Antiwar.com

In early 1945, Hiram Bingham faced a tough decision: he could follow his government’s orders to ignore the Nazi holocaust, thereby keeping his comfortable position as US vice-consul in Marseilles, or he could defy State Department policy by issuing life-saving US visas to French Jews and anti-Nazi activists. Bingham chose the latter, and as a … Continue reading “Constructive Dissent”

In early 1945, Hiram Bingham faced a tough decision: he could follow his government’s orders to ignore the Nazi holocaust, thereby keeping his comfortable position as US vice-consul in Marseilles, or he could defy State Department policy by issuing life-saving US visas to French Jews and anti-Nazi activists. Bingham chose the latter, and as a … Continue reading “Constructive Dissent”

Everyone agrees the 9-11 tragedy confirmed a problem that exists in our domestic security and dramatized our vulnerability to outside attacks. Most agree that the existing bureaucracy was inept. The CIA, the FBI, the INS, and Customs failed to protect us. It was not a lack of information that caused this failure; they had plenty. … Continue reading “Department of Homeland Security – Who Needs It?”

Perhaps this description of Mordor from the film version of Tolkien’s classic is too harsh on the Balkans. After all, the peninsula is not a fountainhead of evil, merely a victim of its ravages and possession. A more apt comparison in this vein would be Moria: a crossroads once full of wealth and splendor, now … Continue reading “Snapshots Of A Nightmare”

It’s not so much that the details of the Bush plan are faultier than some other plan some other leader might have devised. The bigger question is why an American president who upon assuming office seemed to understand that American micromanagement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a losing game is now so eager to impose … Continue reading “Bush: Planning in the Whirlwind”

The two premier magazines of foreign affairs recently featured articles with diametrically opposed themes on a much-discussed topic: is the US Empire on the rise, or in decline? In Foreign Affairs, flagship journal of the New World Order crowd, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth celebrate the rise of the American hegemon, and disdainfully … Continue reading “DECLINE & FALL”

Opposition to the Patriot Act, legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President last year, is growing. Americans are beginning to understand that many precious liberties have been put in jeopardy by the government’s rush to enact new laws in the wake of September 11th. Federal law enforcement agencies now have broad authority to … Continue reading “Monitor Thy Neighbor”

Most of the administration’s paper grandly proclaiming a "National Strategy for Homeland Security" is the kind of innocuous bureaucratic blather one finds in a report on waste management or wetlands maintenance. I’m not sure whether it’s alarming or reassuring to be confronted by such soporific sentences as "This is an exceedingly complex mission that requires … Continue reading “Homeland Security Horrors”

“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”– … Continue reading “IN SEARCH OF MONSTERS”

[nb: As Christopher Montgomery is away this week – paragliding in Tashkent – Antiwar.com is replacing him with stuff we found earlier in the week in a wastepaper bin, in a conference room in London’s Canary Wharf. Although the document is incomplete, it is clearly a transcription, and we believe the initials stand for the … Continue reading “Notes From the Wastebin of History”