Patrick J. Buchanan

A nation’s foreign policy is bankrupt, Walter Lippmann wrote, when its strategic assets, its arms and alliances, are insufficient to cover its liabilities – i.e., its commitments to defend critical territory and vital interests. Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor and rapid seizure of Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines, Lippmann wrote, revealed the bankruptcy of … Continue reading “Bush’s Checks Returning NSF”

Are the neoconservatives and their neoliberal collaborators in the global crusade for democracy pushing America into confrontation and a second Cold War with Russia? So it would seem. Ex-CIA director James Woolsey threw out the word “fascist” on FOX News the other night in describing Putin’s Russia. Earlier, he was quoted as saying, “The … Continue reading “Who’s in Charge of Russia Policy?”

In the aftermath of the suicide bombing of the Mosul mess hall, we are being admonished anew we must stay the course in Iraq. But “Stay the course!” is no longer enough. President Bush needs to go on national television and tell us the unvarnished truth. Why are we still there? For some of Bush’s … Continue reading “‘Staying the Course’ Won’t Do”

Last year, Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz, who has been howling for “World War IV” against the Arabs, published a mash note titled, Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait. The University of Houston’s James D. Fairbanks began his review thus: “Neoconservative writer Midge Decter sets out to explain just what it is about Donald Rumsfeld that … Continue reading “Scapegoating Rumsfeld”

With Bush’s 51 percent victory, Colin Powell’s departure, and the purge at CIA, many on the Old Right seem sunk in Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. They assume the neoconservatives are now free to pursue war without end. Yet, six weeks have now passed since Nov. 2, and there is as yet no conclusive evidence George … Continue reading “The Neocons Haven’t Won Yet”

In the 1940s, as Stalinists were seizing Czechoslovakia, ex-OSS agents were running bags of money to Italy and France to ensure the Communists were defeated in national elections. In the 1950s, using a rent-a-mob, the CIA effected the ouster of an anti-American regime in Iran and the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala. In the 1980s, … Continue reading “What Are We Up to – in Ukraine?”

Iran does not want a clash with the United States. And unlike Milosevic and Saddam, neither of whom wanted a war, either, Iran is determined not to give the neoconservatives the pretext to launch one. This is behind Tehran’s grudging acceptance of the British-French-German initiative to arrest Iran’s nuclear program by forcing a shutdown of … Continue reading “Time to Engage Iran?”

“In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. … In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, ‘God bless his soul.’ ”God bless his … Continue reading “The Sweetheart Contract With Sharon”

To the workers, peasants and soldiers of a war-weary Russia in 1917, Lenin promised “peace, land and bread.” To Germans of the Great Depression, Hitler promised an end to war reparations and the overturning of the injustices of Versailles. Now, Osama bin Laden, with his remarkable videotape on the eve of the U.S. election, seeks … Continue reading “The Wedge Politics of Osama bin Laden”

Two years ago, when The American Conservative magazine was launched, Franklin Foer of The New Republic accorded us a gracious welcome. “Buchanan’s Surefire Flop,” he titled his essay. It began, “Buchanan and his rich friends could not have chosen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist right.” Foer went on: “9/11 hasn’t … Continue reading “The Resurrection of ‘America First!’”