Antiwar.com

There are essentially two types of peace agreements: those that ratify a peace that is in place for whatever reason (conquest, surrender, war-weariness) and those that seek to push forward a “process” that has not yet brought anything resembling an actual peace. One may hope that the Macedonian peace accord signed Monday is in the … Continue reading “A Macedonian Fantasy?”

In a recent Chicago Tribune article, Michael Lev discussed the question that every foreigner in China finds himself asking after his first trip to the market: Which is better – the free market or the supermarket? After taking a stroll through a muddy, crowded Chinese market with discarded corncobs, piles of peas, globs of bloody … Continue reading “FREE MARKETS OR SUPERMARKETS?”

The Kitty Genovese of the Balkans The settlement due to be initialed August 13 by both sides in the Macedonian-Albanian conflict has got to be the strangest “peace agreement” in recent history. “War Looms despite Signing of Macedonia Peace Deal,” the Reuters headline informs us. The level of violence, instead of decreasing, has been ratcheted … Continue reading “THE MUGGING OF MACEDONIA”

The Framework Agreement for Peace is due to be signed this week by the government of Macedonia and someone who allegedly represents the Albanian rebels. I say "allegedly" because the rebels are not present at the negotiating table and it is not known whether they would adhere to the agreement. But what is known is … Continue reading “Macedonia Peace”

My last column, “Hiroshima Mon Amour: Why Americans are barbarians,” has provoked a storm of protest from the clueless and the humorless – reinforcing my own conviction that Americans, for the most part, are indeed barbarians, without the ability or the desire to overcome their brainwashing and engage in even the simplest tasks of reasoning. … Continue reading “HARRY TRUMAN, WAR CRIMINAL”

The idea that America is, in any sense, a civilized country is easily dispelled by the orgy of self-congratulation and rationalization that accompanies the dual anniversaries of Harry Truman’s decision to atom bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Want your gorge to rise? Check out the New York Post editorial "The Bomb That … Continue reading “HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR”

It is a symptom of the consensus disease in American politics that veteran Justice Department bureaucrat Robert Mueller was confirmed as head of the FBI without a single dissenting vote in the U.S. Senate. Despite a good deal of posturing in the Judiciary Committee, accompanied by some reasonably telling critiques of the direction and culture … Continue reading “FBI Taking Wrong International Path”

In the Golden Age of the exploring colonists, the trailblazers were anthropologists, botanists, soldiers and, later, benevolent trading companies. These fine gentlemen categorized and conquered, bringing glory, wisdom and riches back to the motherland, but little changed for the farmers and petty merchants whose lives they jotted down into their notebooks. One hundred or so … Continue reading “Trailblazing”

I‘ve always loved needling Bill Kristol and his neoconservative buddies as lefties in conservative drag: their whole “national greatness” agenda is such a dead giveaway that I often wondered how anyone to the right of, say, John McCain, could possibly be taken in by it. In column after column, I’ve exposed and excoriated the neocons … Continue reading “SEDUCING BILL KRISTOL”

AN ECHT LIBERAL IN BISMARCKIAN GERMANY Somehow, in my last column I wandered into 19th-century Germany. I wish to dwell there long enough to say something about perhaps the most echt (“genuine”) of all late 19th-century German liberals, Eugen Richter. Anyone who has suffered through a standard course on the history of that period will … Continue reading “Eugen Richter on War and Empire”