How about a moment of silence for the passing of the American Dream? M.R.I.C. (May it rest in carnage.) No, I’m not talking about the old dream of opportunity that involved home ownership, a better job than your parents had, a decent pension, and all the rest of the...
Closing Overseas Bases Is Good Policy and Good Politics
It has been like a cross between a suspense and a horror movie. If the committee doesn’t come up with a compromise by the Thanksgiving deadline, the axes will come out. Perhaps only Washington insiders appreciate the suspense. As for the horror part, the blood will...
The End of Pax Americana?
How Washington Creates Global Instability
It was built for… well, not to put too fine a point on it, victory. I’m talking, of course, about the ill-named Camp Victory, the massive military complex, a set of bases really, constructed around an old hunting lodge and nine of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s...
Edward Gibbon at America’s Grave
1. Twin Towers Two years from now the staffs of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker will move into the most haunted building in the world. There, the elite of American celebrity photographers, gossip columnists, and magazine journalists may meet some macabre new muses....
The Rise and Fall of the American Empire
If we look at American foreign policy under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, what strikes the non-partisan observer is a sense of continuity – and an escalating aggressiveness. President Clinton moved with force into Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the...
Apocalypse Now?
The Republican congressional leadership was in a panic: their covering for the Obama administration’s unconstitutional and unnecessary war in Libya was rapidly unraveling as a resolution by Rep. Dennis Kucinich calling for an end to it gained momentum –...
What Must We Defend?
"We need to be honest with the president, with the Congress, with the American people" about the consequences of cutting the defense budget, said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his valedictory policy address to the American Enterprise Institute. "[A] smaller...
Sleepwalking Into the Imperial Dark
The US Versus the Egyptian People
The last thing the U.S. policy elite wants is real democracy in Egypt. That country has been a linchpin of American foreign policy for more than 30 years precisely because its government has been able to defy the will of the Egyptian people. If that should change now,...