Month: September 2002

In their speeches before the United Nations both President Bush and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in different ways and probably for different purposes, made a couple of mistakes that could easily come back to bite them. The chief mistake was to take UN resolutions and statements by diplomats and political leaders too seriously, too … Continue reading “Don’t Take the UN Too Seriously”

President Bush now seems hell-bent on a plan that could easily lead to a nuclear strike against America – a strike that could cause a disaster many times worse than the World Trade Center attack. Over and over Mr. Bush has said he’ll do whatever is necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq. (“I’ve made … Continue reading “How to Destroy America in One Easy Lesson”

p> The House Committee on International Relations is holding hearings this Thursday on the question of whether we ought to invade Iraq – and only one side, the pro-war side, is going to be heard. Here is a list of the witnesses: Richard Perle – a chicken-hawk of the first order, who has been all … Continue reading “House Iraq Hearings – Only War Party Allowed to Testify”

No wonder all those crunchy-granola kids hate capitalism, or think they do. Getta loada this from today’s [September 15] Washington Post: "Although senior Bush administration officials say they have not begun to focus on the issues involving oil and Iraq, American and foreign oil companies have already begun maneuvering for a stake in the country’s … Continue reading “ATTACK OF THE GREED-HEADS”

I went to an evening organised by the Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied territories. It was called "Fighters’ Talk", referring to the title of a well-known book from just after the 1967 war, which exposed the first ideological cracks – hesitations, questions, criticism – of soldiers who had occupied the territories … Continue reading “Fighters’ Talk”

I am not actually going to say much about Henry Cabot Lodge here. He is useful, however, as a symbol of one particular approach to U.S. imperial policy. Lodge was an influential Senator (R., Massachusetts), a crony of Theodore Roosevelt and other high-toned turn-of-the-20th-century Republican imperialists. He was thus one of the architects of what … Continue reading “The Ghost of Henry Cabot Lodge”

The President’s war speech to the United Nations, delivered just a day after the first anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, not only underscored the paucity of his case, but pointed to the great diversion represented by this new adventure: "We meet one year and one day after a terrorist attack brought … Continue reading “WHY THIS WAR?”

Not long ago, an Off-Broadway play opened with the tantalizingly relevant title, Now That Communism is Dead My Life Feels Empty! I thought immediately of the writer Mark Danner’s perceptive remark that this country is "marooned in the Cold War." Today we see that in the hearts and minds of Washington’s relatively small but very … Continue reading “Don’t Ignore Conservative and Liberal Antiwar Groups”

On the anniversary of 9/11, newspapers throughout China ran front page photos of the burning Towers – many with an inset depicting mourning Americans. Articles focused on America’s War on Terrorism, the anguish of the victims’ familis and the few Chinese nationals that died in the attack. The newspapers tended to be very sympathetic toward … Continue reading “Deciphering the Chinese Smile”

"The world has changed. Nothing is the same any more." Those were the two most common sentiments last year, in the shell-shocked aftermath of Black Tuesday, as the horrors of war stopped being something that happened elsewhere. A year later, those phrases ring hollow – along with the pledges to fight "terrorism" and "evil." On … Continue reading “The Day Nothing Changed”