Month: August 2002

There have been complaints that I have not named the “liberventionists.” I do not see the necessity for this, since I assume that readers of this website read widely. For the record, however, let us stipulate that liberventionists include at least the following: many Objectivists, the CATO Institute, several self-named “anarchists” writing on the web, … Continue reading “Liberventionism III: The Flight from History”

Just as the news that the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Advisory Board had declared Saudi Arabia “the kernel of evil” was rolling into Washington, and roiling US relations with the Kingdom, another far less-noticed item off the Dow-Jones Newswire was putting the whole brouhaha in its proper context:“The fate of $25 billion in foreign investment into … Continue reading “GOING AFTER THE SAUDIS”

You’ve really got to hand it to the neocons: they sure know how to conduct a bang-up propaganda campaign. The leak of a “briefing” to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, which targeted the Saudis as the real locus of world terrorism, is all over the place: not only the Washington Post, but MSNBC, Fox News, … Continue reading “NEOCONS GO FOR THE GOLD”

The Senate Foreign Relations committee spent much of last week hearing testimony about Iraq. A second U.S. invasion of Iraq seems a foregone conclusion, as the testimony focused not on the wisdom of such an invasion, but rather only on how and when it should be done. Never mind that our own State department and … Continue reading “Will Congress Debate War with Iraq?”

One expects a certain amount of corner-cutting on both procedures and concern for civil liberties during time of war. That’s one of the main reasons some of us prefer to avoid war when at all possible, because we know that government power will grow and citizen liberty will suffer. War, as Randolph Bourne explained so … Continue reading “U.S. Government Behaving Badly”

Bill Clinton wouldn’t fight for his own country, as we all know, but now he says he’d grab a gun and fight …. for Israel:“If Iraq came across the Jordan River … I would grab a rifle and get in the trench and fight and die.”Conservatives had a good chortle over that little news item, … Continue reading “NO TRUER LOVE”

Forget the Senate hearings on Iraq, ignore Congress, and never mind our laptop bombardiers. How many of these guys have ever been anywhere near a battlefield? Instead, listen to what the US military is saying about the prospect of Gulf War II….Today’s [August 1] Washington Post reports “an increasingly contentious debate … within the Bush … Continue reading “ATTACK OF THE CHICKEN-HAWKS”

True Stories of ‘Failed States’So often is it necessary to describe and decry all the iniquities of Imperial occupation in the Balkans, it is easy to lose track of other reasons for which the peninsula is important. Advocates of Empire often justify their pronouncements by mentioning what they call “failed states.” Successors of the former … Continue reading “Balkans ‘Success’ Stories”