Ivan Eland

Dinesh D’Souza, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has raised a ruckus in his new book The Enemy at Home. In the book, he contends that the 9/11 attackers were motivated by neither U.S. foreign policy abroad nor by a hatred of U.S. freedom, as President Bush has repeatedly argued. Instead, … Continue reading “Demagoguery Posing as Scholarship”

There have been pop psychology explanations that attribute President Bush 43’s aggressive foreign policy decisions to a rivalry with President Bush 41 – for example, ascribing junior’s invasion of Iraq as a reaction to his father’s writings about the pitfalls of doing so. Advocates of such explanations must be trumpeting the president’s recent repudiation of … Continue reading “Rebellion Over Iraq:
Son Against Father”

Although President Bush’s escalation of the Iraq War has been opposed by a substantial majority of the American people, many generals, the Iraq Study Group, and most Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, the most important opposition may come from Iraqis. Although Bush had trouble correctly reading the results of the November 2006 congressional elections, … Continue reading “Escalation Doomed by
Shi’ite Opposition”

President George W. Bush, contrary to the will of the American and Iraqi peoples and his own military commanders, seems ready to embark on a potentially disastrous escalation of the Iraq war, which was lost long ago. This mind-numbingly idiotic strategy is sure to needlessly cost more American and Iraqi lives and to lose the … Continue reading “Say Good-bye to a Future Republican Presidency”

As 2006 comes to a close, the world is in flames and George W. Bush’s foreign policy is both directly and indirectly to blame. He has caused a civil war by invading Iraq, continued an occupation of Afghanistan that motivated a revival of the deposed radical Islamist Taliban movement, pushed for elections in Palestine that … Continue reading “George W. Bush: Islamism’s Best Friend”

With Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine already in or sliding toward civil war, one can correctly label the Bush administration’s foreign policy the most incompetent in recent memory. But the problem lies deeper than that. The hyperactive, and often counterproductive, U.S. foreign policy is a bipartisan problem, best illustrated by the sordid U.S. history in … Continue reading “Another Civil War Exacerbated”

Ever since the Iraq Study Group (ISG) issued its recommendations, the debate in Washington has swirled around what to do about the mess in Iraq. Unfortunately, both the recommendations of the study group and the contradictory inclinations of the Bush administration are "bridges to nowhere." Both groups are in denial about the chaos in Iraq … Continue reading “Top 10 Things Not to Do in Iraq”

This holiday travel season, Santa Claus is not the only one who is checking to see whether you’ve been naughty or nice. For the last four years, the U.S. government has been snooping by computer into people’s travel records and assigning them a risk score for being terrorists or criminals. Of all the government’s violations … Continue reading “More Cheer for the
Holiday Travel Season”

The Baker Commission report calls for a phased withdrawal of combat forces in Iraq and for the United States to talk to adversarial neighboring countries – that is, Iran and Syria – about playing a more constructive role in that country’s civil war. If his rhetoric before the release of the report is any indication, … Continue reading “The Coming Clash
Over Iraq Policy”

Many foreign policy experts advocate using economic sanctions to motivate foreign governments to change policy. And, while it may be true that many of these governments could improve their countries with policy reforms, history shows that economic coercion doesn’t work. Both conservatives and liberals like to use economic coercion. For more than 45 years, conservatives … Continue reading “Sanctions: Useless, or Worse Than Useless?”