Chuck Hagel: An Unconventional Realist

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...

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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...

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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...

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‘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...

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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...

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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...

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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 —...

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