Sometimes, when I recommend that people read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (the full title is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations), I am met with a supercilious snort, as if nothing that was written in 1776 could be relevant to today. A...
Is Defeat Now an Option?
"Is the United States now going to cut and run in Iraq?" asks Bronwen Maddox, foreign editor of the London Times. While the answer from President Bush remains a defiant "No!" the question is now being raised by the most hawkish of his backers. And understandably so....
Al-Jazeera, Serbia, and Liberal Amnesia
Many in my profession journalism were understandably outraged to discover that in a get-together with his partner in crime Tony Blair in April 2004, President Bush allegedly made a bad-taste gag about bombing the Qatar headquarters of the Arab TV channel...
Bush’s Expanding ‘Fallen Legion’
Back in mid-October, I noted that informal "walls" and exhibits to honor those Americans (and sometimes Iraqis) who fell and continue to fall in the Bush administration's war and occupation of choice in Iraq have been arising on- and off-line for some...
Nuking Iran Without the Dachshund
How do you convince military planners to prepare detailed plans for a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear nation, without having them think you are a madman? Use the dachshund principle, as illustrated by this old story: A small boy asked his father how wireless...
Slipped His Moorings
I fear the vice president has had one too many heart attacks. His mind seems to have slipped its moorings and is drifting out into the sea of fantasy. Dick Cheney was the misleader in chief prior to the war in Iraq, and in a recent speech in which he chastised people...
A Desert Called Peace
Re-igniting Bosnia In November 1995, after months of cajoling, threatening, scheming, plotting, bombing, and blackmailing, the American-organized peace conference in Dayton, Ohio, resulted in a peace agreement that ended the hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The...
Outing Brewster Jennings
According to Bob Woodward, we're not to worry: "When the story comes out I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter. And that somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job...
Sharon Minus Likud Equals What?
JERUSALEM - A reliable, pragmatic leader who is tough on Palestinian violence but willing to make calculated sacrifices for peace. A leader who does not trust the Palestinians, but understands that Israel's occupation of the West Bank cannot continue in its current...
Beginning of the End
This Thanksgiving, those of us who look forward to the possibility of a future in which war is more often averted than anticipated with relish, enhancing the chances for peace and the freedom that flourishes best in an atmosphere of peace, have a great deal to be...


