Roundup: Media's Take

Max Boot: Somalia's Lesson -- don't always trust the locals

ITTLE MORE THAN a month ago, the situation in Somalia seemed hopeless. The Islamic Courts Union was consolidating its Taliban-style hold on the country, foreign jihadists were pouring in and a new terrorist haven appeared to be emerging. The CIA's attempts to finance a coalition of secular warlords had failed, and the moderate transitional government was under siege in the provisional capital of Baidoa. Then, on the day before Christmas, the armed forces of Ethiopia — a Christian st

Nicholas Kristof: Why Bush has made the classics newly relevant

... Forget the Vietnam analogy that critics of the Iraq war usually toss out. A more trenchant analysis of Iraq-style adventures appears in the histories of Thucydides, written 2,400 years ago. Great Athenian diplomats of the day, like Nicias, warned against military involvement in Sicily, calling it “a war that does not concern us,” according to Thucydides. But smooth-talking neocons of the day, like the brilliant Alcibiades, said in effect that the Sicilians would welcome the Athe

Nicholas Lemann: What Is the South?

... The South is a big, complicated region, but the simplest available explanation of its politics is that they are primarily racial. From the end of Reconstruction through World War II, Southern voters were overwhelmingly white, and were unified by their dislike of the Republican Party. Pro-civil rights sentiment was detectable in the national Democratic Party from the New Deal onward, but Franklin Roosevelt's economic policies were so popular in the South, and his embrace of civil rights so fa

DeWayne Wickham: Question of race pervades presidential history

[DeWayne Wickham is a columnist for Gannett News Service. His e-mail address is DeWayneWickham@aol.com.] If Barack Obama manages to win the presidency in 2008, the conventional wisdom goes, he’ll become this nation’s first black president. Most recently, that distinction was bestowed on a white man — Bill Clinton — by novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison in a 1998 article she wrote for The New Yorker. Clinto

Jay Janson: Early CIA Involvement in Darfur Has Gone Unreported

[Musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.] There has been a glaring omission in the U.S. media presentation of the Darfur tragedy. The compassion demonstrated, mostly in words, until recently, has not been accompanied by a recognition of U.S. complicity, or at least involvement, in the war which has led to the enormous suffering and loss o

Jan Crawford Greenburg: The Truth About Clarence Thomas

[Ms. Crawford Greenburg, legal correspondent for ABC News, is the author of "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story for Control of the United States Supreme Court," published tomorrow by Penguin Press.] Clarence Thomas has borne some of the most vitriolic personal attacks in Supreme Court history. But the persistent stereotypes about his views on the law and subordinate role on the court are equally offensive -- and demonstrably false. An extensive documentary record shows tha

William Grimes: Why the Strongest Armies May Lose the Newest Wars

Right now in Iraq the mightiest army on earth is being fought to a standstill by insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades, rifles and improvised roadside bombs. This should not come as a surprise. In nearly every respect the war in Iraq fits a new paradigm of conflict that has been operative since the end of World War II, although military and political leaders have been slow to recognize it. Until they do, conventional armies, applying conventional wisdom, will continue to misapply their powe

Peter Beinart: Bush screws McCain again

[Peter Beinart is editor-at-large at The New Republic and the author of The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again (HarperCollins). ] In Iraq, sadly, the troop surge planned by George W. Bush probably won't make much difference. After all, the United States has already surged--the military sent several thousand more troops to Baghdad last summer--and the violence only got worse. Moreover, the intellectual architects of a n

John B. Judis: Is the US a rogue nation?

[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] What exactly are we doing in the Horn of Africa, where we have encouraged the Christian government of Ethiopia to invade Somalia and replace its Islamic government? As far as I can tell, we have violated international law, committed war crimes, helped Al Qaeda recruit new members, and involved ourselves in a guerrilla war that could last decades. It's Iraq writ

Dick Morris: Barack's first blunder

Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, made his first misstep a few days ago when he joined only a handful of Democrats in opposing a Senate reform banning the increasingly widespread practice of legislators hiring their family members on their campaign or PAC payrolls. Obama has not heard the last of this vote. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, who opposes wives cashing in on their husbands’ positions, voted righteously in favor of the reform and will probably use the Illinois senator’

Michael T. Klare: Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?

[Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).] It has once again become fashionable for the dwindling supporters of President Bush's futile war in Iraq to stress the danger of"Islamo-fascism" and the supposed drive by followers of Osama bin La

Max Boot: Both sides' strategies in Iraq are big ifs with big risks. The president's is worth a try.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq has not, to put it kindly, been well received. But does anyone have a better idea? Should we just declare defeat and go home? Not even most leading Democrats are willing to go that far. At least not yet. Most instead talk of gradually drawing down forces and possibly redeploying them either to Iraq's borders or to other bases in the region. There is something to be said for this strategy. But it also entails huge risks.

Jay Janson: King's Anguish When He Condemned U.S. War Crimes and Foreign Policy Worthy of Emulation

[Musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.] "For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Riverside Church, New York City, April 4th, 1967 We should make constant use of King's 1967 speeches condemning the war and foreign policy of his count

Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts: We're Fighting Not to Lose

[Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, directed the Pentagon Papers Project. Richard K. Betts is director of Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.] Iraq is not Vietnam, yet history seems intent on harnessing them together. Three years ago this seemed an unlikely pairing; surely President Bush would not take the United States down the same trail as Lyndon B. Johnson. Yet even though Iraq's story is far from complete, each

Roger Pulvers: Perish the Thought that Japan May Have God on Its Side

[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). Click here for his website.] 'The Japanese are, it is true, commonly said to be an irreligious people. They say so themselves. . . . The average, even educated European strikes the

George F. Will: MacArthur's Two Words

... It is difficult to imagine how Iraq can end as a success—as an enterprise in which the benefits exceed the costs. And if it is judged a disaster, that will be because the responsible officials were too late in remembering what Gen. Douglas MacArthur said. He said that in war, all disasters can be explained by two words: "too late." Because the administration was too late to recognize that there were too few U.S. forces in Iraq, the looting after the fall of Baghdad—whi

Carl M. Cannon: From Washington to FDR to Nixon, presidents have always lied. Here’s what makes George W. Bush different.

[Carl M. Cannon is White House correspondent for National Journal.] In 1944, Harry Truman was asked by his friend and Senate colleague Owen Brewster what Franklin Roosevelt was really like. Truman hadn’t gotten to know his running mate very well, but the Democratic vice-presidential nominee had spent enough time around FDR to provide a succinct answer. “He lies,” Truman replied. At that point, the most consequential issue the president was untruthful abou

Max Boot: The media aren't the enemy in Iraq

IF WE WIND UP losing the war in Iraq, as now appears likely (though not inevitable), many conservatives know who to blame: the press, or, in blogger-speak, the MSM (mainstream news media). Just as it did during the Vietnam War, a myth is likely to develop in which America's valiant fighting men and women were stabbed in the back by unpatriotic, even treasonous, reporters. Administration spokesmen and many soldiers have been saying for years that things aren't so bad in Iraq. "I

Dorothy Rabinowitz: The Duke rape hoax is redolent of past decades' phony child-abuse cases.

No one could have imagined, when the story began last March, how soon and completely that bit of shorthand--"the Duke University scandal"--would be transformed. Scarcely 10 months after, the term is now almost universally understood as a reference to the operations of Michael Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, whose abandonment of all semblance of concern about the merits of the rape and assault accusations against three Duke University students was obvious from

Nick Turse: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums

[Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch.] So you think that American troops, fighting in the urban maze of Baghdad's huge Shiite slum, Sadr City, add up to nothing more than a horrible mistake, an unexpected fias