Length does not equal strength. That's one lesson of President George W. Bush's latest speech on Iraq. The president apparently believed that the more he talked to the American Legion on Tuesday, the more persuasive he would be. But tossing in every argument that he'd...
The Republican Party is in desperate straits. How else to explain that Rudy Giuliani – a former mayor with no foreign policy experience – is the Republican front-runner, largely based on his supposed foreign policy expertise? That the former mayor is...
The Last Days of the Incas Kim MacQuarrie Simon and Schuster, 2007 544 pp. Today the U.S. military can destroy – almost effortlessly – any other organized armed forces on earth. American weapons are a generation ahead of those of its allies, let alone the...
Korea has joined the first rank of nations. You wouldn't know it, however, listening to the Korean public's reaction to the kidnapping and murder of Korean aid workers in Afghanistan. It is America's fault. Christian missionaries long have been active in...
A collective madness has captured Washington, D.C. Actually, that's not news. Washington often has been captured by collective madness. One of the latest and strangest episodes is the belief that America must increase the size of its armed forces. All of the leading...
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England Lynne Olson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 436 pp. As President George W. Bush steadfastly pursues a ruinous policy in Iraq, his supporters laud him as a latter-day Harry S....
President George W. Bush and his supporters live in the world of "what ought to be." The U.S. ought to be able to crush the insurgency, establish liberal democracy, and impose Western values in Iraq. America ought to be able to spread U.S.-style political systems...
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who imagines himself as Winston Churchill in temporary political exile, desperately wants to be president. He imagines himself running not just America, but the world. Worse, he thinks that is what the American people want....
Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose Kenneth B. Pyle Public Affairs, 2007 433 pp. Asia is changing, and with it the global balance of power. The People's Republic of China (PRC) is well on its way to becoming a regional power, an indispensable...
The best that can be said about the upcoming presidential election is that in January 2009 President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney will be out of office. It is tempting to believe that their successors couldn't be worse. Yet only the "second tier"...
