musharraf says there is in Pakistan.
What’s important to keep in mind is that dictatorship doesn’t depend on the exercise of dictatorial powers but rather the possession of dictatorial powers. The fact is that given the right “emergency,” such as some coordinated terrorist strikes across the United States, the president now wields the same powers of round-up (plus the powers of torture and sex abuse) that military general Musharraf wields against his people.
What about habeas corpus? Americans could still file a petition for writ of habeas corpus to challenge their detention, assuming that they would be able to contact a lawyer. But don’t forget that the government’s position is that a federal judge in a habeas corpus proceeding should not second-guess the president’s enemy-combatant determinations. Therefore, the evidentiary requirement to uphold the president’s enemy combatant detentions is likely to be quite low in habeas corpus hearings, especially during a terrorist “emergency.”
Don’t forget also that in an “emergency,” a terrified and intimidated Congress would likely do to Americans what it did to foreigners — remove the jurisdiction of the federal courts to consider habeas corpus petitions in terrorism cases. In an “emergency,” it will likely be “bye, bye habeas corpus” for Americans, as it has been for foreigners.
Lest anyone think that President Bush would hesitate to conduct such enemy combatant roundups if he felt that national security was at stake, just look at his conduct in Iraq, where some 28,000 Iraqis are held in detention without trial. Even worse, as conservative columnist Robert Novak reports, Bush is even ignoring the orders of judges to release Iraqi detainees.
Is Bush a kinder dictator than Musharraf? Americans would certainly say so but probably not the Iraqi people. Who can tell what could happen in an “emergency” where “national security” is at stake? Don’t forget that there are still many conservatives and neo-cons who still idolize Chilean military strongman Augusto Pinochet, who rounded up, tortured, sexually abused, and killed thousands of Chilean citizens who he and his military goons considered enemy combatants.
The best hope there is if the American people, including the men, conquer their silly fears about “the terrorists” and finally recognize what our American ancestors understood: that the biggest threat to our rights and freedoms lies with our very own government officials. That is, in fact, what the Bill of Rights is all about — protecting us not from “the terrorists” but instead from the feds. That’s why the feds hate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and do everything they can to circumvent and ignore them. They know that these documents serve as constant reminder of the danger that the federal government poses to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Bush, Musharraf and Enemy Combatants
by Jacob G. Hornberger
We mustn’t forget one of the most important aspects of the Musharraf crackdown in Pakistan — that the post-9/11 “enemy combatant” doctrine assumed by President Bush and the Pentagon empower the feds to conduct the same types of “emergency” round-ups and incarcerations here in the United States that Musharraf is conducting in his country. Plus don’t forget that Bush and the military also wield the power to torture and sexually abuse detainees, even though they falsely deny exercising such power.
“No way!” some naïve Americans might exclaim. “America is different from Pakistan. Here we have freedom of speech and freedom of protest. There is no way that Bush and the military could round up and incarcerate protestors, dissidents, lawyers, government critics, and newspapers editors, as Musharraf is doing. After all, this is America we’re talking about, not Pakistan.”
Well, that was pre-9/11 America. Like it or not, in post-9/11 America the president and the Pentagon wield the card that trumps freedom of speech and freedom of protest. That card is the “enemy combatant” card. It empowers the president and the military to label any number of Americans as “enemy combatants” and treat them accordingly.
Suppose some American political dissidents find themselves labeled as enemy combatants and carted off to some secret CIA center in the dead of night. As they are being tied down to the water board, they exclaim, “You can’t do this to me. I’m an American. I have the right under the First Amendment to criticize President Bush and his policies. I have my rights!”
The federal agent would simply respond, “Well, of course you have your rights. But we have our rights too. And among our rights is the right to label you an enemy combatant. Just ask the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative court in the country. Now, stop your chattering, take off your clothes, lie down on the water board, and start drinking.”
How did the president and the Pentagon acquire their enemy combatant power? Did they secure a constitutional amendment to acquire it? No. After the 9/11 attacks, they simply declared that they now possessed such power. Then they later got a terrified and intimidated Congress to ratify it. They cowed a frightened American public into accepting it.
So, if President Bush and the Pentagon have the same round-up powers that Gen. Musharraf and his military goons have, why aren’t we witnessing round-ups here in the United States? Because they isn’t a sufficiently serious terrorist “emergency” here, yet, as Musharraf says there is in Pakistan.
What’s important to keep in mind is that dictatorship doesn’t depend on the exercise of dictatorial powers but rather the possession of dictatorial powers. The fact is that given the right “emergency,” such as some coordinated terrorist strikes across the United States, the president now wields the same powers of round-up (plus the powers of torture and sex abuse) that military general Musharraf wields against his people.
What about habeas corpus? Americans could still file a petition for writ of habeas corpus to challenge their detention, assuming that they would be able to contact a lawyer. But don’t forget that the government’s position is that a federal judge in a habeas corpus proceeding should not second-guess the president’s enemy-combatant determinations. Therefore, the evidentiary requirement to uphold the president’s enemy combatant detentions is likely to be quite low in habeas corpus hearings, especially during a terrorist “emergency.”
Don’t forget also that in an “emergency,” a terrified and intimidated Congress would likely do to Americans what it did to foreigners — remove the jurisdiction of the federal courts to consider habeas corpus petitions in terrorism cases. In an “emergency,” it will likely be “bye, bye habeas corpus” for Americans, as it has been for foreigners.
Lest anyone think that President Bush would hesitate to conduct such enemy combatant roundups if he felt that national security was at stake, just look at his conduct in Iraq, where some 28,000 Iraqis are held in detention without trial. Even worse, as conservative columnist Robert Novak reports, Bush is even ignoring the orders of judges to release Iraqi detainees.
Is Bush a kinder dictator than Musharraf? Americans would certainly say so but probably not the Iraqi people. Who can tell what could happen in an “emergency” where “national security” is at stake? Don’t forget that there are still many conservatives and neo-cons who still idolize Chilean military strongman Augusto Pinochet, who rounded up, tortured, sexually abused, and killed thousands of Chilean citizens who he and his military goons considered enemy combatants.
The best hope there is if the American people, including the men, conquer their silly fears about “the terrorists” and finally recognize what our American ancestors understood: that the biggest threat to our rights and freedoms lies with our very own government officials. That is, in fact, what the Bill of Rights is all about — protecting us not from “the terrorists” but instead from the feds. That’s why the feds hate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and do everything they can to circumvent and ignore them. They know that these documents serve as constant reminder of the danger that the federal government poses to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Illegal immigration may hurt Dems. Bill Sammon, Examiner
The boomers will be best remembered for their self-glorification. William Kristol, Weekly Standard
RAMESH PONNURU: Conservative journalists choose up. “Rudy Wins the Pundit Primary” 11/16 8:15 AM
THE EDITORS: Romney need not go into the details of Mormon theology to reassure people. “Romney’s Religion” 11/16 7:40 AM
LARRY KUDLOW: In the strongest possible terms, Mitt Romney told me in an interview Friday that the push-polling attacks in Iowa on his Mormon faith are un-American. “Romney Stands for Faith” 11/16 4:11 PM
JIM GERAGHTY: You could have stopped watching after ten minutes. “The Debate” 11/15 10:12 AM
MARK HEMINGWAY: Bring on the Vikings. “Hillary Wins” 11/16 10:20 AM
RICH LOWRY: Barack Obama and John Edwards ratchet up their attacks on would-be President-elect Hillary Clinton. “Obama Joins the Right-Wing Attack Machine” 11/16 12:00 AM
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Democratic candidates love to attack Bush's foreign policy. “Denying Alliance” 11/16 12:00 AM
MONA CHAREN: Ron Paul might make a dandy new leader for the Branch Davidians. “What Paul Is Running For” 11/16 12:00 AM
LARRY KUDLOW: I mixed it up with Fred Thompson. The former Tennessee senator was in good form. “What Fred Said” 11/15 3:02 PM
THE EDITORS: Romney need not go into the details of Mormon theology to reassure people. “Romney’s Religion” 11/16 7:40 AM
LARRY KUDLOW: In the strongest possible terms, Mitt Romney told me in an interview Friday that the push-polling attacks in Iowa on his Mormon faith are un-American. “Romney Stands for Faith” 11/16 4:11 PM
JIM GERAGHTY: You could have stopped watching after ten minutes. “The Debate” 11/15 10:12 AM
MARK HEMINGWAY: Bring on the Vikings. “Hillary Wins” 11/16 10:20 AM
RICH LOWRY: Barack Obama and John Edwards ratchet up their attacks on would-be President-elect Hillary Clinton. “Obama Joins the Right-Wing Attack Machine” 11/16 12:00 AM
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Democratic candidates love to attack Bush's foreign policy. “Denying Alliance” 11/16 12:00 AM
MONA CHAREN: Ron Paul might make a dandy new leader for the Branch Davidians. “What Paul Is Running For” 11/16 12:00 AM
LARRY KUDLOW: I mixed it up with Fred Thompson. The former Tennessee senator was in good form. “What Fred Said” 11/15 3:02 PM
Saul Friedman: The Breathless Coverage of Hillary Clinton
When will the American press grow up and realize that America may at last be adult enough to catch u...
Dan Froomkin: Could Congress Prevent Bush From Attacking Iran?
Depending on whom you believe, Vice President Cheney may have already persuaded President Bush that ...
When will the American press grow up and realize that America may at last be adult enough to catch u...
Dan Froomkin: Could Congress Prevent Bush From Attacking Iran?
Depending on whom you believe, Vice President Cheney may have already persuaded President Bush that ...
Diamonds Pearls or Some of Both? The November 17 CNN debate critiqued from the role of the producer. Blitzer comes in for his share of criticism in this article. Alexandra Trustman was coerced in the fluffy question and then reported what really happened. MySpace and YouTube will have made this old news. So it is relavant here to read on and find how CNN and Fox, for their part, skewed debates.
Goodbye, Mr. Bush Despite the obvious shortcomings of his policies,he has startlingly succeeded in reshaping the executive into an unaccountable imperial presidency.And Bush's presidency is now accepted as the only acceptable version for major Repub candidates who aspire to succeed him.All of them have pledged to extend its arbitrary powers.Their embrace of the imperial presidency makes the 2008 election a turning point in constitutional gov't
Clinton, CNN and Fall out from the Debate (updated)
November 17, 2007
Hillary Clinton's performance at the Las Vegas debate has been overshadowed by charges of planted questions, a planted audience, and curious behavior by CNN that seemed to favor Clinton over other candidates. More
November 17, 2007
Hillary Clinton's performance at the Las Vegas debate has been overshadowed by charges of planted questions, a planted audience, and curious behavior by CNN that seemed to favor Clinton over other candidates. More
Interactive Graphic: Iowa’s Caucuses
Biden and Clinton Shine in Nevada Debate Ari Melber | Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton shined in the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday night.
Candidates Should Hammer away at Wars' Costs Katrina vanden Heuvel | A new Congressional report says wars costing $1.5 trillion
Carter Speaks His Mind John Nichols | A conversation with the former President on Jonathan Demme's new film, Jimmy Carter Man From Plains, and the difficulty of talking about Israel and Palestine.
Blackwater's Brothers Jeremy Scahill | A deepening conflict-of-interest scandal envelops the Krongard brothers--Howard, a State Department official overseeing Blackwater contracts, and his brother Alvin, who has long been cozy with the mercenary firm.
Immigrant Drivers License Plan Unravels Andrea Batista Schlesinger & Amy Traub | New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer had a good idea about how to issue driver's licenses to undocumented workers. Too bad he caved.
TruthDig Bush Stands By His Dictator Robert Scheer | Bush's coddling of Pervez Musharraf defies all reason--and bears some unsettling similarity to his own offenses and misteps as President.
Carter Speaks His Mind John Nichols | A conversation with the former President on Jonathan Demme's new film, Jimmy Carter Man From Plains, and the difficulty of talking about Israel and Palestine.
Blackwater's Brothers Jeremy Scahill | A deepening conflict-of-interest scandal envelops the Krongard brothers--Howard, a State Department official overseeing Blackwater contracts, and his brother Alvin, who has long been cozy with the mercenary firm.
Immigrant Drivers License Plan Unravels Andrea Batista Schlesinger & Amy Traub | New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer had a good idea about how to issue driver's licenses to undocumented workers. Too bad he caved.
TruthDig Bush Stands By His Dictator Robert Scheer | Bush's coddling of Pervez Musharraf defies all reason--and bears some unsettling similarity to his own offenses and misteps as President.
Democrats See No Evil - Michael Goodwin, New York Daily News
Make the Bush Record the Issue - Markos Moulitsas, Newsweek
Both Parties Walk Tightrope on Immigration - Michael Luo, NY Times
Obama's Transformative Powers - Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle
Rudy Giuliani, Disciplinarian - Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard
Giuliani's Loyalty Problem - Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
Democrats' Devotion to Trial Lawyers - George Will, Indianapolis Star
Debates in Need of Rescue - David Broder, Washington Post
Rising Note of Panic Surrounds Number 10 - Iain Martin, Sunday Telegraph
Pakistan's Collapse, Our Problem - F. Kagan & M. O'Hanlon, New York Times
The Discipline Of the Dollar - David Ignatius, Washington Post
Worries Mount but Dollar Rout Unlikely - Irwin Stelzer, Sunday Times
Is ADHD a Crisis or Hoax? - Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times
When Handouts Keep Coming, Food Line Never Ends - Mark Winne, WP
Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth - Henry Louis Gates, New York Times
Debate: Is It Time to End Affirmative Action? - Intelligence Squared US
Make the Bush Record the Issue - Markos Moulitsas, Newsweek
Both Parties Walk Tightrope on Immigration - Michael Luo, NY Times
Obama's Transformative Powers - Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle
Rudy Giuliani, Disciplinarian - Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard
Giuliani's Loyalty Problem - Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
Democrats' Devotion to Trial Lawyers - George Will, Indianapolis Star
Debates in Need of Rescue - David Broder, Washington Post
Rising Note of Panic Surrounds Number 10 - Iain Martin, Sunday Telegraph
Pakistan's Collapse, Our Problem - F. Kagan & M. O'Hanlon, New York Times
The Discipline Of the Dollar - David Ignatius, Washington Post
Worries Mount but Dollar Rout Unlikely - Irwin Stelzer, Sunday Times
Is ADHD a Crisis or Hoax? - Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times
When Handouts Keep Coming, Food Line Never Ends - Mark Winne, WP
Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth - Henry Louis Gates, New York Times
Debate: Is It Time to End Affirmative Action? - Intelligence Squared US
Iraq's Narrow Window - Washington Post
Inconvenient Truths for Anti-War Lobby - The Australian
Bush's Veto: The Fiscal Phony - Philadelphia Inquirer
Appeals Court Overreaches in Tossing Fuel Rules - Detroit News
Inconvenient Truths for Anti-War Lobby - The Australian
Bush's Veto: The Fiscal Phony - Philadelphia Inquirer
Appeals Court Overreaches in Tossing Fuel Rules - Detroit News
Does Clinton Have Dirt on Obama?
- Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
CNN Caves, But Clinton Will Still Struggle in Iowa
- Dick Morris, Fox News
A Stubborn Senator Who Matters
- Jon Rauch, National Journal
- Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
CNN Caves, But Clinton Will Still Struggle in Iowa
- Dick Morris, Fox News
A Stubborn Senator Who Matters
- Jon Rauch, National Journal
The Icebergs Ahead For the Democrats
- David Broder, Washington Post
Hillary's Achilles' Heel
- Howard Fineman, Newsweek
The Insanity of Bush Hatred
- Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal
- David Broder, Washington Post
Hillary's Achilles' Heel
- Howard Fineman, Newsweek
The Insanity of Bush Hatred
- Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal
Allow Prosecution of Blackwater Guards - Miami Herald editorial
The Democrats Iran Dilemma – Robert Novak, Washington Post
Dems Must Confront Iran - Koch and Lancman, New York Daily News
Attorney General Mukasey – Nat Hentoff, Washington Times
Rendition, Torture and Accountability? – New York Times editorial
Sharpen Airport Security - Los Angeles Times editorial
Terror in the Skies – Linda Chavez, Washington Times
Remember the War on Drugs? – New York Times editorial
CBS' Bogus Vet-Suicide Stats - Michael Fumento, New York Post
The Democrats Iran Dilemma – Robert Novak, Washington Post
Dems Must Confront Iran - Koch and Lancman, New York Daily News
Attorney General Mukasey – Nat Hentoff, Washington Times
Rendition, Torture and Accountability? – New York Times editorial
Sharpen Airport Security - Los Angeles Times editorial
Terror in the Skies – Linda Chavez, Washington Times
Remember the War on Drugs? – New York Times editorial
CBS' Bogus Vet-Suicide Stats - Michael Fumento, New York Post
Life Has Gotten Better in Baghdad - Rod Nordland, Newsweek
Violence in Iraq Continues to Drop - Buckley & Gordon, New York Times
Bush's Foreign Policy Disaster & The GOP - George Packer, The New Yorker
Dems Increasingly 'Jumpy' on Illegals - June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal
Nancy Pelosi: Mi Casa, Sue Casa - John Fund, Opinion Journal
Electability Key Among Iowa Democrats - Jill Lawrence, USA Today
How to Beat Hillary Next November - Karl Rove, Newsweek
Will Edwards' Blow-Dried Populism Sell? - John Heilemann, NY Magazine
Mitt Romney: A CEO in the White House? - Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
Renew Devotion to Freedom, Limited Gov't - Rep. Ron Paul, DM Register
The Case for Patching Up Social Security - Clive Crook, Financial Times
A Disciplined Defense - Richard Betts, Foreign Affairs
The Democrats' Iran Dilemma - Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
Chavez and the King - Jackson Diehl, Washington Post
The World is Drinking Al Gore's Kool-Aid - Phil Valentine, The Tennessean
Global Warming Won't Be Solved Voluntarily - Allen Smith, Boston Globe
Bill Clinton, Scooter Libby and Barry Bonds - John Kass, Chicago Tribune
Violence in Iraq Continues to Drop - Buckley & Gordon, New York Times
Bush's Foreign Policy Disaster & The GOP - George Packer, The New Yorker
Dems Increasingly 'Jumpy' on Illegals - June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal
Nancy Pelosi: Mi Casa, Sue Casa - John Fund, Opinion Journal
Electability Key Among Iowa Democrats - Jill Lawrence, USA Today
How to Beat Hillary Next November - Karl Rove, Newsweek
Will Edwards' Blow-Dried Populism Sell? - John Heilemann, NY Magazine
Mitt Romney: A CEO in the White House? - Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
Renew Devotion to Freedom, Limited Gov't - Rep. Ron Paul, DM Register
The Case for Patching Up Social Security - Clive Crook, Financial Times
A Disciplined Defense - Richard Betts, Foreign Affairs
The Democrats' Iran Dilemma - Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
Chavez and the King - Jackson Diehl, Washington Post
The World is Drinking Al Gore's Kool-Aid - Phil Valentine, The Tennessean
Global Warming Won't Be Solved Voluntarily - Allen Smith, Boston Globe
Bill Clinton, Scooter Libby and Barry Bonds - John Kass, Chicago Tribune
Keeping Americans in Their Homes - New York Times
Oklahoma Democrats Attempt to Jail Their Political Opponents - WSJ
Taxing Wealth & Reviving Unions Will Be a Good Start - The Nation
Yeah, They're Illegals - New Hampshire Union Leader
Tom Kean Endorsing McCain In New Push - The Politico
Immigration Is the Question - Wall Street Journal
Obama's Campaign Has a New Wrinkle - Los Angeles Times
McCain Takes On Clinton, With an Eye to Civility - New York Times
Oklahoma Democrats Attempt to Jail Their Political Opponents - WSJ
Taxing Wealth & Reviving Unions Will Be a Good Start - The Nation
Yeah, They're Illegals - New Hampshire Union Leader
Tom Kean Endorsing McCain In New Push - The Politico
Immigration Is the Question - Wall Street Journal
Obama's Campaign Has a New Wrinkle - Los Angeles Times
McCain Takes On Clinton, With an Eye to Civility - New York Times
On Israel and North Korea, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are positively Clintonian. Danielle Pletka, New York Times
How to beat Hillary. Karl Rove, Newsweek
Readers Write: John Edwards' Plan to Get Serious About HealthcareAlterNet Staff, AlterNet
Health and Wellness: AlterNet readers had much to say about Edwards' threat to strip health coverage from Congress if its members didn't pass his plan.
Luke Ryland: *Dan Ellsberg: Sibel Edmonds case "Far More Explosive Than Pentagon Papers" Daniel Ellsberg supports former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' attempts to 'tell all.'
Crisis in the U.S.: "Plan B"? Retired fed analyst Richard Cook analyzes the upcoming 2008 "elections," discussing the real players behind the dog-and-pony candidates. Plan B is a kinder, gentler "expletive deleted" by the military establishment, placing Hillary at the head. Ron Paul's sudden surge in donations portends a third-party run that elites will use to siphon votes from Republicans. Pragmatic advice for ordinary citizens is offered.
Linda Milazzo: Hillary Clinton's SMUG MUG & Her Bush-like Disdain For Dissenters
Enlargen Unfortunately, much of George W. Bush's disdain for dissension can also be seen in Hillary Clinton. It's becoming increasingly ominous to witness Clinton's Bush-like intolerance toward citizens who voice their displeasure - which might explain the recent revelations of how her handlers manipulate her audience
Enlargen Unfortunately, much of George W. Bush's disdain for dissension can also be seen in Hillary Clinton. It's becoming increasingly ominous to witness Clinton's Bush-like intolerance toward citizens who voice their displeasure - which might explain the recent revelations of how her handlers manipulate her audience
Timothy V. Gatto: Sorry Hillary, You Don't Make the Grade C'mon Hillary, while you make an imposing figure up on the stage with your icy stares and your searing wit, the Republican Party will make mince-meat out of your poorly crafted statements. Nobody can be all things to all people, but yet you try to keep everyone happy telling everyone that will listen, exactly what they want to hear.
Ron Fullwood: Reversing Bush's Imposed Legacy in the Next Administration
WHEN, and if, Bush leaves office it will take an internal revolution by the next administration to reverse and undo the damage he's done to our democracy at home and to our influence and relationship with other countries around the world.
WHEN, and if, Bush leaves office it will take an internal revolution by the next administration to reverse and undo the damage he's done to our democracy at home and to our influence and relationship with other countries around the world.
Wars to Watch Out For
2008 will bring us an abundant crop of overseas crises by Justin Raimondo As we approach the new year, a fresh crop of overseas crises threatens to spring up, like mushrooms after a rain, and the prospects for peace on earth, this holiday season, are dimmer than ever.
Iraq: First up on the agenda is, of course, the war in Iraq, which, we are told, is going swimmingly. The much-touted statistics that we're being fed by the War Party and its media enablers sound good, but if you look at them a bit closer, the illusion begins to dissipate. The downturn in violence that we're hearing so much about is largely due to the fact that the ethno-religious cleansing of contested regions of Iraq has been completed, for the most part: in Baghdad, for example, the Shi'ites have driven the Sunnis out, with the help of the U.S.-supported "police" and the Iraqi "army" – which are really just Shi'ite death squads. They've shed all the blood they can, at least for now: give them a moment to catch their collective breath, however, and the sectarian killings will recommence with gusto.
Similarly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hails the "return" of "7,000 families" to Baghdad as proof positive that the "surge" is working, but the reality is that, as Juan Cole points out, the many tens of thousands who fled to Syria are now being forced by the Syrian government to leave, which explains the great "return." They're being kicked out of Damascus, and they're not allowed into the U.S., so where else are they supposed to go?
The emerging hotspot in Iraq is Kurdistan, which has been relatively peaceful until this point – but only because the ruling parties have kept such a tight lid on internal dissent, ruthlessly suppressing their critics and growing fat on U.S. and Israeli aid. The lid is about to blow off the pot, however, due to two factors: first, terrorist attacks in Turkey carried out by guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which many Turks suspect is funded and managed by the U.S. and the Kurdish regional government, and second, a provision in the Iraqi constitution that requires a referendum to decide who gets the oil-hub city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by the Kurds and the Iraqi central government.
As I have said before on several occasions, the Kurds are the most disruptive and unpredictable factor in the Iraqi jigsaw puzzle, which virtually ensures that the state smashed by U.S. force of arms almost certainly cannot be put back together again, no matter how much glue – in the form of U.S. troops and subsidies – is poured into the breach. Virulent Kurdish nationalism, unleashed by the American invasion and empowered by U.S. and Israeli aid and arms, is on the march, and every nation in the region is going to be negatively affected. It isn't going to be pretty, as the Turks have discovered to their sorrow and growing anger.
Iran: It seems like virtually unanimous opposition from the U.S. military has lessened the possibility of a war being launched by this White House any time soon, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
Admiral Fallon and a number of other military figures have spoken out against a new war in the Middle East, pointing to the overstretch of our resources and the near-impossibility of mobilizing an effective fighting force while we're bogged down in Iraq, but realism was never the neoconservatives' strong point and that isn't stopping them from pushing their agenda. The president, as I've pointed out before, is the most radical neocon of them all – or, at the very least, a fervent fellow traveler – and it really is up to him. Certainly the Kyl-Lieberman resolution gives him the legal and political tools to do it, since it can be seen as merely an extension of the original post-9/11 authorization to go to war against "terrorists." If the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are "terrorists" and are actively killing American soldiers in Iraq, as Kyl-Lieberman avers, then the resolution in tandem with the post-9/11 legislation gives ample legal cover to an administration hell-bent on war with Iran.
Lebanon: Recent incursions by the Israelis over Lebanese airspace could prefigure another Israeli invasion, this time to prevent Hezbollah and its Christian allies from displacing the increasingly unpopular and beleaguered "pro-Western" government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. All factions are arming themselves, and the country looks ready to slide into yet another civil war, which would almost certainly provoke intervention by several outside interests, including the U.S. and/or Israel. Lebanon is the Balkans of the Middle East: a spark struck there could ignite the whole region.
Syria: I've been keeping a close watch on developments in Syria for years, in the belief that this is really the focal point of Israeli interests. Syria, after all, is where the Palestinian factions have been headquartered, and it is the front-line state that has provided support to the Palestinian resistance struggle. For more on Syria as an Israeli target of opportunity, read the now famous "Clean Break" scenario painted by prominent neocons now in high positions in the U.S. government.
Naturally, the Israelis have wanted to take out the Syrians, but they have lacked the capacity to do so. Now, as in the case of Iraq, it could be that the Americans are going to do the job for them. There's been a lot of anti-Syrian rhetoric coming out of this White House, and our State Department has done everything but cut off diplomatic relations with Damascus: we have no ambassador presently in Syria, only low-level diplomatic personnel. Sanctions are hurting the always precarious Syrian economy, the Kurds are busy stirring up trouble, and now there's this news from Nation columnist Eric Alterman:
"I got a letter the other day from a faculty member at the University of Maryland's overseas division in Europe. UM is the primary university providing classes for U.S. service members abroad. Here it is:
"'The reason that I am writing today is to inform you of something rather unsettling. Last weekend, we had a Europe-wide faculty meeting at our headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. At that meeting, we were told that the U of MD military education contracts will be expanding soon to Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti, and other locations in the Middle East and Africa. This comes as no surprise.
"'What is startling is that the U.S. military has also asked us to prepare a bid for educational programs in IRAN and SYRIA (and, oddly enough, France – where we have had no presence since NATO was expelled in 1967 – probably a function of the new conservative government there). We will be bidding on an education contract to these locations at the end of November.
"'This is a truly ominous development. The U of MD overseas program follows the military around the world – thus clearly the contingencies for an occupation of several Middle Eastern countries is not only being contemplated, but actually set up.'"
That Israeli air strike at what was supposedly a Syrian "nuclear facility" portends something, but as to whether it's a U.S.-Israeli invasion is an open question. In my own view, it's not a matter of if, but when.
Somalia-Ethiopia: This was supposed to be war as it should be fought, according to the War Party here on the home front. Why, those no-nonsense Ethiopians, who have no sissy-liberal compunctions about collateral damage, would soon make short work of those pro-terrorist Somalis, but there's just one problem. The Ethiopians aren't winning. You'll remember how the neocons trotted out the old Stalinist eggs-omelet argument, in a new guise, but now we have to ask: where's the beef?
Expect this latest front in our perpetual "war on terrorism" to degenerate further, as the Ethiopian regime faces increasing opposition on the home front, where its program of repression and ethnic supremacism is not only alienating large sectors of Ethiopian society and provoking a new civil war, but also further impoverishing one of the poorest nations on earth. Addis Ababa can't even keep its own house from falling to pieces, so it's no surprise that their Somali sock puppets are at each other's throats. Another factor that could throw the rapidly deteriorating region into the spotlight is the resumption of Ethiopia's endless war with Eritrea. The U.S. has sided with the Ethiopians in the ongoing Ethiopian-Eritrean dispute, giving aid and diplomatic cover to the neocon dictator Meles Zenawi's dreams of a "Greater Ethiopia," but we may well have picked the wrong horse in that fight. The Eritreans are a fierce and proud people who have successfully fought off Ethiopian attempts to incorporate them into "Greater Ethiopia" for centuries, most recently in the late 1990s, a conflict in which 70,000 perished. Of course, the U.S. has no interest in helping the thug Zenawi subjugate his neighbors, who have clung tenaciously to their thin strip of territory on the shores of the Red Sea since independence was won from Ethiopia in 1993.
The Russian periphery: I have long believed that the next stage in the neocons' bid for empire will be a rapidly escalating assault on the remnants of Russian influence in the former Soviet Union – dressed up as yet another crusade for "democracy," Washington-style, launched by the U.S. This has so far been a political effort, typified by the various "color revolutions" that erupted in the post-Soviet periphery, from the Rose Revolution in Georgia to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution led by Viktor Yushchenko. These efforts are apparently stalled, and even suffering from a determined rollback led by nationalist forces, and the next phase is likely to be a series of low-level proxy wars between Russian-backed nationalists and U.S.-backed "democrats."
There are a number of theaters where hostilities could break out, but I'll just cover the hottest hotspots:
Georgia: As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias. Saakashvili, the great "democrat," is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party's point of view.
In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia's political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war.
Kosovo – again!: The irony of this is all too apparent to longtime readers of Antiwar.com. Virtually alone among opponents of imperialism in the U.S., we opposed the American "liberation" of Kosovo and considered U.S. support for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – a gang of drug-smuggling thugs whose control of the European heroin trade subsidized their terrorist activities against the people of Kosovo and neighboring countries – to be a war crime. As it turned out, it was the Clintonian precursor to the American sponsorship of Iraqi exile groups, such as Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, whose ersatz "intelligence" helped lie the American people into war. It is only fitting that this hotspot should get hotter even as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims Kosovo as a model for what we ought to have done in Iraq.
The problem in Kosovo is that the "liberation" led to a reign of terror by the KLA, which burned Serbian Orthodox churches, terrorized the remnants of Serbian communities, and demanded immediate independence. On this latter demand, they managed to be contained by their NATO and U.S. allies, but that pot is about to boil over as Hashim Thaci, KLA militant and candidate of the grievously misnamed "Democratic Party," takes the presidency. Ever since the "liberation," the KLA was kept out of power by the prestige of Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo, but Rugova's death from cancer in 2006 paved the way for the thuggish Thaci to seize power – and he has.
A unilateral declaration of independence by the Thaci regime would not necessarily lead to fighting in the region, although there is that possibility. The real danger is that it will set off a chain reaction in Moscow, which will then encourage its allies in the various regions of the Russian "near abroad" to issue similar declarations: Abkhazia, Adjara (site of a Russian military base), Ossetia, and certain sections of Moldova could be granted diplomatic recognition by Russia and its allies, on the grounds that what's good for the Kosovar goose in good for the Abkhazian-Adjarian-Ossetian-Transnistrian-Gagauzian gander. This could set off a whole series of proxy wars, with the Russians backing the breakaway republics and the Americans standing with their super-centralizing satraps, such as Saakashvili.
With the arms-control treaties pioneered by Reagan and other U.S. presidents now discarded, and the Russians chafing over a missile-defense system installed in the Czech republic and Poland supposedly because of an imminent danger of an Iranian attack, this new development is particularly dangerous.
The ultimate goal of the War Party is "regime change" in the Kremlin: they long to put another one of their stooges, along the lines of Boris Yeltsin, in the drivers' seat. The problem with Yeltsin was that he couldn't stay sober long enough to do Washington's bidding. And now there is no plausible rival to the wildly popular Vladimir Putin, who has put the country back into some semblance of order. Their solution: declare Putin to be the reincarnation of Stalin and announce the death of "democracy" in the former Soviet Union. This would pave the way for a resurgence of aid to "democratic" organizations inside Russia, funneled covertly as well as overtly, and a slowly escalating series of trade sanctions designed to cripple the Russians economically, or at least make them feel the sting of Western wrath.
2008 will bring us an abundant crop of overseas crises by Justin Raimondo As we approach the new year, a fresh crop of overseas crises threatens to spring up, like mushrooms after a rain, and the prospects for peace on earth, this holiday season, are dimmer than ever.
Iraq: First up on the agenda is, of course, the war in Iraq, which, we are told, is going swimmingly. The much-touted statistics that we're being fed by the War Party and its media enablers sound good, but if you look at them a bit closer, the illusion begins to dissipate. The downturn in violence that we're hearing so much about is largely due to the fact that the ethno-religious cleansing of contested regions of Iraq has been completed, for the most part: in Baghdad, for example, the Shi'ites have driven the Sunnis out, with the help of the U.S.-supported "police" and the Iraqi "army" – which are really just Shi'ite death squads. They've shed all the blood they can, at least for now: give them a moment to catch their collective breath, however, and the sectarian killings will recommence with gusto.
Similarly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hails the "return" of "7,000 families" to Baghdad as proof positive that the "surge" is working, but the reality is that, as Juan Cole points out, the many tens of thousands who fled to Syria are now being forced by the Syrian government to leave, which explains the great "return." They're being kicked out of Damascus, and they're not allowed into the U.S., so where else are they supposed to go?
The emerging hotspot in Iraq is Kurdistan, which has been relatively peaceful until this point – but only because the ruling parties have kept such a tight lid on internal dissent, ruthlessly suppressing their critics and growing fat on U.S. and Israeli aid. The lid is about to blow off the pot, however, due to two factors: first, terrorist attacks in Turkey carried out by guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which many Turks suspect is funded and managed by the U.S. and the Kurdish regional government, and second, a provision in the Iraqi constitution that requires a referendum to decide who gets the oil-hub city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by the Kurds and the Iraqi central government.
As I have said before on several occasions, the Kurds are the most disruptive and unpredictable factor in the Iraqi jigsaw puzzle, which virtually ensures that the state smashed by U.S. force of arms almost certainly cannot be put back together again, no matter how much glue – in the form of U.S. troops and subsidies – is poured into the breach. Virulent Kurdish nationalism, unleashed by the American invasion and empowered by U.S. and Israeli aid and arms, is on the march, and every nation in the region is going to be negatively affected. It isn't going to be pretty, as the Turks have discovered to their sorrow and growing anger.
Iran: It seems like virtually unanimous opposition from the U.S. military has lessened the possibility of a war being launched by this White House any time soon, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
Admiral Fallon and a number of other military figures have spoken out against a new war in the Middle East, pointing to the overstretch of our resources and the near-impossibility of mobilizing an effective fighting force while we're bogged down in Iraq, but realism was never the neoconservatives' strong point and that isn't stopping them from pushing their agenda. The president, as I've pointed out before, is the most radical neocon of them all – or, at the very least, a fervent fellow traveler – and it really is up to him. Certainly the Kyl-Lieberman resolution gives him the legal and political tools to do it, since it can be seen as merely an extension of the original post-9/11 authorization to go to war against "terrorists." If the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are "terrorists" and are actively killing American soldiers in Iraq, as Kyl-Lieberman avers, then the resolution in tandem with the post-9/11 legislation gives ample legal cover to an administration hell-bent on war with Iran.
Lebanon: Recent incursions by the Israelis over Lebanese airspace could prefigure another Israeli invasion, this time to prevent Hezbollah and its Christian allies from displacing the increasingly unpopular and beleaguered "pro-Western" government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. All factions are arming themselves, and the country looks ready to slide into yet another civil war, which would almost certainly provoke intervention by several outside interests, including the U.S. and/or Israel. Lebanon is the Balkans of the Middle East: a spark struck there could ignite the whole region.
Syria: I've been keeping a close watch on developments in Syria for years, in the belief that this is really the focal point of Israeli interests. Syria, after all, is where the Palestinian factions have been headquartered, and it is the front-line state that has provided support to the Palestinian resistance struggle. For more on Syria as an Israeli target of opportunity, read the now famous "Clean Break" scenario painted by prominent neocons now in high positions in the U.S. government.
Naturally, the Israelis have wanted to take out the Syrians, but they have lacked the capacity to do so. Now, as in the case of Iraq, it could be that the Americans are going to do the job for them. There's been a lot of anti-Syrian rhetoric coming out of this White House, and our State Department has done everything but cut off diplomatic relations with Damascus: we have no ambassador presently in Syria, only low-level diplomatic personnel. Sanctions are hurting the always precarious Syrian economy, the Kurds are busy stirring up trouble, and now there's this news from Nation columnist Eric Alterman:
"I got a letter the other day from a faculty member at the University of Maryland's overseas division in Europe. UM is the primary university providing classes for U.S. service members abroad. Here it is:
"'The reason that I am writing today is to inform you of something rather unsettling. Last weekend, we had a Europe-wide faculty meeting at our headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. At that meeting, we were told that the U of MD military education contracts will be expanding soon to Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti, and other locations in the Middle East and Africa. This comes as no surprise.
"'What is startling is that the U.S. military has also asked us to prepare a bid for educational programs in IRAN and SYRIA (and, oddly enough, France – where we have had no presence since NATO was expelled in 1967 – probably a function of the new conservative government there). We will be bidding on an education contract to these locations at the end of November.
"'This is a truly ominous development. The U of MD overseas program follows the military around the world – thus clearly the contingencies for an occupation of several Middle Eastern countries is not only being contemplated, but actually set up.'"
That Israeli air strike at what was supposedly a Syrian "nuclear facility" portends something, but as to whether it's a U.S.-Israeli invasion is an open question. In my own view, it's not a matter of if, but when.
Somalia-Ethiopia: This was supposed to be war as it should be fought, according to the War Party here on the home front. Why, those no-nonsense Ethiopians, who have no sissy-liberal compunctions about collateral damage, would soon make short work of those pro-terrorist Somalis, but there's just one problem. The Ethiopians aren't winning. You'll remember how the neocons trotted out the old Stalinist eggs-omelet argument, in a new guise, but now we have to ask: where's the beef?
Expect this latest front in our perpetual "war on terrorism" to degenerate further, as the Ethiopian regime faces increasing opposition on the home front, where its program of repression and ethnic supremacism is not only alienating large sectors of Ethiopian society and provoking a new civil war, but also further impoverishing one of the poorest nations on earth. Addis Ababa can't even keep its own house from falling to pieces, so it's no surprise that their Somali sock puppets are at each other's throats. Another factor that could throw the rapidly deteriorating region into the spotlight is the resumption of Ethiopia's endless war with Eritrea. The U.S. has sided with the Ethiopians in the ongoing Ethiopian-Eritrean dispute, giving aid and diplomatic cover to the neocon dictator Meles Zenawi's dreams of a "Greater Ethiopia," but we may well have picked the wrong horse in that fight. The Eritreans are a fierce and proud people who have successfully fought off Ethiopian attempts to incorporate them into "Greater Ethiopia" for centuries, most recently in the late 1990s, a conflict in which 70,000 perished. Of course, the U.S. has no interest in helping the thug Zenawi subjugate his neighbors, who have clung tenaciously to their thin strip of territory on the shores of the Red Sea since independence was won from Ethiopia in 1993.
The Russian periphery: I have long believed that the next stage in the neocons' bid for empire will be a rapidly escalating assault on the remnants of Russian influence in the former Soviet Union – dressed up as yet another crusade for "democracy," Washington-style, launched by the U.S. This has so far been a political effort, typified by the various "color revolutions" that erupted in the post-Soviet periphery, from the Rose Revolution in Georgia to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution led by Viktor Yushchenko. These efforts are apparently stalled, and even suffering from a determined rollback led by nationalist forces, and the next phase is likely to be a series of low-level proxy wars between Russian-backed nationalists and U.S.-backed "democrats."
There are a number of theaters where hostilities could break out, but I'll just cover the hottest hotspots:
Georgia: As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias. Saakashvili, the great "democrat," is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party's point of view.
In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia's political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war.
Kosovo – again!: The irony of this is all too apparent to longtime readers of Antiwar.com. Virtually alone among opponents of imperialism in the U.S., we opposed the American "liberation" of Kosovo and considered U.S. support for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – a gang of drug-smuggling thugs whose control of the European heroin trade subsidized their terrorist activities against the people of Kosovo and neighboring countries – to be a war crime. As it turned out, it was the Clintonian precursor to the American sponsorship of Iraqi exile groups, such as Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, whose ersatz "intelligence" helped lie the American people into war. It is only fitting that this hotspot should get hotter even as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claims Kosovo as a model for what we ought to have done in Iraq.
The problem in Kosovo is that the "liberation" led to a reign of terror by the KLA, which burned Serbian Orthodox churches, terrorized the remnants of Serbian communities, and demanded immediate independence. On this latter demand, they managed to be contained by their NATO and U.S. allies, but that pot is about to boil over as Hashim Thaci, KLA militant and candidate of the grievously misnamed "Democratic Party," takes the presidency. Ever since the "liberation," the KLA was kept out of power by the prestige of Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo, but Rugova's death from cancer in 2006 paved the way for the thuggish Thaci to seize power – and he has.
A unilateral declaration of independence by the Thaci regime would not necessarily lead to fighting in the region, although there is that possibility. The real danger is that it will set off a chain reaction in Moscow, which will then encourage its allies in the various regions of the Russian "near abroad" to issue similar declarations: Abkhazia, Adjara (site of a Russian military base), Ossetia, and certain sections of Moldova could be granted diplomatic recognition by Russia and its allies, on the grounds that what's good for the Kosovar goose in good for the Abkhazian-Adjarian-Ossetian-Transnistrian-Gagauzian gander. This could set off a whole series of proxy wars, with the Russians backing the breakaway republics and the Americans standing with their super-centralizing satraps, such as Saakashvili.
With the arms-control treaties pioneered by Reagan and other U.S. presidents now discarded, and the Russians chafing over a missile-defense system installed in the Czech republic and Poland supposedly because of an imminent danger of an Iranian attack, this new development is particularly dangerous.
The ultimate goal of the War Party is "regime change" in the Kremlin: they long to put another one of their stooges, along the lines of Boris Yeltsin, in the drivers' seat. The problem with Yeltsin was that he couldn't stay sober long enough to do Washington's bidding. And now there is no plausible rival to the wildly popular Vladimir Putin, who has put the country back into some semblance of order. Their solution: declare Putin to be the reincarnation of Stalin and announce the death of "democracy" in the former Soviet Union. This would pave the way for a resurgence of aid to "democratic" organizations inside Russia, funneled covertly as well as overtly, and a slowly escalating series of trade sanctions designed to cripple the Russians economically, or at least make them feel the sting of Western wrath.
Invading Washington
by John Brown and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch Over the last seven years, it's often been said that George W. Bush exists in a bubble. When it comes to the cast of characters in his administration – and the Washington Consensus generally – it turns out he isn't alone. The other night I watched Harvard academic Joseph Nye and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage discuss the crisis in Pakistan with talk-show host Charlie Rose. The two of them had just finished co-chairing a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission that produced a report, clearly meant for the next administration, on wielding American "smart power" in the world.
Nye is an exceedingly conventional American internationalist; Armitage is a former "Vulcan" who, in the first years of the Bush administration, though Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department, was close to the neocons of the Pentagon, but may now be repositioning himself for a Democratic administration. They could be said to represent the heartland of the present Washington Consensus.
Yet when they talked of Pakistani autocrat Pervez Musharraf ("I mean, Musharraf has been our boy, but we've not been able to do much with it…"), of the Pakistani situation more generally ("I mean, after Musharraf, there are other secular generals…"), and of the American role there ("Well, we have to be working with both Benazir Bhutto and also with our contacts in the army to make sure this doesn't turn into chaos…," "If you do anything to help Benazir, it has to be done very quietly and behind the scenes…"), they might as well have been discussing deploying federal "smart power" to Maryland, or more appropriately, to the U.S. Territory of Guam. Conceptually, they remain deep inside Washington's Pakistan, Washington's dream of a controllable world.
The Bush administration, too, had its dreams of a controllable Pax Americana to go along with a Washington-based Pax Republicana; but, as former diplomat John Brown makes clear below, these were the most provincial of global dreams, hatched at think-tanks inside the Washington Bubblesphere. The world was re-imagined as a kind of imperial dreamscape for a go-it-alone group of armed imperial isolationists who, unlike most imperialists, couldn't even imagine a way those elsewhere could join in their imperial project. As Brown indicates, Bush and his top officials were the most bubblicious of non-diplomats. In the language of another era, they were not just Ugly Americans, but the ugliest of all – and proud of it.
But perhaps they were only extremes of the Washington norm. Perhaps Americans, even in their post-World War II high-imperial phase, were never anything but powerful provincials with little grasp of the wider world: a self-contained universe of Joseph Nyes and Richard Armitages. Perhaps if you are singularly wealthy and powerful, as the United States was from 1945 into the 1970s, the provincial blunders you make don't blow back on you for 20, 30, 40 years. Now, on the downside of hyperpowerdom, they seem to blowback in about the time it takes to play your basic 30-second ad.
We also tend to ignore how much Americans actually take their bubble with them into the world. Consider, for instance, this description from the British Guardian's David Smith on his arrival at Camp Victory, one of the monstrous "mega-bases" the Bush administration has built in Iraq. American reporters often set foot in places like this, but almost never offer such descriptions, perhaps because finding a Little America in the midst of chaos and mayhem strikes them as nothing out of the ordinary.
"I arrived at Camp Liberty, one of the main U.S. bases, and found breakfast in the 'morale area' where food facilities include a Burger King, Cinnabon, Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits, and Seattle's Best Coffee Iraq. It's a sort of pre-fab American simulacrum, Disney World meets Platoon in the desert. There's also Alterations & Embroidery, Barber, Beauty, Electronics, Gift Shop, Jewelry, Magic Island Technologies, Rug Shop, Photo Processing, and even New Car Sales. I wandered around the Bazaar, which takes credit cards but is closed on Fridays, and found kitsch mementos, hookah pipes, brass ornaments, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' rugs bearing the U.S. and Iraqi flags, and a collection of Saddam portraits and clocks. A difficult purchase to explain at customs, perhaps."
So consider with Brown just how provincial the Bush imperial moment really was. Tom
Too Parochial for Empire
The Bush administration conquers Washington
by John Brown
As I write, on a cloudy Washington afternoon, my "Bush's Last Day Countdown Keychain" tells me there are 433 days, 11 hours, 50 minutes and 41.3 seconds left before our 43rd president leaves office. Like other citizens concerned about the fate of the Republic, I wonder what the Bush legacy will be.
Many commentators have written about how the domestic politics of this administration have left the United States more divided than ever; or perhaps the unsettled illegal immigration issue is what Bush will be most remembered for – with an unfinished barrier across the U.S.-Mexican border as the main monument to his eight years in office.
To some concerned with foreign affairs, the Bush era will be remembered most for the acceleration of America's putative march to empire. Advocates of such a view highlight the exorbitant sums the U.S. has sunk into its land bases in the Middle East and Afghanistan, its massive sea power, and its all-volunteer professional army; the inordinately expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the latter being evidence that the U.S. is engaged in a ruthless effort to control the world's oil resources); the threats of possible military action against Iran (interpreted as a desire to control the Middle East in collaboration with Israel); the growing tensions with Russia, as well as the urge to maintain and expand its foothold in former Soviet areas in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (seen as a reflection of America's determination to remain the global hegemon); the increasing frictions with China (proof that the U.S. will not tolerate a competitor in Asia); the constant disagreements with the Europeans (a reminder on our part that we – not they – are the boss).
Indeed, there is little doubt that the military, economic, and cultural impact of the United States continues to be enormous. Calling this global footprint "imperial" is certainly tempting. But for a nation to be an empire, its leaders must have a plan or vision for how to deal with the rest of the world – as, arguably, Theodore Roosevelt and his entourage did with their "large policy" for American overseas dominance. Some historians cite these schemes as the beginning of an American-style empire that led to "the American century," a period that now seems so long ago and so far away. (Are we not now, in fact, living in the Anti-American Century?)
Bush and Visions of Empire
The immense (but declining) global power of the United States notwithstanding, the conceptual baggage required to engage in truly imperial ambitions has simply not been a part of the Bush administration's mindset. This remains so despite its assembly-line-style production of countless "national security" reports on a vast range of global security matters – committee-written, unreadable documents marked by a total lack of intellectual coherence or clear direction. These can, if anything, be seen as a collective "cover-up" for the administration's obvious lack of thought beyond the here-and-now.
To be sure, no imperial plan is ever perfectly framed or implemented (as Theodore Roosevelt himself realized), but the Bush administration's version of such now appears to have been remarkably without rhyme or reason – on, in fact, an automatic pilot, driven by a self-aggrandizing Pentagon budgetary process and "priorities" strikingly determined by shifting domestic politics (what congressional district or crony corporation had put in the best, or most influential, bid for a base, military-style activity, or war-production plant). True, our generals remain engaged in the fearsome-sounding "Global War on Terror" by order of the White House – but this has proven a helter-skelter example of global confusion, regularly renamed by an administration clueless about what its "war" really is.
Put another way, the Bush administration was never able to define, shape, or direct in an "imperial" fashion the powerful forces, negative and positive, stemming from various segments of American society that do so much to determine the destiny of our planet. (This may have been inevitable, given the contentious nature of American democracy.) As for the once-dynamic duo who characterized much of this administration – Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and those clustered around their "offices") – the only "empire" that really counted for them was the parochial world of Washington, D.C., with its lobbyists, bureaucrats, politicians, and assorted supporting think-tankers, all absorbed in their petty turf-wars about who among them would get government money for their minions and projects, overseas or at home. This was the narcissistic province that the vice president and secretary of defense had the urge to dominate with their "unitary executive," "wartime," commander-in-chief presidency and the foreign wars that made it all possible. Developments outside the U.S., however, mattered largely to the extent that they helped in the aggrandizement of their own power, their fiefdoms, and those of their cronies, on the banks of the Potomac.
The President and His Diplomats
To make some sense of all this, let's start at the top. With his utter lack of experience in foreign-affairs and complete lack of curiosity about the outside world (with the possible exception of Mexico), George W. Bush was incapable of having a global vision himself, imperial or otherwise. In the words of commentator William Pfaff, "Bush is happy deciding, even though he knows nothing." The president's major foreign-policy decision – to invade Iraq – was certainly not based on any understanding of the global implications of what he was doing (including, conceivably, expanding an empire). It was taken for reasons that still remain unclear, but may have ranged from his tortuous relationship with his father to his desire to portray himself as a decisive commander in chief to the American electorate. Perhaps, to use his words, the former cheerleader frat boy just wanted to "kick ass" overseas to show the media, voters, and possibly even himself, that he was doing something other than sitting in the Oval Office preaching the virtues of compassionate conservatism.
Kicking ass – playing cowboys and Indians with the world, as little boys once did on playroom floors or in backyards – has remarkably little to do, however, with anything that might once have been defined as imperial planning or the knowledge necessary to implement such plans. For example, a year after his "axis of evil" State of the Union Address, when informed by Iraqi exiles that there were both Sunnis and Shi'ites in their country, "emperor" Bush allegedly responded that he thought "the Iraqis were Muslims." (No way, after all, that you can tell those Indian tribes apart!) And what better summarizes George W. Bush's preparation for putative empire building than the following nugget from the 2000 presidential campaign season, as related by Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times:
"When a writer for Glamour Magazine recently uttered the word 'Taliban' – the regime in Afghanistan that follows an extreme and repressive version of Islamic law – during a verbal Rorschach test, Mr. Bush could only shake his head in silence. It was only after the writer gave him a hint ('repression of women in Afghanistan') that Mr. Bush replied, 'Oh. I thought you said some band. The Taliban in Afghanistan! Absolutely. Repressive.'"
Given the tabula rasa in Bush's mind regarding the world outside "the homeland" (a word his administration has regrettably contributed to the American language), it is hardly surprising that he selected as his main foreign policy advisers two people with very limited global visions of their own: Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor and, as Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Rice herself admitted in 2000 that, as a "Europeanist," "I've been pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope"; and Powell's qualifications were based on his military savvy – and loyalty – not his geopolitical perspectives. The general, as Bill Keller of the New York Times reported in 2001, was "a problem solver, not a visionary."
As became clear after the horror of 9/11 – a foreign policy failure of the first order, if ever there was one, that no "empire" in its right mind would have allowed – Rice and Powell essentially became talking-point briefers on day-to-day events they had not foreseen and did not control. Compare them to Henry Kissinger, who held each of their positions at some point in his White House career. A cynical maneuverer who may not have been to everyone's liking, he nonetheless worked in the realm of global strategy. In the way he attempted to play off the Soviet Union against China in relation to the Vietnam War, he was an imperial planner of the first order (if not always with the greatest success). Contrast his meaty books on Metternich and on nuclear weapons to the sole tome that Rice authored by herself – a bland monograph on the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak army, 1948-1983, excoriated by the scholarly American Historical Review in 1985. What her sad little historical "study" demonstrated, if anything at all, was that Rice was, from scratch, anything but a geopolitician of Soviet – or any other – affairs.
Had Rice and Powell been capable of a global imperial vision – or even of grasping essential global cause and effect – they doubtless would have advised their president that his much-desired Mesopotamian (mis)adventure was bound to be a bloody, costly imperial mess. With certain down-to-earth military smarts, Powell may have sensed this, but evidently he lacked the nerve (or was it intellectual inclination?) to ask the simple questions at White House meetings that would have been the key to any imperial decision-making process: "Why exactly are we doing this?" "Is it really in our interests to invade a third-world country thousands of miles from our shores?" Or, put another way: "How does this invasion preserve or expand the American empire"?
All the President's Men: Cheney and Rumsfeld
According to some commentators, when it came to the American ascendancy abroad, the real powers behind (or in) the White House were Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who had been collaborators ever since the distant Ford administration. Some argue that they – and their neocon poodle and second-in-command at the Defense Department, Paul Wolfowitz, as well as assorted neocons once linked to the Likud Party in Israel and the Christian Right in the U.S. – were the true framers of a Bush empire.
To be sure, Rumsfeld was an early member of the Project for the New American Century and no doubt had ideas – or perhaps simply fantasies masquerading as ideas – about a more aggressive use of American military strength throughout the world. Cheney's former position as CEO of Halliburton and his connections with large corporations certainly made him the prime imperial candidate for considering global energy flows and eyeing Iraq as one vast oil field just waiting to be seized, one more country with must-have natural resources for the American imperium.
Even if the duo were eager indeed to expand U.S. influence and resources overseas, as veterans of countless Washington partisan and personal battles, what really got their aged blood flowing was the sleazy, vindictive inside-the-Beltway world of Washington, D.C. Rumsfeld's utter inability to focus on post-invasion planning in Iraq was in itself strong evidence that what happened there ("events" which he so often simply made up) was of secondary concern. Iraq – or success in that country – was indeed important but mainly to the extent that it heightened his profile as a monster player in Washington.
For both Cheney and Rumsfeld, it was the imperial capital, not the empire itself that really mattered. There, "war" would mean the loosing of a commander-in-chief presidency unchecked by Congress, courts, anything – which meant power in the only world that mattered to them. War in the provinces was their ticket to renewed prominence within D.C.'s self-absorbed biosphere, a kind of lost space station far removed from Mother Earth, and a place where they had long-standing, unfinished accounts – both personal and political – to settle. "Foreign policy," in other words, was an excuse for war in a far-off country that 63 percent of American youth between the ages of 18 and 24 could not, according to a National Geographic survey, find on a map of the Middle East. That, in turn, would make both the vice president and secretary of defense (for a while) little caesars in the only place that mattered, Washington, D.C.
If Saddam and assorted terrorists were enemies, they weren't the ones who really mattered. In the realest war of all, the one on the banks of the Potomac, Cheney and Rumsfeld were, above all, targeting those symbols of American internationalism that they had grown to despise in their previous Washington stays – the State Department and the CIA – perhaps because those organizations, at their best, aspired to see how the world looked at the United States, and not just how the United States could dismiss the world. Just as Bush "kicked ass" in Iraq, so Cheney and Rumsfeld used Iraq to "kick ass" among the striped-pants weenies at Foggy Bottom and the eggheads in the intelligence community. (Consider Cheney's treatment of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who questioned the validity of the administration's claim about Saddam Hussein's search for uranium yellowcake in Niger in the late 1990s.) In toppling Iraq, the "imperial" aim of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their foreign policy "experts" and acolytes was to raise the flag of their own power high above Washington, D.C., while discrediting and humiliating those in the foreign-policy profession interested in the outside world for itself, those willing to consider how it related to actual U.S. national interests, not fantasy ones, and who therefore dared to question the goals and intentions of the dynamic duo.
To see how Washington-centered this cast of characters actually was, just recall the secretary of defense's self-glorifying press conferences in his post-invasion heyday, when he played the strutting comedian. In that period, Rumsfeld, venerated by, among others, aging neocon Midge Decter in a swooning biography, was the king of the heap and visibly loving every second of it. Front-page headlines in the imperial capital were what counted, never the reality of Iraq; any more than it did when George W. Bush strutted that aircraft-carrier deck in his military get-up for his "mission accomplished" moment, launching (against a picturesque backdrop of sailors and war) Campaign 2004 at home. Poor Iraq. It was the butt of the imperial joke, as was – for a while – the rest of the outside world.
Political theorist Benjamin Barber caught the Bush foreign-policy moment perfectly. The U.S., he wrote, made "foreign policy to indulge a host of domestic concerns and self-celebratory varieties of hidebound insularity. The United States remains a hegemonic global superpower sporting the narrow outlook of mini-states like Monaco and Liechtenstein."
In the end, the Bush administration is likely to be remembered not for a failed imperialism, but a failed parochialism, an inability to perceive a world beyond the Washington of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, beyond George W. Bush's national security "homeland." That may be the president's ultimate legacy.
John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer who resigned from the State Department over the planned war in Iraq, compiles a near-daily Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, available free by requesting it at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com.
Copyright 2007 John Brown
by John Brown and Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch Over the last seven years, it's often been said that George W. Bush exists in a bubble. When it comes to the cast of characters in his administration – and the Washington Consensus generally – it turns out he isn't alone. The other night I watched Harvard academic Joseph Nye and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage discuss the crisis in Pakistan with talk-show host Charlie Rose. The two of them had just finished co-chairing a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission that produced a report, clearly meant for the next administration, on wielding American "smart power" in the world.
Nye is an exceedingly conventional American internationalist; Armitage is a former "Vulcan" who, in the first years of the Bush administration, though Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department, was close to the neocons of the Pentagon, but may now be repositioning himself for a Democratic administration. They could be said to represent the heartland of the present Washington Consensus.
Yet when they talked of Pakistani autocrat Pervez Musharraf ("I mean, Musharraf has been our boy, but we've not been able to do much with it…"), of the Pakistani situation more generally ("I mean, after Musharraf, there are other secular generals…"), and of the American role there ("Well, we have to be working with both Benazir Bhutto and also with our contacts in the army to make sure this doesn't turn into chaos…," "If you do anything to help Benazir, it has to be done very quietly and behind the scenes…"), they might as well have been discussing deploying federal "smart power" to Maryland, or more appropriately, to the U.S. Territory of Guam. Conceptually, they remain deep inside Washington's Pakistan, Washington's dream of a controllable world.
The Bush administration, too, had its dreams of a controllable Pax Americana to go along with a Washington-based Pax Republicana; but, as former diplomat John Brown makes clear below, these were the most provincial of global dreams, hatched at think-tanks inside the Washington Bubblesphere. The world was re-imagined as a kind of imperial dreamscape for a go-it-alone group of armed imperial isolationists who, unlike most imperialists, couldn't even imagine a way those elsewhere could join in their imperial project. As Brown indicates, Bush and his top officials were the most bubblicious of non-diplomats. In the language of another era, they were not just Ugly Americans, but the ugliest of all – and proud of it.
But perhaps they were only extremes of the Washington norm. Perhaps Americans, even in their post-World War II high-imperial phase, were never anything but powerful provincials with little grasp of the wider world: a self-contained universe of Joseph Nyes and Richard Armitages. Perhaps if you are singularly wealthy and powerful, as the United States was from 1945 into the 1970s, the provincial blunders you make don't blow back on you for 20, 30, 40 years. Now, on the downside of hyperpowerdom, they seem to blowback in about the time it takes to play your basic 30-second ad.
We also tend to ignore how much Americans actually take their bubble with them into the world. Consider, for instance, this description from the British Guardian's David Smith on his arrival at Camp Victory, one of the monstrous "mega-bases" the Bush administration has built in Iraq. American reporters often set foot in places like this, but almost never offer such descriptions, perhaps because finding a Little America in the midst of chaos and mayhem strikes them as nothing out of the ordinary.
"I arrived at Camp Liberty, one of the main U.S. bases, and found breakfast in the 'morale area' where food facilities include a Burger King, Cinnabon, Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits, and Seattle's Best Coffee Iraq. It's a sort of pre-fab American simulacrum, Disney World meets Platoon in the desert. There's also Alterations & Embroidery, Barber, Beauty, Electronics, Gift Shop, Jewelry, Magic Island Technologies, Rug Shop, Photo Processing, and even New Car Sales. I wandered around the Bazaar, which takes credit cards but is closed on Fridays, and found kitsch mementos, hookah pipes, brass ornaments, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' rugs bearing the U.S. and Iraqi flags, and a collection of Saddam portraits and clocks. A difficult purchase to explain at customs, perhaps."
So consider with Brown just how provincial the Bush imperial moment really was. Tom
Too Parochial for Empire
The Bush administration conquers Washington
by John Brown
As I write, on a cloudy Washington afternoon, my "Bush's Last Day Countdown Keychain" tells me there are 433 days, 11 hours, 50 minutes and 41.3 seconds left before our 43rd president leaves office. Like other citizens concerned about the fate of the Republic, I wonder what the Bush legacy will be.
Many commentators have written about how the domestic politics of this administration have left the United States more divided than ever; or perhaps the unsettled illegal immigration issue is what Bush will be most remembered for – with an unfinished barrier across the U.S.-Mexican border as the main monument to his eight years in office.
To some concerned with foreign affairs, the Bush era will be remembered most for the acceleration of America's putative march to empire. Advocates of such a view highlight the exorbitant sums the U.S. has sunk into its land bases in the Middle East and Afghanistan, its massive sea power, and its all-volunteer professional army; the inordinately expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the latter being evidence that the U.S. is engaged in a ruthless effort to control the world's oil resources); the threats of possible military action against Iran (interpreted as a desire to control the Middle East in collaboration with Israel); the growing tensions with Russia, as well as the urge to maintain and expand its foothold in former Soviet areas in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (seen as a reflection of America's determination to remain the global hegemon); the increasing frictions with China (proof that the U.S. will not tolerate a competitor in Asia); the constant disagreements with the Europeans (a reminder on our part that we – not they – are the boss).
Indeed, there is little doubt that the military, economic, and cultural impact of the United States continues to be enormous. Calling this global footprint "imperial" is certainly tempting. But for a nation to be an empire, its leaders must have a plan or vision for how to deal with the rest of the world – as, arguably, Theodore Roosevelt and his entourage did with their "large policy" for American overseas dominance. Some historians cite these schemes as the beginning of an American-style empire that led to "the American century," a period that now seems so long ago and so far away. (Are we not now, in fact, living in the Anti-American Century?)
Bush and Visions of Empire
The immense (but declining) global power of the United States notwithstanding, the conceptual baggage required to engage in truly imperial ambitions has simply not been a part of the Bush administration's mindset. This remains so despite its assembly-line-style production of countless "national security" reports on a vast range of global security matters – committee-written, unreadable documents marked by a total lack of intellectual coherence or clear direction. These can, if anything, be seen as a collective "cover-up" for the administration's obvious lack of thought beyond the here-and-now.
To be sure, no imperial plan is ever perfectly framed or implemented (as Theodore Roosevelt himself realized), but the Bush administration's version of such now appears to have been remarkably without rhyme or reason – on, in fact, an automatic pilot, driven by a self-aggrandizing Pentagon budgetary process and "priorities" strikingly determined by shifting domestic politics (what congressional district or crony corporation had put in the best, or most influential, bid for a base, military-style activity, or war-production plant). True, our generals remain engaged in the fearsome-sounding "Global War on Terror" by order of the White House – but this has proven a helter-skelter example of global confusion, regularly renamed by an administration clueless about what its "war" really is.
Put another way, the Bush administration was never able to define, shape, or direct in an "imperial" fashion the powerful forces, negative and positive, stemming from various segments of American society that do so much to determine the destiny of our planet. (This may have been inevitable, given the contentious nature of American democracy.) As for the once-dynamic duo who characterized much of this administration – Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and those clustered around their "offices") – the only "empire" that really counted for them was the parochial world of Washington, D.C., with its lobbyists, bureaucrats, politicians, and assorted supporting think-tankers, all absorbed in their petty turf-wars about who among them would get government money for their minions and projects, overseas or at home. This was the narcissistic province that the vice president and secretary of defense had the urge to dominate with their "unitary executive," "wartime," commander-in-chief presidency and the foreign wars that made it all possible. Developments outside the U.S., however, mattered largely to the extent that they helped in the aggrandizement of their own power, their fiefdoms, and those of their cronies, on the banks of the Potomac.
The President and His Diplomats
To make some sense of all this, let's start at the top. With his utter lack of experience in foreign-affairs and complete lack of curiosity about the outside world (with the possible exception of Mexico), George W. Bush was incapable of having a global vision himself, imperial or otherwise. In the words of commentator William Pfaff, "Bush is happy deciding, even though he knows nothing." The president's major foreign-policy decision – to invade Iraq – was certainly not based on any understanding of the global implications of what he was doing (including, conceivably, expanding an empire). It was taken for reasons that still remain unclear, but may have ranged from his tortuous relationship with his father to his desire to portray himself as a decisive commander in chief to the American electorate. Perhaps, to use his words, the former cheerleader frat boy just wanted to "kick ass" overseas to show the media, voters, and possibly even himself, that he was doing something other than sitting in the Oval Office preaching the virtues of compassionate conservatism.
Kicking ass – playing cowboys and Indians with the world, as little boys once did on playroom floors or in backyards – has remarkably little to do, however, with anything that might once have been defined as imperial planning or the knowledge necessary to implement such plans. For example, a year after his "axis of evil" State of the Union Address, when informed by Iraqi exiles that there were both Sunnis and Shi'ites in their country, "emperor" Bush allegedly responded that he thought "the Iraqis were Muslims." (No way, after all, that you can tell those Indian tribes apart!) And what better summarizes George W. Bush's preparation for putative empire building than the following nugget from the 2000 presidential campaign season, as related by Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times:
"When a writer for Glamour Magazine recently uttered the word 'Taliban' – the regime in Afghanistan that follows an extreme and repressive version of Islamic law – during a verbal Rorschach test, Mr. Bush could only shake his head in silence. It was only after the writer gave him a hint ('repression of women in Afghanistan') that Mr. Bush replied, 'Oh. I thought you said some band. The Taliban in Afghanistan! Absolutely. Repressive.'"
Given the tabula rasa in Bush's mind regarding the world outside "the homeland" (a word his administration has regrettably contributed to the American language), it is hardly surprising that he selected as his main foreign policy advisers two people with very limited global visions of their own: Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor and, as Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Rice herself admitted in 2000 that, as a "Europeanist," "I've been pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope"; and Powell's qualifications were based on his military savvy – and loyalty – not his geopolitical perspectives. The general, as Bill Keller of the New York Times reported in 2001, was "a problem solver, not a visionary."
As became clear after the horror of 9/11 – a foreign policy failure of the first order, if ever there was one, that no "empire" in its right mind would have allowed – Rice and Powell essentially became talking-point briefers on day-to-day events they had not foreseen and did not control. Compare them to Henry Kissinger, who held each of their positions at some point in his White House career. A cynical maneuverer who may not have been to everyone's liking, he nonetheless worked in the realm of global strategy. In the way he attempted to play off the Soviet Union against China in relation to the Vietnam War, he was an imperial planner of the first order (if not always with the greatest success). Contrast his meaty books on Metternich and on nuclear weapons to the sole tome that Rice authored by herself – a bland monograph on the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak army, 1948-1983, excoriated by the scholarly American Historical Review in 1985. What her sad little historical "study" demonstrated, if anything at all, was that Rice was, from scratch, anything but a geopolitician of Soviet – or any other – affairs.
Had Rice and Powell been capable of a global imperial vision – or even of grasping essential global cause and effect – they doubtless would have advised their president that his much-desired Mesopotamian (mis)adventure was bound to be a bloody, costly imperial mess. With certain down-to-earth military smarts, Powell may have sensed this, but evidently he lacked the nerve (or was it intellectual inclination?) to ask the simple questions at White House meetings that would have been the key to any imperial decision-making process: "Why exactly are we doing this?" "Is it really in our interests to invade a third-world country thousands of miles from our shores?" Or, put another way: "How does this invasion preserve or expand the American empire"?
All the President's Men: Cheney and Rumsfeld
According to some commentators, when it came to the American ascendancy abroad, the real powers behind (or in) the White House were Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who had been collaborators ever since the distant Ford administration. Some argue that they – and their neocon poodle and second-in-command at the Defense Department, Paul Wolfowitz, as well as assorted neocons once linked to the Likud Party in Israel and the Christian Right in the U.S. – were the true framers of a Bush empire.
To be sure, Rumsfeld was an early member of the Project for the New American Century and no doubt had ideas – or perhaps simply fantasies masquerading as ideas – about a more aggressive use of American military strength throughout the world. Cheney's former position as CEO of Halliburton and his connections with large corporations certainly made him the prime imperial candidate for considering global energy flows and eyeing Iraq as one vast oil field just waiting to be seized, one more country with must-have natural resources for the American imperium.
Even if the duo were eager indeed to expand U.S. influence and resources overseas, as veterans of countless Washington partisan and personal battles, what really got their aged blood flowing was the sleazy, vindictive inside-the-Beltway world of Washington, D.C. Rumsfeld's utter inability to focus on post-invasion planning in Iraq was in itself strong evidence that what happened there ("events" which he so often simply made up) was of secondary concern. Iraq – or success in that country – was indeed important but mainly to the extent that it heightened his profile as a monster player in Washington.
For both Cheney and Rumsfeld, it was the imperial capital, not the empire itself that really mattered. There, "war" would mean the loosing of a commander-in-chief presidency unchecked by Congress, courts, anything – which meant power in the only world that mattered to them. War in the provinces was their ticket to renewed prominence within D.C.'s self-absorbed biosphere, a kind of lost space station far removed from Mother Earth, and a place where they had long-standing, unfinished accounts – both personal and political – to settle. "Foreign policy," in other words, was an excuse for war in a far-off country that 63 percent of American youth between the ages of 18 and 24 could not, according to a National Geographic survey, find on a map of the Middle East. That, in turn, would make both the vice president and secretary of defense (for a while) little caesars in the only place that mattered, Washington, D.C.
If Saddam and assorted terrorists were enemies, they weren't the ones who really mattered. In the realest war of all, the one on the banks of the Potomac, Cheney and Rumsfeld were, above all, targeting those symbols of American internationalism that they had grown to despise in their previous Washington stays – the State Department and the CIA – perhaps because those organizations, at their best, aspired to see how the world looked at the United States, and not just how the United States could dismiss the world. Just as Bush "kicked ass" in Iraq, so Cheney and Rumsfeld used Iraq to "kick ass" among the striped-pants weenies at Foggy Bottom and the eggheads in the intelligence community. (Consider Cheney's treatment of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who questioned the validity of the administration's claim about Saddam Hussein's search for uranium yellowcake in Niger in the late 1990s.) In toppling Iraq, the "imperial" aim of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their foreign policy "experts" and acolytes was to raise the flag of their own power high above Washington, D.C., while discrediting and humiliating those in the foreign-policy profession interested in the outside world for itself, those willing to consider how it related to actual U.S. national interests, not fantasy ones, and who therefore dared to question the goals and intentions of the dynamic duo.
To see how Washington-centered this cast of characters actually was, just recall the secretary of defense's self-glorifying press conferences in his post-invasion heyday, when he played the strutting comedian. In that period, Rumsfeld, venerated by, among others, aging neocon Midge Decter in a swooning biography, was the king of the heap and visibly loving every second of it. Front-page headlines in the imperial capital were what counted, never the reality of Iraq; any more than it did when George W. Bush strutted that aircraft-carrier deck in his military get-up for his "mission accomplished" moment, launching (against a picturesque backdrop of sailors and war) Campaign 2004 at home. Poor Iraq. It was the butt of the imperial joke, as was – for a while – the rest of the outside world.
Political theorist Benjamin Barber caught the Bush foreign-policy moment perfectly. The U.S., he wrote, made "foreign policy to indulge a host of domestic concerns and self-celebratory varieties of hidebound insularity. The United States remains a hegemonic global superpower sporting the narrow outlook of mini-states like Monaco and Liechtenstein."
In the end, the Bush administration is likely to be remembered not for a failed imperialism, but a failed parochialism, an inability to perceive a world beyond the Washington of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, beyond George W. Bush's national security "homeland." That may be the president's ultimate legacy.
John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer who resigned from the State Department over the planned war in Iraq, compiles a near-daily Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, available free by requesting it at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com.
Copyright 2007 John Brown
Inside Track: Fred Thompson’s Defense Diatribe by Ted Galen Carpenter
11.15.2007
EMAIL ARTICLE | PRINTER FRIENDLY
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson may have set a modern record for the amount of sloppy thinking on defense policy in a single speech. In remarks at the Citadel on Tuesday, Thompson proposed measures for a “revitalized” national defense.
The chief “pillar” of Thompson’s proposal is that the United States should not spend less than 4.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense—not including the vast sums committed each year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another crucial pillar is that the U.S. should expand Army and Marine Corps to form a “million-member” force.
4.5 percent of GDP is an astonishingly large sum. The U.S. already spends as much on the military as the rest of the world combined, but even that vast outlay apparently does not satisfy Thompson and others who want to lavish more money on the Pentagon. Under his plan—and a similar scheme advanced by the Heritage Foundation earlier this year— the U.S. military budget would soar by nearly $100 billion. The total would approach $600 billion—plus at least another $150 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Worse, the 4.5 percent figure is a floor; the actual defense budget of a Thompson administration could be even more.
Thompson’s approach turns proper defense budgeting on its head. Instead of crafting a defense strategy and then determining how much we need to spend to implement it, Thompson picks an arbitrary budget figure. He would apparently decide on policy priorities later.
To the extent he thinks about the specifics of security strategy at all, Thompson uncritically accepts all of Washington’s current defense commitments. But there are numerous obligations that reek of obsolescence. Why, for example, does the United States need to keep nearly 100,000 troops in Europe more than 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Similarly, why do we need to retain our security commitment to South Korea? When we made that pledge, South Korea was an impoverished country incapable of defending itself, and the Korean peninsula was only one theater in America’s global struggle against communism. Today, South Korea has twice the population and an economy 40 times bigger than that of its North Korean rival. It seems absurd on its face to continue subsidizing the defense of such a prosperous and capable country -- especially when it is no longer part of a global security rivalry.
Yet there is no hint in Thompson’s defense manifesto that he is willing to consider terminating—or even downsizing—such obsolete commitments. Setting military spending at so high a level spares policymakers from having to make decisions about priorities. Instead, it encourages complacent, lazy thinking about strategy.
The second crucial pillar of Thompson’s proposal—the million-member ground force— may be even more worrisome than the overall spending figure. Due to its geographic position and technological prowess, America needs to focus on air and naval power to protect its legitimate security interests. A large ground force makes little strategic sense. The United States is not likely to wage a ground war against China, Russia or any other conceivable major strategic adversary.
Consequently, a million-member ground force is superfluous, unless Thompson is contemplating involving the United States in additional Iraq-style nation-building missions. But that is the last thing America needs to do. We have already spent a tragic amount of blood and treasure—nearly 3,900 casualties and well over $500 billion—in the Iraq misadventure. For the United States to pursue similar missions in the future would be an exercise in foreign policy masochism.
Thompson’s defense proposal is a case study in faulty thinking about important security issues. Throwing money at the Pentagon, complacently accepting a host of obsolete commitments to free-riding allies and embracing the folly of nation building is not what the next administration needs to do.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of seven books on international affairs. His next book, Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America, will be published in 2008.
11.15.2007
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Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson may have set a modern record for the amount of sloppy thinking on defense policy in a single speech. In remarks at the Citadel on Tuesday, Thompson proposed measures for a “revitalized” national defense.
The chief “pillar” of Thompson’s proposal is that the United States should not spend less than 4.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense—not including the vast sums committed each year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another crucial pillar is that the U.S. should expand Army and Marine Corps to form a “million-member” force.
4.5 percent of GDP is an astonishingly large sum. The U.S. already spends as much on the military as the rest of the world combined, but even that vast outlay apparently does not satisfy Thompson and others who want to lavish more money on the Pentagon. Under his plan—and a similar scheme advanced by the Heritage Foundation earlier this year— the U.S. military budget would soar by nearly $100 billion. The total would approach $600 billion—plus at least another $150 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Worse, the 4.5 percent figure is a floor; the actual defense budget of a Thompson administration could be even more.
Thompson’s approach turns proper defense budgeting on its head. Instead of crafting a defense strategy and then determining how much we need to spend to implement it, Thompson picks an arbitrary budget figure. He would apparently decide on policy priorities later.
To the extent he thinks about the specifics of security strategy at all, Thompson uncritically accepts all of Washington’s current defense commitments. But there are numerous obligations that reek of obsolescence. Why, for example, does the United States need to keep nearly 100,000 troops in Europe more than 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Similarly, why do we need to retain our security commitment to South Korea? When we made that pledge, South Korea was an impoverished country incapable of defending itself, and the Korean peninsula was only one theater in America’s global struggle against communism. Today, South Korea has twice the population and an economy 40 times bigger than that of its North Korean rival. It seems absurd on its face to continue subsidizing the defense of such a prosperous and capable country -- especially when it is no longer part of a global security rivalry.
Yet there is no hint in Thompson’s defense manifesto that he is willing to consider terminating—or even downsizing—such obsolete commitments. Setting military spending at so high a level spares policymakers from having to make decisions about priorities. Instead, it encourages complacent, lazy thinking about strategy.
The second crucial pillar of Thompson’s proposal—the million-member ground force— may be even more worrisome than the overall spending figure. Due to its geographic position and technological prowess, America needs to focus on air and naval power to protect its legitimate security interests. A large ground force makes little strategic sense. The United States is not likely to wage a ground war against China, Russia or any other conceivable major strategic adversary.
Consequently, a million-member ground force is superfluous, unless Thompson is contemplating involving the United States in additional Iraq-style nation-building missions. But that is the last thing America needs to do. We have already spent a tragic amount of blood and treasure—nearly 3,900 casualties and well over $500 billion—in the Iraq misadventure. For the United States to pursue similar missions in the future would be an exercise in foreign policy masochism.
Thompson’s defense proposal is a case study in faulty thinking about important security issues. Throwing money at the Pentagon, complacently accepting a host of obsolete commitments to free-riding allies and embracing the folly of nation building is not what the next administration needs to do.
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of seven books on international affairs. His next book, Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America, will be published in 2008.
Crime, Drugs, Welfare--& Other Good News - Wehner & Levin, Commentary
Restore Leadership, Rebuild Middle Class - Hillary Clinton, DM Register
Rapid Response Speeds Up - Mike Allen & Jonathan Martin, The Politico
Which Dem is the Real Change Candidate? - E. J. Dionne, Washington Post
The New Fire in Fred's Belly - Larry Kudlow, RealClearPolitics
Can Bloomberg Fill JFK-Sized Hole? - Mort Kondracke, Roll Call
Miracle of Plenty - Rich Lowry, National Review
The Supreme Court's Wrong Turn - Edward Kennedy, American Prospect
Income Confusion - Thomas Sowell, RealClearPolitics
Keeping Faith With Colombia - Barry McCaffrey, Washington Post
The Annapolis Fiasco - Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal
Bush Fails as Mideast Marriage Broker - HDS Greenway, Boston Globe
Give Thanks for Good News from Iraq - Christopher Hitchens, Slate
Life Has Gotten Better in Baghdad - Rod Nordland, Newsweek
Violence in Iraq Continues to Drop - Buckley & Gordon, New York Times
Bush's Foreign Policy Disaster & The GOP - George Packer, The New Yorker
Dems Increasingly "Jumpy" on Illegals - June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal
Restore Leadership, Rebuild Middle Class - Hillary Clinton, DM Register
Rapid Response Speeds Up - Mike Allen & Jonathan Martin, The Politico
Which Dem is the Real Change Candidate? - E. J. Dionne, Washington Post
The New Fire in Fred's Belly - Larry Kudlow, RealClearPolitics
Can Bloomberg Fill JFK-Sized Hole? - Mort Kondracke, Roll Call
Miracle of Plenty - Rich Lowry, National Review
The Supreme Court's Wrong Turn - Edward Kennedy, American Prospect
Income Confusion - Thomas Sowell, RealClearPolitics
Keeping Faith With Colombia - Barry McCaffrey, Washington Post
The Annapolis Fiasco - Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal
Bush Fails as Mideast Marriage Broker - HDS Greenway, Boston Globe
Give Thanks for Good News from Iraq - Christopher Hitchens, Slate
Life Has Gotten Better in Baghdad - Rod Nordland, Newsweek
Violence in Iraq Continues to Drop - Buckley & Gordon, New York Times
Bush's Foreign Policy Disaster & The GOP - George Packer, The New Yorker
Dems Increasingly "Jumpy" on Illegals - June Kronholz, Wall Street Journal
Keeping Americans in Their Homes - New York Times
Oklahoma Democrats Attempt to Jail Their Political Opponents - WSJ
Taxing Wealth & Reviving Unions Will Be a Good Start - The Nation
Yeah, They're Illegals - New Hampshire Union Leader
Tom Kean Endorsing McCain In New Push - The Politico
Immigration Is the Question - Wall Street Journal
Obama's Campaign Has a New Wrinkle - Los Angeles Times
McCain Takes On Clinton, With an Eye to Civility - New York Times
The Two-Man Republican Race - John Podhoretz, Contentions
Dems Still Stumbling on National Security - Joe Klein, Time
In FDR, My Dad Had a Friend in the White House - Bill Moyers, The Nation
Hillary's Faux Experience - Tony Blankley, Washington Times
The Issues That Will Decide the '08 Race - Mitt Romney, Human Events
They Should All Give a 'Mormon Speech' - Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix
Lawyers, Guns & Washington - Glenn Reynolds, New York Post
Putin's Version of Democracy - Simon Tisdall, The Guardian
The United Nations is Always Right - Maggie Gallagher, Universal Press
Politics Nation: New Hampshire Sets Primary Date for January 8 Nixon 1968, Clinton 2008 - John Ellis, RealClearPolitics
How Hillary Got Her Rove Back - Jason Horowitz, New York Observer
Who's the Inexperienced One, Hillary? - Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Huckabee Makes Crucial Gains Among GOP Base - Jake Tapper, ABC News
Instill Hope, Support Strong Families - Mike Huckabee, DM Register
Some Thanksgiving For Everyone - Reid Wilson, RealClearPolitics
Iraq: What Went Right - Ralph Peters, New York Post
Good Iraq News Isn't All Good - David Ignatius, Washington Post
Debating Iraq's Transition - Thomas Friedman, New York Times
Bush's Warning: Patience - Kathleen Parker, RealClearPolitics
The Perils of Engagement - Jeff Robbins, Wall Street Journal
A Powder Keg in Lebanon - Milton Viorst, Los Angeles Times
Krugman vs. Krugman - Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
Trade Backlash Shapes Election - Deborah Solomon & Greg Hitt, WSJ
Credit Crunch Will Impact '08 - Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
Who Will Pick Up Pieces if US Enters Recession? - Martin Wolf, FT
The Tragedy of the Commons - John Stossel, RealClearPolitics
Dems Still Stumbling on National Security - Joe Klein, Time
In FDR, My Dad Had a Friend in the White House - Bill Moyers, The Nation
Hillary's Faux Experience - Tony Blankley, Washington Times
The Issues That Will Decide the '08 Race - Mitt Romney, Human Events
They Should All Give a 'Mormon Speech' - Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix
Lawyers, Guns & Washington - Glenn Reynolds, New York Post
Putin's Version of Democracy - Simon Tisdall, The Guardian
The United Nations is Always Right - Maggie Gallagher, Universal Press
Politics Nation: New Hampshire Sets Primary Date for January 8 Nixon 1968, Clinton 2008 - John Ellis, RealClearPolitics
How Hillary Got Her Rove Back - Jason Horowitz, New York Observer
Who's the Inexperienced One, Hillary? - Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Huckabee Makes Crucial Gains Among GOP Base - Jake Tapper, ABC News
Instill Hope, Support Strong Families - Mike Huckabee, DM Register
Some Thanksgiving For Everyone - Reid Wilson, RealClearPolitics
Iraq: What Went Right - Ralph Peters, New York Post
Good Iraq News Isn't All Good - David Ignatius, Washington Post
Debating Iraq's Transition - Thomas Friedman, New York Times
Bush's Warning: Patience - Kathleen Parker, RealClearPolitics
The Perils of Engagement - Jeff Robbins, Wall Street Journal
A Powder Keg in Lebanon - Milton Viorst, Los Angeles Times
Krugman vs. Krugman - Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
Trade Backlash Shapes Election - Deborah Solomon & Greg Hitt, WSJ
Credit Crunch Will Impact '08 - Robert Samuelson, Newsweek
Who Will Pick Up Pieces if US Enters Recession? - Martin Wolf, FT
The Tragedy of the Commons - John Stossel, RealClearPolitics
Tackling the Gun Debate Head-on - Washington Times
The Court and the Second Amendment - New York Times
Municipal ID's For Illegals a Step Too Far? - San Francisco Chronicle
Hillary's Record - Investor's Business Daily
Republican Faithful Await a Savior in Iowa - Washington Post
For Edwards, a Relationship That Never Quite Fit - New York Times
Stem-cell Findings May Affect '08 Vote - Washington Times
Obama Unveils $18B Education Plan - USA Today
The Court and the Second Amendment - New York Times
Municipal ID's For Illegals a Step Too Far? - San Francisco Chronicle
Hillary's Record - Investor's Business Daily
Republican Faithful Await a Savior in Iowa - Washington Post
For Edwards, a Relationship That Never Quite Fit - New York Times
Stem-cell Findings May Affect '08 Vote - Washington Times
Obama Unveils $18B Education Plan - USA Today
Why AIPAC Took Over Brookings
by Grant F. Smith / November 21st, 2007
The following is an excerpt from Foreign Age