Roundup: Media's Take

Todd Crowell: The Tet Offensive and Iraq

[For fourteen years (1987-2001) Todd Crowell worked as a Senior Writer for Asiaweek, the leading English-language newsmagazine, published in Hong Kong by Time Warner. This position gave him a perch from which to observe the tumultuous events of modern history in East Asia, from the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. He has published three books: Farewell, My Colony: Last Years in the Life of British Hong Kong (1998); Tokyo: City on the Edge (2001) and Discover Macau

Paul Krugman: The Arithmetic of Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan

... The classic analysis of the arithmetic of insurgencies is a 1995 article by James T. Quinlivan, an analyst at the Rand Corporation. “Force Requirements in Stability Operations,” published in Parameters, the journal of the U.S. Army War College, looked at the number of troops that peacekeeping forces have historically needed to maintain order and cope with insurgencies. Mr. Quinlivan’s comparisons suggested that even small countries might need large occupying forces. Specifically

Nat Hentoff: Hillary Clinton Wakes Up

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty—and the destiny of the republican model of government—are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked out on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. — President George Washington, First Inaugural Address Having often criticized the junior senator from New York for her tepid and too rare responses to Bush administration attacks on the Constitution's "sacred fire of liberty," I must credit her now for

Ken Shear: Cut and Run -- the Prequel

[Mr. Shear is a Seattle attorney and a lover of history.] Not so very long ago -- America and its allies sent a peacekeeping force to a Middle Eastern country to support a pluralistic, multi-ethnic government, under attack from hate-mongering militants and neighboring dictatorships. It was a dangerous mission. A terrorist suicide bomber killed over 200 American servicemen. It was the deadliest attack on American troops since World War II -- more casualties than any single incide

Peter Boyer: The strangest Senate race of the year is Virginia's

... The unifying theme of [Senate Democratic candidate James] Webb's fiction, his popular history of the Scots-Irish, and, especially, his opinion journalism has been that of put-upon people (the military, Southerners, white men) suffering the smug disregard of a hostile élite. In the Webb reckoning, much blame resides in nineteen-sixties-era liberalism, which has influenced the Democratic Party for a generation. That he now finds himself a Democratic candidate in a pivotal U.S. Senate race is a

Juan Santos: What Makes for a Real “Terrorist State”?

[Juan Santos is a Los Angeles based writer and editor. His essays from 2006 can be found at: http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/. He can be reached at: JuanSantos@Mexica.net.] It’s difficult to analyze claims that Iran is a “rogue state” or a “state sponsor of terror.” So much depends on definitions, and the definitions themselves depend on actual -- not theoretical -- comparisons with

Tony Karon: No, Iraq Is Not Vietnam

Washington has a bad habit of viewing things elsewhere in the world only through the prism of American experience, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the recent comparisons of Iraq and Vietnam. Both President Bush and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman are wrong in comparing the current violence in Iraq to the 1968 Tet Offensive.... What both Bush and Friedman fail to see is that the catastrophe created by the U.S. invasion is a product of Iraq's own history, culture an

John Tierney: Iraqis just don't share our commitment to nationalism

An American in Iraq has finally gotten it almost right. J. D. Thurman, the major general who is the senior commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, has figured out the obstacle to America’s dream for Iraq. “Part of our problem is that we want this more than they do,” General Thurman told The Times’s Michael Gordon, alluding to American efforts to unify Iraqis. “We need to get people to stop worrying about self and start worrying about Iraq.” That’s a refreshing

Donald Greenlees: Norrth Korea's half century quest for nukes

... In 2005, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington released a sheaf of documents from the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Hungarian State Archives that showed that Pyongyang - worried that the United States might use nuclear weapons in the Korean War - was bolstering its defenses against a nuclear attack and trying to acquire its own arsenal from communist allies. Kim Tae Woo, a nuclear policy specialist at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Se

Sidney Blumenthal: End of the Culture War

The spectacle of hypocrisy, impunity and corruption engulfing the Republican Congress has its origins in its rise in 1994, extolled as its "revolution." At first came the Republican Lenin, Speaker Newt Gingrich, determined to annihilate his enemies and extirpate the "counterculture." But after he shut down the federal government twice and was cited for ethics violations, Republicans on the eve of the impeachment trial of President Clinton forced Gingrich's resignation. (They

Noemie Emery: The Sixth Year Slump

[Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author of the forthcoming Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families (Wiley).] Now in the sixth year of his crisis-wracked presidency, George W. Bush is perceived as being in desperate trouble, having spent the two years since his reelection falling all over his feet. His democracy project looks stalled, his drive to reform Social Security seems to have been a huge waste of effort, his response t

Philip Terzian: A new page in an old book

[Philip Terzian is Books & Arts editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.] FIRST, LET'S DISPENSE with formalities and come to quick agreement on the gathering scandal of Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., whose lascivious emails and instant messages to House pages have Washington in thrall. The Foley epistles are "abhorrent" (House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi), "repulsive" (Speaker Dennis Hastert), and "repugnant" (Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid). And like President

Fareed Zakaria: America has used sanctions since the 1950s, but nothing has stopped North Korea from getting the bomb.

Despite all the disagreement over who's to blame for the North Korean nuclear test, everyone agrees on the next step: economic sanctions. But does anyone really think that they will work? North Korea is already the most isolated country in the world. Its people live at subsistence levels, escaping mass starvation only because of aid shipments. There is virtually no industrial economy.... Sanctions by themselves have had little success in the nuclear arena. Consider the countries tha

Jim Lobe: U.S. Neo-Conservatives Call For Japanese Nukes, Regime Change in North Korea

[Jim Lobe wrote this article for Inter-Press Service. Posted October 12, 2006. Jim Lobe, a leading specialist on neoconserevatism, is a Washington-based journalist who writes for Inter-Press and other outlets.] Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines, and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea's borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent U.S. neo-conservatives in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.

Humberto Fontova: President Bush Is No JFK, Thank God

[Humberto Fontova is author of Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, a Conservative Book Club Main Selection.] Kim Jong-il's atomic blast has some conservative pundits reminiscing fondly over JFK. His response to Khrushchev and Castro exactly 44 Octobers ago, we're now given to understand, was positively Pattonesque. "Now that's deterrence," writes Charles Krauthammer in a syndicated column hailing JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The column calls for

Peggy Noonan: FDR and Reagan had more fun than their successors do

Everyone is focusing on the polls and spreadsheets, on the scandals and negative ads. This in fact may be the year negative advertising reached critical mass. Voters are no longer running from the room saying, "Smith is dishonest, I must vote for Jones!" They're slouched in front of the TV thinking, They're all bums, I'll try to pick the least bummy. Or asking, "Honey, which bum is least likely to raise my property taxes?" The irony of the ads: Their relentless tearing down m

Edward Furey: The Unconstitutionality of the Military Commissions Act

[The following letter was written by Edward Furey to historian Juan Cole and posted by Cole on his blog. Furey posts on the blog TPM Cafe.] Professor Cole: You barely scratched the surface on the unconstitutionality of the so-called terror legislation. Beyond repealing habeas corpus, another grotesque violation of the Constitution is implicated in that legislation. The Constitution specifically forbids the passage of a “bill of attainder.” In the old days, when kings

Joel Kotkin: A Nation of 400 million and counting

[Mr. Kotkin, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is writing a book about the American future.] The fact that the U.S. population will soon top 300 million has led some environmentalists to gnash their teeth over the nation's ability to handle our expanded "ecological footprint." One can also imagine that few champagne bottles are being popped in Parisian salons. And there's even worse news ahead for those who hate the notion of numerous Amer

Kenneth Zammit Tabona: ...When a waiter drops a turkey

What happens when a waiter drops a turkey? The Downfall of Turkey, the Spreading of Greece, the Breaking of China and the Leaving of Hungary! Such was the rather droll method of remembering historical facts employed in the schoolroom a century or so ago. Since the downfall of Turkey, read The Ottoman Empire, the Middle East and the Mediterranean Basin have been in a constant state of flux. There was something about the Ottoman Empire which since its inception in 1453 kept an

James Castagnera: When the Victim Has a Fan Club, Does Justice Suffer?

[Mr. Castagnera, a Philadelphia journalist and attorney, is the Associate Provost at Rider University and author of the weekly newspaper column Attorney at Large.] Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of a defendant who was convicted of first-degree murder. What made the case of Mathew Musladin, who shot and killed his estranged wife’s boyfriend Tom Studer, interesting to the Supremes was the buttons. That’s right, the buttons.