Roundup: Media's Take

Max Boot: Fire the incompetents, find the Pattons

THE NAVY IS ON a tear. Last week, for the sixth time in six weeks, a skipper was relieved of command. The latest to get the sack was Cmdr. E.J. McClure of the guided missile destroyer Arleigh Burke, which had a"soft grounding" while heading back to port in the well-charted waters off Norfolk, Va. These firings have sparked debate in military circles, with some critics from the other services charging that the Navy is guilty of a"zero defect" mentality that would have robbed it of suc

Al Knight: Decision on Ward Churchill Correct

Brown's decision, which is contained in a thoughtful, 10-page letter, could stand alone as the historical record of this sorry chapter in CU history. In it, he outlines the incredibly complex process that has been used during the last two years to get the university to the point where it is able to reach a conclusion. It is easily possible to imagine, say, the closing of a large factory and the displacement of its entire work force that would consume less time and paperwork.

Tim Butcher: How I followed Stanley's path into the dark heart of Africa

The Daily Telegraph changed the course of African history when it funded Henry Morton Stanley's voyage of discovery down the Congo River in the 1870s, which launched the continent's troubled modern history of colonialism and post-colonial turbulence. In recent decades the Congo has regressed into the most dangerous, remote region in the world. I followed Stanley's original 2,000 mile route using pygmy motorbike guides and a flotilla of unconvincing river-craft on a journey that prov

Sidney Blumenthal: Wolfowitz's tomb

Paul Wolfowitz's doctrines are a summa of numerous failed political dogmas of the 20th century. His notion of politics was essentially Bolshevik, but less democratic in practice than Lenin's. Wolfowitz had no concept of mass politics. Nor did he have an idea of democratic centralism, the core of Leninism, by which the vanguard led the cells of the party. Wolfowitz believed only in the vanguard. The dutiful student of obscurantist authoritarian philosopher Leo Strauss operated as a solitary intel

Jonathan Freedland: Bush's amazing achievement

One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced

Gaby Wood: Getting Jimmy Carter

[Wood interviewed Carter just before he ridiculed the Bush administration as the worst in history.] ... Is Carter a valiant truth-teller, or a dangerous loose cannon? Conservatives this past week have been happy to embrace the latter view. The New Republic's editor-in-chief, Marty Peretz, said when Carter's Palestine book was published in the US late last year that the former president, who famously brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s, would 'go down in hi

Paddy Ashdown: When I look to the future in Iraq, I start by studying the past

[Mr. Ashdown is a former leader of Liberal Democrats in the UK.] Those who, like me, supported the removal of Saddam Hussein by force now have to face up to the awkward task of deciding what can be salvaged from the mess. I have joined a new and independent Iraq study group, the Iraq Commission, with Tom King and Margaret Jay, to do this in front of Channel 4 cameras. We will be concentrating on the future, but it is important not to forget the lessons of the past. The traged

Peter Collier: Memorial Day ain't what it used to be

[Mr. Collier wrote the text for "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty" (Workman, 2006).] Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: Those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of c

Lawrence Downes: America the Generous ... A Lost Story of Citizenship

When people bicker over immigration, it’s often not long before the topic turns to My Family Came Here Legally. People whose roots go to Ellis Island or deeper like to say that. It fills their family trees with hard-working people who were poor but played by the rules, who got with the American program. It draws a bright line between upstanding Americans and those shadowy illegal workers hiding one big secret and who knows how many others. It’s that line — that moral chasm between U

Jeffrey Bell: What Falwell Wrought ... Just the biggest voter realignment in modern history

[Jeffrey Bell is a principal of Capital City Partners, a Washington consulting firm.] To gauge the impact of Jerry Falwell--or, more precisely, the political realignment he was a central figure in precipitating--it is helpful to review the voting behavior of conservative white Protestants in the presidential elections between 1976 and 1984, the years when Falwell's political influence emerged from nowhere and reached its peak. Jimmy Carter's capture of the Democratic pr

Jules Witcover: Repairing the Damage Done by Bush

[Jules Witcover, a political columnist for 30 years, has written a dozen books about American politics, including “No Way to Pick A President” and “The Year the Dream Died.” His most recent book is “Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.”] ... While Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq has been the immediate trigger for the decline of American influence, just as significant was his original failure to capitalize on the terrorist a

Paul Krugman: Why liberals should be concerned about the immigration bill

... There’s a highly technical controversy going on among economists about the effects of recent immigration on wages. However that dispute turns out, it’s clear that the earlier wave of immigration increased inequality and depressed the wages of the less skilled. For example, a recent study by Jeffrey Williamson, a Harvard economic historian, suggests that in 1913 the real wages of unskilled U.S. workers were around 10 percent lower than they would have been without mass immigration. But the st

Nick Cohen: What's Oxfam up to now?

Oxfam was founded in 1942 to bring aid to the oppressed of Nazi Europe, a cause that didn't make it popular with the Churchill government. After the Germans occupied Greece, the Royal Navy blocked the shipping lanes. Food and medicines couldn't get through to civilians, and famine set in. Lifting the blockade might have helped the starving, but Whitehall wondered whether food meant for the hungry wouldn't end up in the bellies of German troops instead, and gazed with some disdain on the new lobb

Andrea Althoff: The Impact of Latino Immigration on Catholicism in the United States

[Andrea Althoff is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago Divinity School.] The sizeable influx to the United States of Latin American immigrants -- mainly from Mexico -- raises questions about how immigration is changing the face of the Catholic Church, where Latinos already make up one third of that communion. A recent survey from the Pew Hispanic Center ("Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion") reveals data meriting analysis here

Daniel Henninger: American politics plays with the dangers of permanent opposition

[Mr. Henninger is a columnist for the WSJ. He recently returned from a trip to Spain.] ... How like New York [Spain is], where at this stage of our politics, Democrats and Republicans co-exist to the extent they agree not to discuss George Bush, Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz or much of anything deeper than the celebrities of presidential politics. There are many things America could profitably learn from Spain -- its good manners, an unfailing willingness to help a confused tra

Shelton L. Williams: What I learned from the Texas school mass shooting 41 years ago

[Shelton L. Williams is the John D. Moseley Chair of Government and Public Policy at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and President of the Osgood Center for International Studies in Washington, D.C.] The American penchant for noting records marked the Virginia Tech shootings in Blacksburg as the “single worst massacre on an American campus.” Having survived the previous record-setting event, that awful day in 1966 at the University of Texas, I understand the demarcation, but the la

Robert Spencer: Turkish Secularism on the Ropes

[Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of six books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.] Turkish secularism is gravely threatened, and millions of Turks a

David Swanson: Dick Cheney and Jim Wright Saved Reagan ... What Can Cheney and Nancy Pelosi Do for Bush?

[Mr. Swanson is a leader in the impeach Cheney movement.] For almost five months, Congress has gone out of its way to avoid impeachment in order to get things done, and has thereby managed to have signed into law all sorts of wonderful legislation. Er, well, actually not so much legislation that you would really call wonderful. Well, OK, actually not a single bill, if you want to be picky about it. And of course, any useful legislation sent to the President is likely to be vetoed or

Lisa Jardine: The intellectual ties that bind the West

[Whatever the state of relations between London and Washington, Europe and the US should remember their long history of shared intellectual activity, championed chiefly by Albert Einstein.] The campus of the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, in Pasadena, where I spent this week, looks more like a Latin-American hacienda than a top-flight university dedicated to teaching and research in fundamental science. Practically all the giants of modern science have bee

Frank Zarb: How to Win the Energy War

[Frank G. Zarb, the managing director of a private equity firm, was the assistant to the president for energy affairs in the Ford administration.] ... Back in 1975, President Gerald Ford used his State of the Union message to inform Americans how dangerous our growing dependence on foreign oil was: “We, the United States, are not blameless. Our growing dependence upon foreign sources has been adding to our vulnerability for years and years, and we did nothing to prepare ourselves fo