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...
LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
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...
Fighting Is Fun
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...
Is America a Police State?
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...
On St. Vitus Day
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...
‘IN GOVERNMENT WE TRUST’?
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...
Inspection or Invasion in Iraq?
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...
Did India Cry Wolf to Secure US Intervention?
Did America's newly discovered ally, India, cry wolf (that is, deliberately exaggerate tentative indications of the presence of Al-Qaeda in Kashmir) to get the United States to intervene sympathetically on its behalf and secure a commitment from Pakistan's President...
‘AMEN TO THAT!’
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...
Getting Bogged Down
Before I fell ill, I had last week meant to write about how what Britain leaving the EU would entail. I would like to be able to tell you that whilst lying on a bed of pain, a series of hallucinatory visions about the nature of foreign policy occurred to me, and hence...