Leon Hadar

Since I’ve been spending so much time in recent months reading and writing about President George W. Bush, his neoconservative advisers, and the mess in Iraq, I decided to take some time off these current topics and read a very well-written and well-researched life history of one of America’s Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. But I … Continue reading “Bush: The Lord North of Today”

As U.S. President George W. Bush concludes his visit to China, it’s important to restate the obvious: Washington, under the Bush administration, doesn’t have a “China Policy.” Instead, when it comes to dealing with the emerging East Asian giant, the White House has adopted a policy of “muddling through,” by responding to conflicting pressures at … Continue reading “Muddling Through”

If you are like me and you’ve been following the news on a regular basis for a while, say, 20 or 30 years, the chances are that whether it was 1977 (when you got married), 1986 (when your kid was nine years old), or 2003 (when the grandkid was on the way), you were watching … Continue reading “In Praise of ‘Virtual States’”

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a while since a top U.S. official delivered one of those wordy sermons to China or Russia about their responsibility to fix their governments, fight political corruption, and protect human rights. With President George W. Bush being forced to deal with rising domestic criticism of his administration’s performance … Continue reading “A Politically Deflated Bush Faces a Resistant World”

When he was once asked to define what exactly an "intellectual" was, British writer Aldous Huxley proposed that it was "a person who’s found something in life that’s more interesting than sex." Based on Huxley’s definition, I’m here to report to you that I had a very, very interesting weekend, which I spent with a … Continue reading “My Weekend With the Wonks”

Under the leadership of a conservative Republican president, the U.S. was drawn into a costly military quagmire in a strategic region of Asia. The president was facing growing domestic political opposition to his management of the controversial war, and some of his aides decided to launch an aggressive campaign aimed at antiwar critics. Some elements … Continue reading “All the President’s Men, the Sequel”

One of the conclusions that Harry Truman reached after spending several decades in the U.S. capital, first as a lawmaker and then as a vice-president who inherited the White House following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was: "If you want to have a friend in Washington, buy a dog." Even during Mr. Truman’s time, … Continue reading “A Town Without Pity”

The Bush administration seems to be drawing the outlines of a strategy to oust Syria’s President Bashar Assad and his ruling Ba’ath Party. Of course, no one is considering an American-led military invasion à la Iraq to achieve “regime change” in Damascus. Instead, neoconservative policymakers and analysts are urging Washington to take advantage of the … Continue reading “Making the Middle East Safe for What?”

Glimpse through the commentary pages of American newspapers and you are bound to run into a headline comparing the mess in American-occupied Iraq to the chaos in hurricane-devastated Louisiana. In fact, forget about the op-eds bashing the Bush administration and watch for a few minutes the 24/7 coverage on one of the cable news networks. … Continue reading “The United Gates of America”

Some American pundits are suggesting that a major transformation has been taking place in the direction of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. “The Bush Doctrine has collapsed, and the administration has consequently embraced realism,” Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, argued in a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times. Rose and other … Continue reading “Realism in Washington? Don’t Hold Your Breath”