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...
Who’s in Charge of Russia Policy?
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...
‘Staying the Course’ Won’t Do
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...
Scapegoating Rumsfeld
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...
The Neocons Haven’t Won Yet
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,...
What Are We Up to in Ukraine?
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...
Time to Engage Iran?
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...
The Sweetheart Contract With Sharon
"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...
The Wedge Politics of Osama bin Laden
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...
The Resurrection of ‘America First!’
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...


