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If you want to see the face of pure evil, cast your eyes on a recent column in National Review Online by resident financial guru Larry Kudlow, "Taking Back the Market – By Force." The market is down, he moans, and it isn’t really about corporate corruption and the Bush administration’s anti-free market policies: these, … Continue reading “PURE EVIL”

One of the salutary lessons from the scary India-Pakistan standoff (which has still not ended) is that the political and military leadership of neither country can be trusted to desist from nuclear brinkmanship, even downright nuclear adventurism. More than a billion people in South Asia once again came close to the brink of a nuclear … Continue reading “Reducing the Nuclear Danger”

I‘m not sure I was quite prepared for the question from Leslie Dutton, host of a Los Angeles-area public-affairs program called “Full Disclosure” that taped last week. (The program, which is independently produced on a shoestring and distributed to cable networks on public access, just won a Local Emmy for Informational/Public Affairs Series for a … Continue reading “Assessing the War”

The latest scare stories – the terrorists are going to give us a display of nuclear fireworks on July 4, commandeer dams, electrical grids, and traffic lights via the Internet, and launch suicide attacks in shopping malls – don’t phase me. I guess we’re all so used to the hysterics of our demagogic leaders that … Continue reading “LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE”

A few years ago Niall Ferguson made the unexceptionable observation in The Pity of War that Great War soldiers as much as anything fought on, and fought to win, because they enjoyed fighting. This caused some of the more po-faced reviewers of his book to tut-tut – and murmur about, ‘what can a civilian academic … Continue reading “Fighting Is Fun”

Most Americans believe we live in dangerous times, and I must agree. Today I want to talk about how I see those dangers and what Congress ought to do about them. Of course, the Monday-morning quarterbacks are now explaining, with political overtones, what we should have done to prevent the 9/11 tragedy. Unfortunately, in doing … Continue reading “Is America a Police State?”

What’s in a day? In the US, certain dates have come to mean certain things: July 4 is about freedom, even if only in theory; December 7 stands for a surprise attack, despite evidence to the contrary; and September 11 has become shorthand for terrorism writ large. The French still faithfully celebrate July 14, the … Continue reading “On St. Vitus Day”

Oh, I get it: it’s okay to pledge allegiance to the State, but not to God – and that about sums up the official ideology of our ruling elites. BEARISH ON THE WAR The news that only one in three Americans think we’re winning the "war on terrorism," and that 49 percent say neither side … Continue reading “‘IN GOVERNMENT WE TRUST’?”

After months of teeter-tottering between fairness to the Palestinians and complete prostration before Israel’s amen corner in the US, George W. Bush has come down decisively on the side of the latter – and the so-called war on terrorism has taken a new and ominous turn. It was pathetic, really, to see that Chairman Arafat … Continue reading “‘AMEN TO THAT!’”

I call my colleagues’ attention to a recent article by Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, published in the Los Angeles Times. In this article, Mr. Ritter makes a salient point that deserves careful and serious consideration in this body: how will it be possible to achieve the stated administration goal of … Continue reading “Inspection or Invasion in Iraq?”