Month: August 2004

The traditional principles of the Republican Party have in the past several years been subordinated to a more intrusive domestic policy and an imperialistic foreign policy. Whereas a policy of less federal government intrusion into domestic personal affairs once held together most party adherents, now the party machinery has more recently been redirected to a … Continue reading “The Hijacking of the Republican Party”

On August 25, New York State Supreme Court Justice Jacqueline Silbermann ruled that the activist coalition United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) cannot rally in New York’s Central Park this Sunday, stating that the more than 250,000 demonstrators expected to participate could cause damage to the park’s recently restored grass. The group intended to assemble … Continue reading “NYC to First Amendment: Keep Off the Grass”

In Iraq and elsewhere, all eyes are currently on Najaf. As I had guessed, the battle ended with a whimper, not with a bang, as the Mahdi Army militiamen exfiltrated, and Moqtada al-Sadr turned over the keys to the mosque to Ayatollah al-Sistani. But the real winner is likely once again to be the new … Continue reading “The Desert Fox”

When you look at the Vietnam War Memorial, with those 57,000 names of dead Americans on it, you should feel anger. All of those young lives were sacrificed by blundering civilian politicians and bureaucrats who made their deaths meaningless. They died because of the posturing and ineptness of politicians in Washington who sent them to … Continue reading “A Waste of Blood”

The only two nation-states on earth who could destroy us – nipping in the bud the American Hegemony – are Russia and China. Each has mobile ICBMs – which we could never preemptively “take out” – capable of dropping thermonukes on every mega-city in the United States. Each also has more thermonuke warheads than any … Continue reading “A Reverse Cold War”

Even Sean Hannity, always eager to consider gratuitous bombing and killing, had a hard time with Michelle Malkin’s latest book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for “Racial Profiling” in World War II and the War on Terror. The cringe-making crux of Malkin’s book is that, in light of the intelligence intercepts to which the … Continue reading “Internment Chic”

What do the president’s nomination of Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), to head the CIA and the seemingly contradictory proposal of Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), to dismember the CIA have in common with tales of Swift boats once in Vietnam? Answer: The proven potential of all three to grab the headlines and draw attention away from … Continue reading “Swift Intelligent Smokescreen”

NEW DELHI – After the first extended round of India-Pakistan talks on the eight issues they have identified as bilateral disputes or concerns, it is clear that their dialogue has entered a phase of stagnation. Earlier expectations that at least some issues would be resolved in a series of discussions – the latest being earlier … Continue reading “India-Pakistan Dialogue Moves Between Stagnation, Hope”

What I took away from reading the entire James Schlesinger “independent” commission report [.pdf] and the executive summary and a skim of the rest of the Jones-Fay generals’ report [.pdf] on the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was a profound confirmation of what many of us have been saying for some time. The Bush … Continue reading “A Culture of Improvisation”

The DNC showed that the present path of the organized antiwar movement cannot lead to success. The antiwar movement within the Democratic Party was utterly defeated. It placed its hopes in John Kerry, in spite of Kerry’s call for greater military power for the U.S., in spite of his call for 40,000 more troops, in … Continue reading “The Silent Majority Is Ours”