WASHINGTON While President Bush and his security advisers obsessed over Russia, China, Iraq and missile defense before 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his neoconspirators were just as stuck in the Cold War over at the Pentagon. Al-Qaida hardly...
The Worst Idea, Ever
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is turning out to have been the worst idea in the history of American foreign policy, far stupider than the Vietnam debacle, and potentially even more destructive and futile than our entry into World War I. Up until now, the scale...
Does the US Have the Will to Win?
Would that mob in Fallujah have dared treat the security men of Saddam the way they treated those Americans? Would they have danced and shouted, "Death to Saddam," as they did "Death to Bush"? No way. For every one in those TV pictures and photos would now be in an...
Chinese Generalizations
In my last column, I made some broad generalizations about Chinese and China. One of the points of the column was to show that Chinese businessmen make decisions based on guanxi. Any businessman or any foreigner for that matter has a collection of...
Israel's Isolation and America's Bush can't see the connections between the US and Israel because he doesn't want to see the connections or just doesn't care and it certainly doesn't help that Sharon has the US Congress in his pocket too. How many years have we...
Remembering Afghanistan
The hype surrounding the 9/11 Commission and Richard Clarkes testimony is mostly superficial and overly partisan. Americans argue whether George W. Bush or Bill Clinton was the stronger president against terrorism, when in fact neither did anything to stop al...
Revering the Big Men
Many Chinese revere Hitler. This may seem unfathomably irrational to Europeans, especially when coupled with the intense dislike most Chinese have for all things Japanese, but it fits in with the Revere the Big Man Effect that dominates vast aspects of Chinese...
Thought Control for Middle East Studies
A band of neoconservative pundits with close ties to Israel have mounted a campaign against American scholars who study the Middle East. Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American and former director of the Dayan Center for Middle East Studies at Tel-Aviv University, has led...
Fallujah Deflates Washington’s Optimism
April Fools' Day is traditionally one of good-natured mischief, but not this year. Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush's trademark smirk, which normally fits the day's spirit almost to a T, was nowhere to be seen Thursday. The reason was clear enough: Iraq suddenly,...
Missing the Point on the New Terror
I can't deny that it has been fun to see all the Bushies pushed on the defensive or jolted into attack mode so dramatically that you can't help but discern just how insecure and vulnerable they are as are most people who are at least dimly aware that they have...


