Month: March 2002

I rise to introduce legislation expressing the sense of Congress that the United States government should not revive military conscription. Supporters of conscription have taken advantage of the events of September 11 to renew efforts to reinstate the military draft. However, reviving the draft may actually weaken America’s military. Furthermore, a military draft violates the … Continue reading “Conscription: A Tradition of Slavery”

Recent events in the Balkans indicate that the foreign policy team of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is confronted with a monumental task in this part of the world. Unfortunately, little is known about the magnitude of problems that the Bush administration has inherited from the Clinton administration in this part of … Continue reading “Destabilizing the Balkans: US & Albanian Defense Cooperation in the 1990s”

In the gray, matter-of-fact bureaucratese so typical of a government document, the leaked “Israeli Art Student Papers” – posted on Antiwar.com yesterday – confirm what we have been saying in this space all along: that an underground apparatus of Israeli covert agents, centered in the southwestern US but extending nationwide, carried out extensive operations in … Continue reading “The Truth, At Last”

As a commentary on how quickly the original rationale for this war has been abandoned, Maureen Dowd dubs the Evil One “Osama bin Later,” or, alternatively, “the One Formerly Known as Evil,” as the President declares: “I am truly not that concerned about him.” Yesterday bin Laden was the epitome of Pure Evil – today … Continue reading “What Are We Fighting For?”

Why is the Bush administration, after a period of benign neglect, suddenly interested in mediating the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian dispute? It’s hardly a news flash that it’s mainly because the administration is just itching to attack Iraq. But how realistic is the idea that the United States can play deus ex machina in the Middle East … Continue reading “Mideast: The Iraqi Connection”

There’s nothing like being in the safe hands of the Bush administration. I mean, how embarrassing for those poor people in Zimbabwe, dealing with their rigged presidential election. Imagine the shame of knowing opposition voters had been systematically disenfranchised, and that the Supreme Court had stepped in to support a specific presidential candidate. That could … Continue reading “God, It’s Great To Be American!”

There’s nothing like being in the safe hands of the Bush administration. I mean, how embarrassing for those poor people in Zimbabwe, dealing with their rigged presidential election. Imagine the shame of knowing opposition voters had been systematically disenfranchised, and that the Supreme Court had stepped in to support a specific presidential candidate. That could … Continue reading “God, It’s Great To Be American!”

When, twenty years ago, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands – subjecting their British inhabitants to the severest tyranny imaginable (they made them drive on the right hand side of the road) – many Reagan administration officials found themselves in the rare position of agreeing with Mario Vargas Llosa, in that they too felt surely this … Continue reading “Twenty Years On”

A couple of weeks ago Norman Podhoretz gave a speech to the American Enterprise Institute annual dinner: speaking as the Grand Old Man of the War Party, Podhoretz told his audience not to be overconfident. It isn’t enough that we have the USA “Patriot” Act, which gives the government unprecedented powers of scrutiny and interdiction … Continue reading “Big Bill Is Watching You”

While scores of Palestinians and several Israelis are killed every day now, while one of the world’s strongest armies is bravely proving it can turn even wretched refugee camps into ashes, I feel rather uncomfortable talking about ideology. Still, I’ll do it. In a previous column I analysed several arguments of the right-wing ideology of … Continue reading “Postmodernism Alive and Killing”