Ivan Eland

President George W. Bush and Democratic and Republican luminaries broke ground recently at the future gleaming home of the United States Institute of Peace on the National Mall. After absorbing the speeches and, on the same day, the rather partisan Senate Intelligence Committee’s report that concluded the Bush administration lied to the United States regarding … Continue reading “Is the Real Problem ‘Isolationism’ or Bipartisan Aggression?”

At the behest of Iraqi Shi’ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, his powerful faction staged a formidable protest this week against a likely U.S.-Iraqi agreement to establish a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq, which would replace the United Nations-authorized U.S. occupation that expires at the end of 2008. This demonstration, and subsequent protests planned for the … Continue reading “Sadr, Sistani Opposition to US Presence Should Worry Maliki”

It has been suggested that it is hypocritical of President Bush to implicitly attack Barack Obama for his outrageous suggestion that the United States should actually talk to its adversaries. The President likened efforts to negotiate with "terrorists and radicals" to attempts made to appease Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. Yet even his … Continue reading “Negotiating with ‘Terrorists and Radicals’ Is a Must”

In a recent speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pleaded with the armed services to emphasize preparing for war against guerrillas instead of spending so much money and effort getting ready for conventional wars. He said that he wanted to avoid the erosion of counterinsurgency capabilities that occurred after the Vietnam War, when the U.S. … Continue reading “Gates’s Hope to Reform the Pentagon Is Barking at the Moon”

From the administration that used the 9/11 tragedy to violently pursue an unrelated vendetta against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, we get Round Two. After a cyclone devastated portions of Burma (which the despotic Burmese government has renamed Myanmar) and killed an estimated 100,000 people, instead of concentrating on providing relief, the Bush administration couldn’t resist scoring … Continue reading “Politicizing the Tragedy in Burma”

Although the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. has treated us to nutty and racist rants, which included saying that the even more bigoted Minister Louis Farrakhan is one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, and that the U.S. government was capable of having used the AIDS virus to commit genocide against minorities, … Continue reading “Rev. Wright Is Not All Wrong”

Enmeshed in two military occupations that have turned into well-publicized quagmires, the Army and Marines are understandably having trouble enlisting new recruits. Their answer: vastly increase the number of convicted felons and other societal miscreants accepted into their ranks. According to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, from 2006 to 2007 the Army … Continue reading “Quagmires, Wacky Personnel Policies Strain All-Volunteer Military”

At the passing of the 25th anniversary of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon – the first large suicide bombing to target Americans – the time is right to ask the perennial question: has the Bush administration’s “war on terror” since 9/11 made Americans safer? Although the Bush administration regularly boasts … Continue reading “War on Terror
Dangerously Counterproductive”

According to Gen. David H. Petraeus’ progress report to Congress on Iraq, the latest worst threat to the shaky U.S. position is Iranian-backed "special groups." This label refers to parts of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his security forces ham-handedly sought to confront and undermine in Basra before the fall … Continue reading “Things Unsaid at the Petraeus Hearings”

More memos have recently surfaced that were written early in the Bush administration by John C. Yoo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – the man who gave us the administration’s horrifyingly narrow definition of torture as physical pain that must be “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such … Continue reading “Yoo-surping Power for the Executive”