Month: April 2004

Unlike Sofia Coppola’s charmingly discombobulated film, there is nothing funny or charming about the way the Imperial “order” is crumbling everywhere, from the Balkans to Babylonia. Driven by a devastating mix of arrogance, ignorance, malice and stupidity, foreign occupiers in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo strain to keep their grip on power, but are actually losing … Continue reading “Lost in Translation”

Bush in Deep Denial? Two reactions to the article: Your argument against preemptive aggression is convincing but more importantly for me, for the first time I realised its enormous, gaping flaw, namely: if you are going to strike something before it becomes truly harmful, then the first thing to do is find out why it … Continue reading “”

Testimony before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2004 This brief addresses three areas. First, what mistakes have been made in the Coalition administration of Iraq, and why? Second, what is the current situation? Third, what steps can be taken to ensure the emergence of a stable and democratic Iraq? Mistakes The biggest US … Continue reading “US Mistakes in Iraq”

I‘m traveling today, and so there’s no real column. I’m on my way to New York, where I’m speaking at the state convention of the Libertarian Party, an event I look forward to: as a longtime libertarian (small-‘l’), I have a lot to say, and you’ll be reading it next week, in this space. I … Continue reading “Instead of a Column”

U.S. soldiers’ negligence appears to be the cause of Monday’s killings of two Iraqi media workers in the city of Samara north of Baghdad, said an official from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on Tuesday. The organization had not completed its probe of the killings of Al-Iraqiya correspondent Asaad Kadhim and driver Hussein Saleh, … Continue reading “Journalist Group: Latest Killings of Media Workers Fit Pattern”

The story of Yusuf Fakri Amash is the story of so much of Fallujah. The 11-year-old boy just managed to escape from the town with his family. But not before the U.S. military killed his best friend. "Ahmed was in my class," he says. "He was younger than me. He was standing next to the … Continue reading “Fallujah Cannot Even Bury Its Dead”

Civil society groups in Honduras applauded the government’s decision to withdraw the country’s 370 troops from Iraq, while voices in El Salvador called for a pullout of the Salvadoran forces as well. "We were taken by surprise, because it looked like the troops would stay there," Juan Barahona, coordinator of the Popular Bloc, which links … Continue reading “Hondurans Cheer Iraq Withdrawal, Salvadorans Call for Same”

“Speaking of the Palestinians, they were dealt a lethal blow,” exulted a jubilant Ariel Sharon, “It will bring their dreams to an end.” Sharon was bragging about his trip to Washington where he bullied Bush into selling out the Palestinians as thoroughly as Neville Chamberlain sold out the Czechs at Munich. “Sharon Got It All” … Continue reading “Bush Outsources Mideast Policy”

The American press needs to end its lovey-dovey relationship with the Pentagon. The Pentagon has provided ample evidence that it can propagandize the American people without the help of a lap-dog press. It is not the job of the press to support the troops. That is the duty of the American people, their loved ones … Continue reading “Press and Military”

Once there was a time when American conservatives defended their country from government. No more. Today conservatives defend Bush’s warmongering neo-Jacobin government at all costs. In a recent column, “Feeling a Draft” (April 15), I reported that the US has now killed more Iraqi women and children than Saddam Hussein. Two pro-Bush, pro-military superpatriots took … Continue reading “A Country Destroyed”