After the assassination of the archduke in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Austria got from Kaiser Wilhelm a "blank cheque" to punish Serbia. Germany would follow whatever course its ally chose to take. Austria chose war on Serbia. And World War I resulted. On...
Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, "The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." He failed with North Korea....
Did Hitler's crimes justify the Allies' terror-bombing of Germany? Indeed they did, answers Christopher Hitchens in his Newsweek response to my new book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: "The stark evidence of the Final Solution has ever since been enough...
"What Would Winston Do?" So asks Newsweek's cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill's career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and...
After losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Bill Clinton expostulated: The president of the United States is not irrelevant! On learning his trusted aide from Texas Scott McClellan has denounced as an "unnecessary war" the same Iraq war...
"A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope. Daily, our 43rd president testifies to Pope's point. Addressing the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth, Bush said those who say we should negotiate with Iran or Hamas are like the fools who...
Is war with Iran inevitable, even imminent? Or is peace at hand? From the public diplomacy of the administration, either conclusion may be reached. Consider. "West Offers Iran 'Refreshed' Deal," ran the headline in the May 3 Washington Times. The story described an...
The neocons may yet get their war on Iran. Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East. Iran,...
"Yes, it was a good war," writes Richard Cohen in his column challenging the thesis of pacifist Nicholson Baker in his new book, Human Smoke, that World War II produced more evil than good. Baker's compelling work, which uses press clips and quotes of Axis...
In an echo of Warren Harding's "A Return to Normalcy" speech of 1920, George Bush last week declared, "Normalcy is returning back to Iraq." The term seemed a mite ironic. For, as Bush spoke, Iraqis were dying in the hundreds in the bloodiest fighting in months in...
