Requiem for the War on Terror
On Monday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced his version of the new Pentagon budget. Looked at one way, his suggested changes were significant, even startling given how deeply the giant armament companies have embedded themselves and their new generations of...
Filling the Skies With Assassins
Wars Abroad Continue at Home
Whether it's $900 billion, more than one trillion dollars, or even, in the long run, several trillion dollars, the spiraling costs of George Bush's wars – one of which is now in the grim process of becoming "Obama's War" – are indisputable. It's hardly less disputable...
The Great Afghan Bailout
Let's start by stopping. It's time, as a start, to stop calling our expanding war in Central and South Asia "the Afghan War" or "the Afghanistan War." If Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke doesn't want to, why should we?...
Aboard the Imperial Star Ship Ameriprise
Okay, the new Star Trek film – you know, the prequel with space sex – is premiering in Australia. Go figure. All I know is I'm not beaming there. On the other hand, I've already been in close communication with a Trekkie pal, and she and I have chosen our...
Unknown Afghanistan
The signals coming from the Obama administration as a "strategic review" of Afghan policy is nearing completion this week are, to say the least, confusing. While much new thinking on the Afghan War has been promised, early leaks about the review's proposals for the...
The Freeman Affair
Because one man, conceding defeat, didn't issue the typical statement indicating that he preferred to spend more time with his family, and instead launched a frontal attack on those who had attacked him, the foreign policy equation in Washington might have changed in...
Why the Pentagon Can’t Put America Back to Work
President Obama has recently threatened to rescind the "blank check" the Bush administration offered to big defense contractors. So now is the time when all that planning by Lockheed Martin and the other major arms manufacturers comes into play. One of that...
A Falcon of Peace
How come they get to be the hawks? And we get to be the doves? A hawk is a noble bird. A dove – well, basically it's a pigeon. The sort of bird that, in New York City anyway, messes your building's window sills, is always underfoot, and, along with the city's...
