Antiwar.com

Thanks to the editors of The American Conservative for putting my piece on the antiwar movement online – that means I don’t have to write a column today! Not that I’m going to be idle. Because, you see, I have to get together yet another fundraising letter (moan). My last one raised nearly $6,000 – … Continue reading “Antiwar Breakthrough!”

In the case of an American war on Iraq, Palestinians will not be watching for a "smart bomb" heading their way, but for the Israeli army forcing them out of their homes. This possibility is of greater danger that one might think. It is seldom that the international community has stood in the face of … Continue reading “War on Iraq Double Disaster for Palestinians”

I suppose there are people who imagine that the conservative movement was pretty much on the right track, before it succumbed to a boarding party of former Cold War liberals – some of whom had been Trotskyites before they were Cold War liberals. Certainly, some important changes stem from that hostile takeover, but in the … Continue reading “The Crazies Who Preceded the Loonies”

We are now being inundated with hosannas to Colin Powell’s UN speech as having “delivered the goods” and, supposedly, a knockout blow to the “give inspections a chance” crowd, but I don’t believe a word of it because, well, I can’t say it any better than my friend Jim Henley: “Because they lie. Routinely and … Continue reading “The Lying Game”

It is hard for many people to imagine the size and scope of China, especially with the big seaboard cities taking up all the limelight and only the occasionaly Xinjiang flare-up, Three Gorges study or Yunnan pictorial bringing the rest of the country into the world’s focus. It is also difficult to imagine a country … Continue reading “Villages in Transition”

This Tuesday, the parliament of the last Yugoslavia decided to lay the name and the idea to rest, abolishing the country in favor of a new, ill-defined entity called "Serbia and Montenegro." The new Constitutional Charter and the bill governing its implementation had already been passed by the Serbian parliament on the 28th, and by … Continue reading “Yugoslavia’s End”

Most of the media are trying to make the very difficult case that in boosting defense spending President Bush is starving domestic programs. Unfortunately, too few people are questioning the defense budget itself. We’re at war, after all, and the military probably needs the money, right? We know we’ve dropped a lot of bombs, lost … Continue reading “Military Pork by the Barrel”

The idea that the "allies" – basically, the U.S. and Britain – are two liberal "democracies" that are bound and determined to "liberate" Iraq from the evil repressive Saddam has always been a complete crock. The "rapturists" and the neoconservatives have been demanding Iraq’s scalp for years as the price of their support to the … Continue reading “Free Taki!”

My goodness, but you wouldn\’t want to be French or German. Not, at any rate, if you read what their English speaking friends have to say about them. Popping up in The Times yesterday, Max Boot (he gets about) offered the helpful suggestion that to understand French diplomacy, what one really needed was a \’shrink\’. … Continue reading “You Don\’t Have to Be Brave To Be French”

White House officials have said that the space shuttle disaster will not slow down or alter the president’s plans on war with Iraq. That’s defensible, of course – or it would be if the war itself were defensible. While the loss of the space shuttle and the seven people on it commanded great attention (and … Continue reading “The Case Weakens, the Plot Thickens”