Antiwar.com

The UN intervention in East Timor – taken in a larger context than simply the insertion of troops – raises some interesting questions to which I don’t claim to have the answers. Are we seeing signs of decentralization or devolution of power here or a centralizing move? Can East Timor be viewed as part of … Continue reading “Which Way, Old World?”

The unanswered questions about the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the NATO air war against Yugoslavia seem to have raised little interest among the courtier media in the United States, although the London Observer has cited an unnamed intelligence officer to the effect that NATO targeted the building deliberately because it was … Continue reading “Embassy Questions Persist”

In sharp contrast to last spring when we were being literally barraged with anecdotal accounts of alleged atrocities in Kosovo, supposedly committed by Serbian troops against ethnic Albanians, the media are largely silent this summer. The media chose, for the most part, not to report on the most recent wave of KLA atrocities against the … Continue reading “Word Games and the Lexicon of Denial”

I got several objections to my recent column on East Timor pointing out that Indonesia had taken over the former Portuguese colony by force in 1975, an acquisition not recognized diplomatically by a number of countries and protested by numerous human rights campaigners. So the general rule under the older theory, that the "international community” … Continue reading “Timor Complications”

Some people like to say that photographs of President George Bush and other high US officials taken while the Berlin Wall was coming down and Eastern Europe liberating itself (with no real heroics and bloodshed from the likes of NATO, thank you) reveal much unhappiness on the part of men who had given "the whole … Continue reading “STUNNED!”

So, are you ready to answer the call for volunteers for the East Timor Expeditionary Force? Actually, if anybody were seriously thinking of organizing a volunteer force, on the order of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades during the Spanish civil war, I would have no objection, though I wouldn’t be especially tempted to volunteer myself. There … Continue reading “A Timorous Expedition”

(Note: This is an expanded version of a piece that ran in the Orange County Register August 29, 1999 but wasn’t put on the newspaper’s Web site.) The twin concerns – after almost 25 years of a voluntary military that met its recruitment goals with mostly qualified and competent people – of the military falling … Continue reading “The Military in the Post-Cold War Era”

A NEW CRUSADE TAKES FORM In March 1947, President Harry Truman announced his Doctrine of "containing" communism by giving aid to all nations, anywhere, resisting it. The proposal he set before Congress was an aid package to defeat the Communist-led insurgency in Greece and promote the security of Turkey. In a reversal of later ideological … Continue reading “THE ‘LOSS’ OF CHINA, McCARTHY, KOREA, AND THE NEW RIGHT”

With the Kosovo war, the criminal mendacity of U.S. foreign policy seemed to have reached its limit. The lies, the venality, the puffed-up grandiosity of our preening leaders and their repulsive spokespersons – surely, you think, it can’t get any worse that that. But just wait until you see what they have cooked up for … Continue reading “IS IRAQ NEXT?”

A good deal of the fretting over what might or might not turn out to be an increasing level of hostility between mainland China and Taiwan over the arcane (and currently irrelevant) question of whether everybody still believes in "One China" is related to the apparently irresistible urge of the U.S. State Department to want … Continue reading “THE ITCH TO CHOOSE SIDES”