Roundup: Media's Take

Robert Scheer: Gorbachev’s Sermon on the Mount

[Robert Scheer has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. Scheer is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow. He has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale, and was a fellow in arms control at Stanford.] “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” That biblical quotation certainly applies to Mikhail Gorbachev, a man not honored enough for the example he set and whose past pract

David Ignatius: A Salute to Our Military

[David R. Ignatius is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He also co-hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues at Washingtonpost.com, with Newsweek 's Fareed Zakaria.] WASHINGTON -- In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings, some commentaries have examined the damage to the U.S. Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few have spoken about the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, as an ex

Slavoj Zizek: 20 Years of Collapse

[Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London, is the author, most recently, of “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.”] TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During this time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculous nature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true, the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the world suddenly changed in ways that had been inconc

Don Surber: Obama plans Hiroshima and Nagasaki trips

[Don Surber has been with the Charleston Daily Mail for 25 years, the last 22 as an editorial writer and columnist.] President Obama could not find time to join in the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall in Berlin. But as he heads to Japan, Obama he promised a reporter that he will visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime in his presidency. “The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world and I would be honor

Kishore Mahbubani: Obama in Asia: West Looks East After "The End of History"

[Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, at the National University of Singapore, is the author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.] SINGAPORE -- The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has just been celebrated. For many, that momentous event marked the so-called "end of history" and the final victory of the West. This week, Barack Obama, the first black president of the once-triumphant s

James Taranto: The D.C. sniper, Fort Hood and the post-post-9/11 mentality

[James Taranto is a Manhattan-based columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of its online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com.] John Allen Muhammad, the "D.C. sniper" of autumn 2002, is no more. The commonwealth of Virginia put Muhammad to death last night for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Northern Virginia. Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also convicted of six murders in Maryland and suspected of three killings in other sta

Express-News Editorial Board: Honor veterans today, every day

It's been 90 years since Nov. 11 was proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson as the first commemoration of Armistice Day to mark the end of World War I — the Great War known as “the war to end all wars.” Because it wasn't, because there were more wars to be fought and endured, Congress would eventually move to rename it Veterans Day and to honor all the men and women who have served in the military. The word veteran conjures up the image of seasoned and gray individuals who have alr

Bob Richards: Veterans Day or Rulers Day?

[Bob Richards is a military veteran who served as a submariner in the 1960s.] How is it that Veterans Day gets turned around into US Military Hegemony Day? The airwaves were buried under an avalanche of lip service about veterans, but the moving lips were all about the myth that the warfare decisions this country's rulers make have something to do with anyone's freedom. Just as soldiers and sailors are doing around the world today, I did in my time. I was there as a teenager, ignora

Jamie Weinstein: Learning from Iraq

[Jamie Weinstein is a syndicated columnist with The North Star National. He can be reached through his blog, www.JamieWeinstein.com] As Barack Obama deliberates over whether to grant General Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan, one of the president’s greatest concerns is reportedly the unreliability and questionable legitimacy of the current Afghan government. While this is hardly a trivial conce

Jonathan Freedland: Our Amnesia on Afghanistan

[Jonathan Freedland is the Guardian's policy editor and has been a columnist for the paper since 1997.] This is remembrance week, when we are supposed to wear a poppy or stand in silence and remember those who have fallen. And yet we seem to have a problem with memory – especially when it comes to peace and war. We tell ourselves we will never forget and yet, when we debate the war in which British troops are fighting and dying, we are saddled with a national amnesia. P

Melvin A. Goodman: Revisiting the Rehabilitation of Defense Secretary Robert Gates

[Melvin A. Goodman is national security and intelligence columnist for Truthout. He is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included service at the CIA, State Department, Defense Department and the US Army. His latest book is "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA."] Michael Crowley of the New Republic is the latest journalist to give absolution

Loretta Napoleoni: 20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Will Another Superpower Meet Its End in Afghanistan?

[Loretta Napoleoni, a former Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics, is a leading expert on international terrorism who has worked as a consultant to European national banks and a financial columnist for numerous European daily papers.] On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US is losing the war in Afghanistan, a country that indirectly contribute

Marion Brady: Education Reform: Wrong Diagnosis, So Wrong Cure

[Marion Brady began a career in education in 1952 teaching in a semi-rural high school in northeastern Ohio. Since then he has taught at every level from 6th grade through the university, been a county-level school administrator, publisher consultant, teacher educator, textbook author, contributor to professional journals, author of professional books, writer of instructional materials, visitor to schools across America and abroad, and long-time education columnist for Knight-Ridder/Tribune.]

Michael Lind: The fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers: Each ushered in a new American era

[Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation.] Three calendar dates. Three anniversaries. Three eras in the history of the United States and the world... ... 11/9. 9/11. 9/15. These three dates divide three eras in recent history: the Age of Euphoria, the Age of Paranoia, and the Age of Disillusionment. The Age of Euphoria lasted from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the twin towers. In Washington, the fall of

Frances Kissling: When Congress sells out women

[For over the thirty five years, Frances Kissling has been the leading international voice on women, religion and reproduction. She is currently working on a book on ethical dilemmas and abortion as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. A prolific writer and lecturer, Kissling is the co-author of Rosie: The Investigation of a Wrongful Death (The Dial Press, 1978).] It was just a week ago that I sat in Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office, alo

Andrew Leonard: Why can't Obama be more like Roosevelt?

[Andrew Leonard has been working at Salon as a technology reporter, editor and blogger for 12 years.] In the wake of 10.2 percent unemployment, the usual suspects are calling for more stimulus and even dreaming of a new Works Progress Administration. The subtext: Why can't Obama be more like Roosevelt? People are out of work, so instead of subsidizing car purchases or home ownership, why not just hire them to build the kinds of parks and schools and bridges that made Roosevelt's W

Fouad Ajami: From Berlin to Baghdad

[Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).] For all its menace and fanfare, Eastern European communism, one of its countless chroniclers observed, left the theater of history on tiptoe. The simple, surprising end came 20 years ago, Nov. 9, 1989, when an apparatchik of the German Democratic Republic read out a no

Fareed Zakaria: The Age of Terror Has Passed ... The Age of China Has Arrived

[Zakaria is editor of NEWSWEEK International and author of The Post-American World and The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.] One year in, it seemed obvious what would define this decade. After 9/11, everyone could see that we were living in the age of terror. Presidents and senators talked about it, the media covered its every twist and turn, from bombings in Bali to terror camps in Pakistan. And yet, as the decade comes to a close, it is clear to me that t

David Aaronovitch: Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?

[David Aaronovitch is a writer, broadcaster and commentator on international politics and the media. He writes for The Times Comment page on Tuesdays.] Not so long ago I was at a supper party about which I can give no other details than that the Cuban Ambassador and a well-known political industrialist were present. At some late, lubricated point between cheese and liqueurs, the captain of industry commended the man from Havana for his country’s imperviousness to such destabilising

Bret Stephens: In Defense of Hamid Karzai

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] In the matter of Hamid Karzai (this would be the feckless, warlord-backed, corruption-tainted and dubiously re-elected president of Afghanistan), it's wonderful to observe how he has single-handedly created a new designation in the American ideological lexicon: the neo-neocon. Who are the neo-neocons? They're a bipartisan, single-issue group that has recently discovered the virtues—na