Roundup: Media's Take

Jonathan Alter: Post-Bush Stress Disorder: Democrats have too many hang-ups

[Jonathan Alter is also the author of Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War.] In The Godfather, Sonny talks about going "to the mattresses," meaning war with rival Mafia families. Now President Obama and the Democrats are holing up together on their Posturepedics as they work out battle plans on health care, banking reform, and Afghanistan. The question is whether they'll be daring soldiers of the future or content to fight the last war.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920

[Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and, most recently, Meltdown: A Free Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (with a foreword by Ron Paul).] It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an

John Graham: Afghanistan—Winning Lessons from Vietnam

[A Foreign Service Officer for fifteen years, John Graham was in the middle of the revolution in Libya and the war in Vietnam. For three years in the mid-seventies, he was a member of NATO's top-secret Nuclear Planning Group, then served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator John Glenn. At the United Nations, he was deeply involved in U.S. initiatives in Southern Africa, South Asia and Cuba.] There are many differences between our wars in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. There are also

Michael Mukasey: Civilian Courts Are No Place to Try Terrorists

[Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.] The Obama administration has said it intends to try several of the prisoners now detained at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courts in this country. This would include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and other detainees allegedly involved. The Justice Department claims that our courts are well suited to the task. Based on my experience trying such cases,

Jamie Glazov interviews Lynn O'Shea about the POWs we left behind

[Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy.] Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Lynn O’Shea, Director of Research for the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America’s Missing Servicemen.FP: Lynn O’Shea, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Tell us what your Alliance is currently working on.O’Shea: Currently, we are working toward t

Mark Thompson: The Soviets in Afghanistan ... Obama's Déjà Vu?

[Mark Thompson is Washington Correspondent for Time Magazine.] "It's a tricky situation," said the decision-maker huddled with his inner circle debating what to do next in Afghanistan. "We went in, but how to get out — our head[s] are splitting from this. Of course we can just pull out fast, without thinking of anything and blame the former leadership who started all this." The dilemma may sound familiar as the Obama Administration weighs General Stanley McChryst

Gordon Goldstein: From Defeat, Lessons in Victory

PRESIDENT OBAMA recently told Congressional leaders something many of them did not want to hear. It was time to “dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan,” he is said to have declared, frustrating those on both sides of the aisle who have sought to portray the choices in Afghanistan as just such a simplistic dichotomy. While the president continues to analyze his military options with senior advisers, some parameters of his

Lewis Sorley: The Vietnam War We Ignore

[Lewis Sorley, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, is the author of “A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam.] AS President Obama and his advisers contemplate a new course for Afghanistan, many commentators are suggesting analogies with earlier conflicts, particularly the war in Vietnam. Such comparisons can be useful, but only if the characterizations of earlier wars are accurate and lessons are appropriately applied.

Darren Hutchinson: Time warp! Justice of peace won't officiate interracial marriage

[Professor Darren Hutchinson teaches Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, Law and Social Change, and Equal Protection Theory at the American University, Washington College of Law.] I have checked, and this is not a story from The Onion. Apparently, Keith Bardwell, a Louisiana justice of the peace, actually refuses to officiate marriages of interracial couples. Bardwell says he opposes interracial marriages because multiracial children "suffer" (yeah -- from bigots lik

Jon Meacham: The Obama-Dubya Connection

[Jon Meacham became Editor of Newsweek in October 2006, after serving as Managing Editor since November 1998.] George H.W. Bush was delighted with his guest. Last Friday at the 41st president's library on the campus of Texas A&M in College Station, Bush and President Obama met to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Points of Light service program, part of Bush 41's legacy to the country. Unfailingly polite, Bush wrote the Aggie community before Obama's visit. The note was fa

Jonathan Movroydis: Military Enlistment The Highest Since Nixon Days

[Jonathan recently graduated from the University of California, Irvine. His research and writing interests include political ideology, religion, and their respective impact on domestic and world politics.] The Washington Post is reporting that military recruiters have posted their best year since 1973, bringing in nearly 170,000 new troops in 2008, 3 percent above their stated goals. The Post credits the ballooning civilian unemployment for a surge in enlistment rates.

David R. Stokes: Russians Reject Our Reset Button In Favor Of Theirs

[David R. Stokes (www.davidrstokes.com) is a minister, broadcaster, and free-lance writer. He currently serves as Senior Pastor of FAIR OAKS CHURCH in Fairfax, Virginia (www.fairoakschurch.org )] U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a lesson in geopolitics this past week. It may be best described by comparing the now-all-rage reset button metaphor to that gizmo put out by office supply gia

Robert Parry: Obama and the Left's Old Schism

[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.] My article mildly defending Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize drew a number of critical comments from readers who felt I was letting the President off too easily, essentially excusing his reluctance to fully reverse George W. Bush’s wars and crimes. Some readers thought I was giving Obama a pass, too, when I faulted the American Left for its lack of an effective media

Gordon P. Erspamer: MKULTRA Legacy: The Stain of Dishonor and the Prerequisites for Redemption

[Gordon P. Erspamer is the lead counsel in the class action complaint which is pending in San Francisco Federal District Court, Vietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al., Case No. 09-0037 CW (ND Cal. 2009). More information regarding this lawsuit can be found at www.edgewoodtestvets.org.] Despite the passage of four decades, America and its military have never come to grips with its own ghastly programs

Sam Ferguson: In Pursuing Human Rights, Argentina Displays a Broken Justice System

[Sam Ferguson is currently a Yale Law School Robina International Human Rights fellow, and is residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is writing a book about prosecuting military atrocities committed during the Dirty War. In March, he will begin a Fulbright Fellowship.] Buenos Aires, Argentina - Buenos Aires' Comodoro Py judicial building is situated far from the city's municipal core, sandwiched between the city's busy bus terminal and the country's main port. Long distance buses

Brett Arends and Dave Kansas: Eighty Years After the Great Crash -- 'Is It the '30s Again?'

Editor's Note: It was the worst thing to happen to the U.S. since Fort Sumter. October, 1929. Wall Street crashed and helped drive the country into the Great Depression—a deep economic and spiritual wound that has afflicted three generations of Americans. Eighty years later, as the country struggles through the harsh aftermath of another crash, two Sunday Journal contributors mark a grim anniversary and weigh the question that haunts everyone:"Is this the 1930s all over again?"

Brendan Goldman: Forum at Columbia University Whitewashes UN and Arab States

[Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the Middle East Forum. This essay was sponsored by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.] With all the irony of President Richard Nixon's famous quip that, "there can be no whitewash at the White House," the ivory tower played host to a September 25 "debate" at Columbia University's Casa Italiano that exonerated the United Nations Relie

John R. Bolton: Obama's Jimmy Carter Foreign Policy

[John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."] Weakness in American foreign policy in one region often invites challenges elsewhere, because our adversaries carefully follow diminished American resolve. Similarly, presidential indecisiveness, whether because of uncertainty or internal political struggles, signals that the United States may not respond to

Alex Koppelman: Christian right leader sorry for comparing Emanuel to Mengele

[Alex Koppelman is a staff writer Salon.com] Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League have been getting some criticism for not doing more to speak out against the comparisons some people are making between Obama administration figures and Nazis. In New York magazine, for instance, Peter Keating wrote an article asking why organizations like the ADL hadn't done more, or hadn't been more effective, in countering the suggestions, saying,"[I]njecting Hitler analogies into subjects like Me

Anna Hartnell: The Rise of the Religious Left -- Why Christianity Isn't Just for Conservatives

[Anna Hartnell is a lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of Birmingham. She is completing a book Imagining Exodus, Re-imagining America: Race and Religion in Black American Thought.] The enormous political clout wielded by evangelical Christians in the United States is usually seen from the outside as a coup for rightwing zealots against any agenda that might be called "progressive". But we should think again. The recent revelation that Michael Moo