The knives are out: "Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite." That’s what a top Republican Senate aide told the Weekly Standard in response to the news that President Obama is likely to nominate former Republican Senator Chuck...
The Amash Rebellion
Americans are sick and tired of war, they are incredulous when they see their own country going down the tubes while our preening politicians plot "regime change" in faraway lands, and they positively hate "foreign aid. So why – if the US is a...
Destiny and Decline
The poet Robinson Jeffers isn’t thought of as a foreign policy theorist: his oeuvre, when it is remembered at all, is generally reduced to a crude sort of nature worship, combined with a misanthropic leave-me-alone-I-don’t-want-to-hear-it view of life. He considered...
‘He’s Killing His Own People!’
“He’s killing his own people!” It’s a familiar refrain to those of us who’ve been paying attention the past decade or so: it’s what our leaders in both parties said about Saddam Hussein by way of justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and it’s what they’re...
Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt Knew
Today is the seventy-first anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an act that brought us into World War II, pushed a reluctant America onto the world stage, and ushered in the age of empire. The official history of that event is that it was a "sneak...
Rachel Maddow, War Propagandist
The Moment had arrived! I’m talking about that Benghazi Moment, when the axis of elite opinion turns and the Forces of Righteousness come to the rescue — Syria’s internet was down! Rachel Maddow had one of those “Oh, This is Serious” looks on her face as she solemnly...
A Note to My Readers
A mild winter cold has morphed, overnight, into Something Greater, which has turned me into a wheezing fever-stricken mess. Of course, going out into the storm that buffeted Northern California for the past few days couldn’t have anything to do with it. In any case —...
Jeffrey Goldberg: Prison Guard of American Journalism
Former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg, now writing for The Atlantic, has a new prison population to deal with: the American news media, and, specifically, that portion of it covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In response to a few fairly innocuous tweets...
Oliver Stone’s Untold History:
A Twice-Told Tale
I wanted to like Oliver Stone’s new documentary, The Untold History of the United States, really I did. After all, here is the maker of films positing a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy and exposing the criminal history of the Vietnam war promising to unveil...
Obama as Wilson:
Playing the Historical Analogy Game
A drone war that takes out old ladies in the name of "fighting terrorism" — a "regime change" campaign that plays with the fate of millions — a President supposedly committed to "transparency" who has topped the unprecedented secrecy and authoritarianism of his...


