This originally appeared at the Future of Freedom Foundation. The following is a statement to the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission: Charting a New Path Forward, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, December 3, 2020: I wish to express...
Unhappy 18th Anniversary: How an Unholy Pro-War Lobbying Alliance Pushed America Into the Iraq Quagmire in 2003
Eighteen years ago, George W. Bush’s administration took the fateful step of launching a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. That conflict set in motion developments that destabilized not only Iraq but other already fragile countries throughout the...
Capitulation Diplomacy: Washington Keeps Making Unrealistic Demands of Other Countries
The Biden administration seems intent on maintaining an especially counterproductive practice in U.S. foreign policy. For decades, US officials have insisted in making utterly unrealistic demands on other governments in its diplomatic interactions. In such cases,...
Stealth Commitment: How the Syrian Kurds Became US ‘Allies’
It’s bad enough when the U.S. government takes on unwise security commitments through the signing of formal treaties as required in the Constitution. The "pactomania" frenzy during the early Cold War, beginning with the decision to join NATO in 1949, led to...
How the National Security State Manipulates the News Media
An especially dangerous threat to liberty occurs when members of the press collude with government agencies instead of monitoring and exposing the abuses of those agencies. Unfortunately, collusion is an all-too-common pattern in press coverage of the national...
Washington’s Habitual Fondness for ‘Friendly Dictators’
One of the foreign policy establishment’s biggest complaints about Donald Trump is that during his presidency, the United States ceased being the defender and promoter of democracy internationally. Following Trump’s election defeat, there was a collective expression...
Washington’s Tiny Islands Fetish Could Endanger the American People
Most Americans likely do not realize the U.S. defense treaty with Japan does not just entail a commitment to help defend the heavily populated Japanese home islands. Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden all have affirmed that the treaty also covers a...
Washington’s Foreign ‘Democratic’ Clients Become an Embarrassment Again
One of the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s favorite propaganda themes is that the United States promotes liberalism and democracy around the world. However, several of the supposedly democratic foreign factions that Washington has backed proceeded to establish...
Barack Obama’s War on a Free Press
U.S. presidents have had a long, dishonorable history of trying to undermine the First Amendment, especially freedom of the press. Woodrow Wilson’s brutal suppression of critics, primarily through prosecutions under the Espionage Act of 1917, remains the most odious...
Ugly Yankee: Washington Continues To Bully Mexico on the Drug War
A nasty spat has emerged between the U.S. and Mexican governments about alleged official corruption and drug trafficking. The latest incident began on October 16, 2020, when US authorities arrested Mexico’s former defense secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, at...


