What looked like a virtually sure thing just one month ago Senate confirmation of the Bush administration's controversial ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton is suddenly looking unexpectedly shaky. Last week's eleventh-hour request by moderate...
Centanni and Wiig Escape: A Celebration and Lessons Learned
My favorite war movies are the ones where people soldiers or civilians escape from a prison camp or a concentration camp. I saw The Great Escape when it first came out in 1963, and have seen it at least five times since. I still remember my mother, as...
Backtalk September 11, 2006
The GOP, RIP I'm afraid that in his zeal to pronounce the Republican Party dead before one vote has been cast, Justin is wallowing in irrational exuberance. The GOP's obituary is premature on several counts: Fewer House races than ever before are competitive due to...
America’s Ideologue in Chief
"The war we fight today is more than a military conflict," said President Bush to the American Legion. "It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." But if the ideology of our enemy is "Islamofascism," what is the ideology of George W. Bush? According...
Before 9/11, There Was 11/9
With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, American leaders declared "victory" in the Cold War no less firmly or repeatedly than our president has promised "victory" in his Global War on Terror no less than 12 times, in fact, in an August speech to the American...
The 9/11 Enigma, Revisited
A thousand years from now, who will observe this doleful anniversary? From that perspective, will the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history seem like a blip on the wide screen of history, or a turning point in the saga of the rising American Imperium? Although I'd be...
Iraq: Media Dead Zone
with Salam TalibIn Iraq, the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars is accusing the US military of carrying out a massacre during a pre-dawn raid in a small village Northeast of Baghdad. The Association said the raid, which was carried out on Monday in Muqtadadiya, left...
Five Years In, Bush Is Losing Terror War
To consider whether U.S. President George W. Bush is winning his "global war on terror" (GWOT) five years after al-Qaeda's devastating 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, one has only to look at the news of the past few days. In Afghanistan, where the war...
Reverting to Form
Well, you can say this for President Bush. Even in the midst of a clearly politicized action designed to show candor and that he is changing and evolving as the threats from terrorism evolve, he stays remarkably close to the concepts that have guided him since...
The Korean Imbroglio: Disengage and Ignore
You have to wonder what America has done to deserve to be stuck in Korea. What curse are we suffering under? On the one side are the South Koreans, whom we have defended for five decades. Large numbers think more highly of China and North Korea than of America; many...


