Patrick J. Buchanan

When Congress finally decides on just the right language for its “non-binding resolution” deploring Bush’s leadership in this war, it might consider a resolution to keep us out of the next one. For America is on a collision course with an Iran of 70 million, and the folks who stampeded us into Iraq are firing … Continue reading “Hysteria at Herzliya”

Churchillian it was not. Yet the State of the Union seemed a success if Bush’s purpose was to buy time from Congress to wait and see if his surge of US forces into Iraq might yet succeed. But when Bush started to describe the ideological war we are in, one began to understand why we … Continue reading “The Ideologue”

After a weekend in which 29 Americans died and the 82nd Airborne deployed in Baghdad, what the Iraq war will mean to the politics of 2008 becomes clear. Hillary Clinton’s early Saturday announcement of her exploratory committee was brilliantly executed and captured front page, cable, and network coverage all weekend. But it was a decision … Continue reading “The X Factor in 2008 – Iran”

No sooner had Sens. Hagel and Biden announced their resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the Bush surge of 21,500 troops to Iraq was not in the national interest than the stampede was on. By day’s end, Sens. Dodd, Clinton, Bayh, Levin and Obama and ex-Sen. John Edwards had all made or issued … Continue reading “See the Superpower Run”

America is four years into a bloody debacle in Iraq not merely because Bush and Cheney marched us in, or simply because neocon propagandists lied about Saddam’s nuclear program and WMD, and Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda, anthrax attacks, and 9/11. We are there because a Democratic Senate voted to give Bush a blank check for … Continue reading “Mr. Bush, Meet Walter Jones”

Wednesday night, George Bush seemed to play his last card in the Iraq war. It was not impressive. Consider. First, he warned of the awful consequences of a US defeat: “Radical Islamic extremism would grow … in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos … Continue reading “Still One More Card to Play”

As George Bush reflects on his legacy, an urgent question must be pressing in upon him each day. Will I leave here as the man who launched failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost thousands of U.S. dead, to no avail? Or can I yet enter history as the Churchillian statesman who used U.S. … Continue reading “Who Is Planning Our Next War?”

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, said a rueful John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. George W. Bush knows today whereof his predecessor spoke. For as he prepares to “surge” 20,000 more U.S. troops into a war even he concedes we “are not winning,” his erstwhile acolytes have begun … Continue reading “Cakewalk Crowd Abandons Bush”

The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost fewer U.S. lives than the Filipino insurgency of 1899-1902. Yet Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker warned Congress last week the U.S. Army “will break” without more troops. We started this war “flat-footed,” with 500,000 fewer soldiers than we had before the Gulf War, … Continue reading “Broken Army, Broken Empire”

Since 1927, the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic in his single-engine Spirit of St. Louis, Time has devoted its final cover of the year to the Man of the Year. The Lone Eagle was first. In the 1930s and 1940s, FDR was the Man of the Year three times. Stalin, Truman, and Churchill made it … Continue reading “Person of the Year: Ahmadinejad”