Roundup: Media's Take

Ian Buruma: Japan Can't Stay Postwar Forever

[Ian Buruma, the author of Murder in Amsterdam: the Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, is professor of human rights at Bard College, New York. His latest book is the novel The China Lover.] Revolutions, it is often claimed, do not happen when people are desperate. They occur in times of rising expectations. Perhaps this is why they so often end in disappointment. Expectations, usually set too high to begin with, fail to be met, resulting in anger, disillusion, and o

Fred Block: Infrastructure, Deficits, and Global Recovery

[Fred Block is a research professor of sociology at the University of California at Davis. His book, edited with Matthew Keller, State of Innovation: The U.S. Government’s Role in Technology Development has just been published by Paradigm.] A TALE of two episodes in the life of a bridge tells us a lot about the dilemmas facing governments around the world. The Bay Bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland was originally built between 1933 and 1936 at a cost of $77 million. After the

Steve Kornacki: For GOP, Islamophobia is the New Anti-Communism

[Steve Kornacki is the news editor for Salon.] The difference between Bush’s GOP and Newt’s is one of window dressing only. The Republican Party of the Bush years had the same magnetic allure to Islamophobes as today’s does, even if it didn’t use quite the same inflammatory rhetoric.... Bush’s policies also found vocal support from Islamophobes outside the Christian right. "I have nothing against Islamic people," Dennis Miller told Bill O’Reilly during the Bus

Jackson Diehl: Can Raul Castro Modernize and Stabilize Cuba?

[Jackson Diehl is a columnist for the WaPo.] ...[S]ome in and out of Cuba argue that Raúl Castro is up to something different. He understands, they say, that the Stalinist regime cannot survive in its present form, and he wants to modernize and stabilize it before he and his brother pass away. He faces stiff resistance from Fidel Castro -- who, after a four-year absence, began popping up in public within days of the first prisoner release. But Raúl, it is said, is nevertheless deter

Matt Bai: I’m American. And You?

...Last week, a group of senior Republican senators called for hearings on repealing the 14th Amendment; that’s the one that affords children born on American soil automatic citizenship. At the same time, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich were among those posting outraged Twitter updates over the decision to allow an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the fallen trade center towers.... Sometimes the threat is economic or cultural. The 1850s, for instance, saw the rise of the Ame

Jonathan Powell: We will talk to Mullah Omar, and maybe to Bin Laden too

[Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to Tony Blair 1997-2007. His book Great Hatred Little Room, about the Northern Ireland peace process, is published by The Bodley Head Ltd.] It has become fashionable for western leaders, including generals, to talk about talking to the Taliban. But no one seems to be able to quite bring themselves to actually do it. That is understandable. It is almost impossible for a democratic government to fight an insurgency, losing lives in the process, and

Andy Yee: China rising ... what would Mackinder do?

[Andy Yee is a writer, blogger and translator, who is based in Hong Kong. He blogs at Global Voices Online and China Geeks.] In a lecture in 1904, British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder predicted how the Russo-Japanese War would have its effects fed back to Europe. With its ambitions in the Far East thwarted, Russia renewed its interests in the Turkish straits and the Balkans, putting it into a collision course with the Austro-Hungarian empire and Germany. This further heightened

Judith Warner: What the Great Recession Has Done to Family Life

[Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of “We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication.”] ...This glass-half-full narrative, the popular trope that the Great Recession will ennoble us by purging us of our excesses, has, as its reference point, the Great Depression — or a certain idea of the Great Depression. After all, we’ve been told countless times, the Depression put an end to the libertine individualism of the flapper age: families stayed home and playe

Michael Barone: Midterms: Route 66 for the GOP?

[Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.] Everybody, even White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, agrees that the Republicans are going to pick up seats in the House and Senate elections this year. The disagreement is about how many. Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. That was a reaction to the big-government programs of t

John Murray: The 'C' Should Stay in the YMCA

[Mr. Murray is headmaster of Fourth Presbyterian School in Potomac, Md.] Last month, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) unveiled a new brand strategy to address America's needs, as well as a name change to "the Y." After surveying "a cross section of Americans to learn more about the most pressing issues and challenges facing their communities today," the Y had found that only 51% of Americans were optimistic about the future while 49% were not....

Peggy Noonan: America Is at Risk of Boiling Over

[Peggy Noonan is a columnist for the WSJ.] ...Our problems as a nation have been growing on us for a long time. Their future growth, and the implications of that growth, could be predicted. But there is one thing that is both new since 1994 and huge. It took hold and settled in after the crash of 2008, but its causes were not limited to the crash. The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than

Seumas Milne: The U.S. Isn't Leaving Iraq, It's Rebranding the Occupation

[Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor.] For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion's share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what's happening there in 2010 barely registers. That will have been reinforced by Barack Obama's declaration this week that US combat tro

Ahmed Rashid: Divide Afghanistan At Your Peril

[The writer’s book, Taliban, has just been updated and reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication.] Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition. The war in Afghanistan just got more complicated with the release of secret military files by the Wikileaks website – a big

Joe Conason: Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich Need a History Lesson

[Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.] No recent controversy has so plainly revealed the hollow values of the American right than the effort to prevent the construction of a community center in Lower Manhattan because it will include a mosque. Arguments in opposition range from a professed concern for the sensitivities of the Sept. 11 victims’ families to a primitive battle cry against Islam—but what they all share is an arrant disregard for our country’s founding principle

Jeremy McCarter: James Baldwin is Still Angry After All These Years

When I play reverse time travel and imagine historical figures turning up today (what would Ben Franklin say about the iPad? Or Jane Austen about Jersey Shore?, etc.), James Baldwin’s name comes to mind. The essayist and novelist spent four decades picking at the scab of American race relations. He could be incendiary, but at his best he was sly, writing with a sharply ironic sensibility that gave him one of the most distinctive voices of the early postwar years. In part because he warned that t

E.J. Dionne: Is the GOP Shedding Its Birthright?

[E.J. Dionne is a columnist for the WaPo.] ...Nothing should make Republicans prouder than their party's role in passing what are known as the Civil War or Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, ending slavery; the 14th, guaranteeing equal protection under the law and establishing national standards for citizenship; and the 15th, protecting the right to vote. In those days, Democrats were the racial demagogues. Opponents of the 14th Amendment used racist arguments against

Yoani Sánchez: Fidel Castro, Present and Past

[Yoani Sánchez is a writer in Cuba. Her awards include the 2009 Maria Moors Cabot Prize. She blogs at www.desdecuba.com/generationy. This column was translated from Spanish by M.J. Porter. ] Fidel Castro's return to public life after a four-year absence provokes conflicting emotions here. His reappearance surprised a people awaiting, with growing despair, the reforms announced by his brother Raúl. While some weave fantasies around h

Edwin Black: Judge in Rubashkin Kosher Slaughterhouse Case Accused of Conflict-of-Interest

[Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust and the forthcoming book The Farhud: The Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust]Chief District Judge Linda Reade both coordinated with prosecutors and acted as judge in the contentious conviction of Agriprocessors kosher slaughterhouse operator Sholom Rubashkin, according to internal federal documents and court filings obtained by this reporter. According to the documents, Judge Reade personally participated in many aspects of the r

Timothy Egan: In Fire Country

[Timothy Egan worked for The Times for 18 years – as Pacific Northwest correspondent and a national enterprise reporter. In 2001, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America.” He is the author of several books, including “The Worst Hard Time,” a history of the Dust Bowl, for which he won the National Book Award, and most recently, “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America.”] ...It’s early in the fire season,

Joe Klein: Iraq ... Requiem for a Profound Misadventure

[Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost.] It is a matter of some relief that Barack Obama did not announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq under a banner that said "Mission Accomplished." He did it in a speech to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), the most grave and sober audience imaginable. And appropriately so, after a war that should never have been fought, a war that by some estimates will cost $3 tri