Roundup: Media's Take

George Will: Congress's Unused War Powers

.... American history is replete with examples of Congress restraining executive war-making. (See "Congress at War: The Politics of Conflict Since 1789," a book by Charles A. Stevenson.) Congress has forbidden: Sending draftees outside this hemisphere (1940-41); introduction of combat troops into Laos or Thailand (1969); reintroduction of troops into Cambodia (1970); combat operations in Southeast Asia (1973); military operations in Angola (1976); use of force in Lebanon o

Brendan Simms: John Bolton's new memoir shows that he's no neocon

[Mr. Simms is the author, most recently, of "Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1789" (Penguin/Allen Lane). You can buy "Surrender Is Not an Option" from the OpinionJournal bookstore.] The British conservative Enoch Powell once famously said that all political careers end in failure. John Bolton's career, as we read in the opening pages of "Surrender Is Not an Option," began with the defeat of Barry Goldwat

Bret Stephens: Did the Allies in World War II "lower themselves to the level of their enemies"?

[Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.] The death last week of Paul Tibbets Jr., the pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945, is an opportunity to revisit the debate about the strategic value and moral justification of the aerial bombardment of civilian targets in wartime. It also casts some light on the controversy surrounding Michael Mukasey's nomination to be the next

Bernard Weiner: Back to the 1960s

[Bernard Weiner, a poet, playwright and Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently is co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). ] I've been privileged, if that's the right word, to live through the tenures of two of the worst presidents in American history: Richard Nixon, who

John B. Judis: The childhood roots of Giuliani's strange views of liberty

By the time Giuliani took office as mayor in 1994, he had already enjoyed a spectacular career as a U.S. attorney, becoming the scourge of the Mafia and Wall Street inside-traders, including Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. In addition, he had already acquired a philosophy of government and a way of dealing with subordinates that would mark his eight years as mayor. He picked up some of this approach in his years as a prosecutor, but most of his core beliefs can be traced to his childhood in New

Daniel A. Rezneck : Teddy Roosevelt was right: Waterboarding wrong

[Daniel A. Rezneck, an amateur historian, is a former president of the District of Columbia bar.] There is nothing new under the sun. Just consider the practice known as “waterboarding,” which has caused Senate Democrats to suggest they will block confirmation of Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey because, while he decries the practice, he said he could not comment on its legality. The Bush administration has said it considers the practice to be humane and to fa

Paul Elie: Suddenly everybody's getting right by Niebuhr

The vital center was not holding. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., bow-tied eminence of American liberalism, stepped in. The “war on terror” was sputtering into its fifth year, and there was no end in sight; Schlesinger was 87, and the hour was getting late. He tapped out an essay for The New York Times, confident that the men down in Washington could be set straight if only they had the right guide. Where, he asked, was the wisdom of his old friend Reinhold Niebuhr when the country needed it? “Why, in a

Fareed Zakaria: Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

Robert McHenry: Dinesh D’Souza's illogical statements about religion and science

[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.] The newspaper USA Today is generally acknowledged to be the newspaper of choice for two kinds of people: those away from home and those who don’t care to know too much. I see it when I fall into the former category, as I did this past week. The hotel supplied the paper for free, along with the “free” breakfast – juice, coffee, and pastry in your

Sidney Blumenthal: Journalism and its Discontents

[Mr. Blumenthal is a contributing writer at Salon.com and the author of The Clinton Wars.] Editor's note: The following is the author's afterword for a reissue of Walter Lippman's"Liberty and the News," to be published this month by Princeton University Press. Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was the most influential American journalist of the 20th century. Born into one of the German-Jewish"Our Crowd" families of New York City, he began his career as a cub reporter for Lincoln Ste

Paul Krugman: The reinvention of Vietnam (interview)

[Excerpt] ROC: In your book [The Conscience of a Liberal (Oct. 2007)], you talk about the media's use of "storylines" and what you've called the "Rambofication of history." PK: Yes, I'm rather proud of the term "Rambofication." In the years immediately following Vietnam, all of this stuff that now seems so much a part of the story -- that we lost the war because we were stabbed in the back, that the "weak" politicians, the Democra

John B. Judis: Bush's Neo-Imperialist War

[John B. Judis, is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is author most recently of The Folly of Empire.] In 1882 the British occupied Egypt. Although they claimed they would withdraw their troops, the British remained, they said, at the request of the khedive, the ruler they had installed. The U.S. Army Area Handbook aptly describes the British decision to stay: "At the outset of the occupa

Michael Parenti: Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints

[Michael Parenti’s recent publications include: Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights, 2007); Democracy for the Few, 8th ed. (Wadsworth, 2007); The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006). For further information visit his website: www.MichaelParenti.org.]During his 26-year papacy, John Paul II elevated 483 individuals to sainthood, reportedly more saints than any previous pope. One personage he beatified but did not

Raymond Ibrahim: The Al Qaeda Reader and Mein Kampf

[Raymond Ibrahim is editor of The Al Qaeda Reader.] A number of book reviewers have recently pointed to the similarities between The Al Qaeda Reader and Mein Kampf. For instance, writing in the New York Observer, James Buchan notes that, "In their [al Qaeda’s] brutality and candor, their fulminations against democracy and loose morals, their obsession with territory, their finicky racism and absolute disdain for the material needs of the public, these documents are a strange ec

Aluf Benn: How Condoleezza Rice sees the Palestinians through the eyes of America's civil rights movement

When Condoleezza Rice talks about the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, she sees in her mind's eye the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, which culminated in the period of her Alabama childhood. Rice is very aware of political sensitivity, and avoids making such comparisons in public speeches and interviews, where she keeps to the official list of talking points. But in private, she talks about the segregated buses of her childhood. One

Ruth Malhotra and Orit Sklar: Leftist Brown Shirts Shut Down Horowitz Speech at Emory

[Ruth Malhotra is a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, studying International Affairs and Public Policy. Orit Sklar is a graduate of Georgia Tech, where she studied Civil Engineering. Malhotra and Sklar have both been involved with College Republicans and Jackets for Israel at Georgia Tech, and have been leaders in the movement for academic freedom and intellectual diversity nationwide. Malhotra and Sklar are currently co-plaintiffs in a federal civil rights lawsuit chall

Peggy Noonan: The New Republic's editors seem to have mistaken Vietnam movies for real life

"I love chicks that have been intimate with IED's," he announced to his fellow soldiers sitting in the chow tent in Camp Falcon in Baghdad. "It really turns me on--melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses." The soldiers laughed so hard they almost fell from their chairs. They enjoy running over dogs in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, luring them in and then crushing their bones as they whelp. When a soldier comes upon a mass grave, he picks up a human skull, places it merrily on

Christopher Hitchens: Defending the Term "Islamofascism"

[Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. His most recent collection of essays is titled Love, Poverty, and War.] The attempt by David Horowitz and his allies to launch "Islamofascism Awareness Week" on American campuses has been met with a variety of responses. One of these is a challenge to the validity of the term itself. It's quite the done thing, in liberal academic circles, to sneer at any compa

Roger Pulvers: Bush couldn't get elected mayor in Japan

[Roger Pulvers is an Australian author, playwright and theater director, and a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. His latest book is a collection of 12 secular bible stories, "The Honey and the Fires," from ABC Books (Australia).] In his new book, "The Political Brain," Drew Westen analyzes in detail the election debates of 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Westen points out that it was Gore's dispassionate approach to issues that hurt him. Bush,

D.A. Davis: Holocausts... Christians need to acknowledge them all

[D.A. Davis is a freelance writer in South Bend, Indiana.] The number of holocausts that have occurred in the past 100 years is incredible and the body count is astronomical. What is especially troubling is that many Catholic laymen and clergy are uninformed about the suffering, persecutions, massacres, and martyrdom that Catholics and other Christians have endured in recent history. When I ask fellow Catholics if they are aware that an estimated five million Christian