Roundup: Media's Take

Fareed Zakaria: Why Bush should reach out to Iran

If you think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said some crazy things, none comes close to this: "If the worst came to worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground ... " That was Mao Zedong in 1957. If you find the idea of an Iranian nuclear program unsettling, put yourself in the shoes of policymakers in 1964, the year that China tested a nuclear bomb. At the time, China was probably the most aggressive country in the w

Niels C. Sorrells: Germany has been eavesdropping on its own citizens for decades -- It hasn't helped catch terrorists

[Niels C. Sorrells spent a year researching German surveillance policy with a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is currently based in Berlin as a correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs and is writing a book comparing German and U.S. surveillance tactics.] When it comes to keeping tabs on its own residents in the ongoing war on terror, there’s a lot the United States could learn from Germany. Interestingly, the lessons would not be from Nazi Germany, wher

Normon Solomon: Iraq Is Not a Quagmire

[The paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published this summer. For information, go to: www.warmadeeasy.com] The uproar over Bob Woodward’s new book has intensified the media focus on a basic controversy that’s summed up this way: Is Iraq a quagmire? Like many other debates that flourish in American mass media, the standard answers on both sides are wrong -- because the question bypa

Adam Simms: quackquack Islamo-fascism quackquack

[Adam Simms, formerly senior editor of Present Tense magazine, is a freelance editor and translator. He served as a researcher for Three Men in a Room: The Story of Power and Betrayal in an American Statehouse, by Seymour P. Lachman and Robert Polner, just published by The New Press.] “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less,” says Humpty Dumpty to Alice during her adventure in Wonderland. And as we know, Wonderland is a topsy-

James Castagnera: To an Athlete Dying Old

[Mr. Castagnera, a Philadelphia journalist and attorney, is the Associate Provost at Rider University and author of the weekly newspaper column ìAttorney at Large.]       The poet A.E. Housman penned a famous poem “To an Athlete Dying Young.”  Says Housman, “Smart lad, to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay.  And early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose.”  John Byron Nelson, who die

Thant Myint-U: Don’t Force Democracy in Burma

[Thant Myint-U is the author of the forthcoming“The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma.”] ... Though interest and concern over Myanmar has mushroomed in recent years, few really understand its history. There is, for example, the myth that Burma emerged, at its independence from Britain in 1948, a rich and promising country only to descend into poverty and violence under the present military regime. In fact, Burma in 1948 was already at war with itself, a bloody

Robert Harris: Is the US following in the footsteps of the Roman Republic?

[Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.”] IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped. The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern hi

Paul Rockwell: The Lt. Watada Case ... A Day of Reckoning for US Courts

[Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine http://www.inmotionmagazine.com.] For Vietnam War veterans, the pending court-martial of Lt. Ehren Watada is déjà vu "all over again." Watada may be the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, but he is hardly the first American soldier to face trumped-up charges for denouncing U.S. aggression abroad. It has been over 40 years since Army Pfc. Ja

Franklin C. Spinney: Skullduggery in the Pentagon's Budget

[Franklin C. Spinney is a former Pentagon analyst and whistleblower. His writing on defense issues can be found on the invaluable Defense in the National Interest http://www.d-n-i.net website.] A recent report in "Aviation Week" (Sept 25, 2006) leads by saying, "The U.S. Air Force is planning to reduce funding for pilot training and construction around the globe, although Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley says he

Ivan Briscoe: Latin America’s new left: dictators or democrats?

[In Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela constitutional government is under attack.] ... Meanwhile, even in those nations run by what the new standard typology of Latin America applauds as a soft, market-friendly left, the health of constitutional democracy has been seriously questioned. The strongheaded rule of Néstor Kirchner in Argentina has brought a sharp fall in poverty rates (now down to 31.4%), but the president has operated through executive decree, intolerance of criticism and po

William Underwood: Historical revisionism in Japan is leading to a backlash in the US

The headline of a story by Reiji Yoshida in Wednesday's Japan Times says that "Hawkishness is watchword for Abe team." (See http://search.japantimes; ) It could also be fairly described as an "anti-historical reconciliation" cabinet, in keeping with previous media reports that PM Abe may not reaffirm the (Diet-rejected) 1995 "Murayama Statement" acknowledging Japan's war of invasion.

Fred Halliday: Why the left should beware of Jihadists

... It is evident that the attacks, and others before and since on US and allied forces around the world, have won the Islamist groups responsible considerable sympathy far beyond the Muslim world, including among those vehemently opposed from a variety of ideological perspectives to the principal manifestations of its power. It is striking, however, that - beyond such often visceral reactions – there are signs of a far more developed and politically articulated accommodation in many parts of th

Richard Miniter: What Clinton Didn't Do

Bill Clinton's outburst on Fox News was something of a public service, launching a debate about the antiterror policies of his administration. This is important because every George W. Bush policy that arouses the ire of Democrats--the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, pre-emptive war--is a departure from his predecessor. Where policies overlap--air attacks on infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, freezing ba

Max Boot: Muslims' Complicity With Violence

EVER SINCE 9/11, a dark view of Islam has been gaining currency on what might be called the Western street. This view holds that, contrary to the protestations of our political leaders — who claim that acts of terrorism are being carried out by a minority of extremists — the real problem lies with Islam itself. In this interpretation, Islam is not a religion of peace but of war, and its 1.2 billion adherents will never rest until all of humanity is either converted, subjugated or simply annihila

E.J. Dionne: No Silent Majority for Bush

What could prove to be the most important factor in the 2006 elections is overlooked because it is unseen: The Republicans cannot try to curry favor with a "silent majority" that favors the Iraq war because a majority of Americans, both vocal and quiet, have come to see the war as a mistake. President Bush's defenders have cast opponents of the war as weak on terrorism. Yesterday, Vice President Cheney accused Democrats of "resignation and defeatism." But the cha

Normon Solomon: Media Tall Tales for the Next War

[The paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published this summer. For information, go to: www.warmadeeasy.com] The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over the cover-story interview with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is “A Date With a Dangerous Mind.” The big-type subhead calls him “the man whose

David Morse: Appeasement Driven by Oil (Darfur and the Bush Administration)

[David Morse's articles and essays have appeared in Dissent, Esquire, Friends Journal, The Nation, the New York Times Magazine, The Progressive Populist, and various on-line publications including Alternet, Counterpunch, Mother Jones, and Salon. His last article for Tomdispatch, War of the Future: Oil Drives the Genocide in Darfur, was widely posted and translated into several languages. He is now writing a book about the Darfur sit

Robert Parry: Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism

[ Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.']Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for

Joan Didion: Cheney ... The Fatal Touch

It was in some ways predictable that the central player in the system of willed errors and reversals that is the Bush administration would turn out to be its vice-president, Richard B. Cheney. Here was a man with considerable practice in the reversal of his own errors. He was never a star. No one ever called him a natural. He reached public life with every reason to believe that he would continue to both court failure and overcome it, take the lemons he seemed determined to pick for himself and

David Corn: At the UN, Bush Cites Human Rights Declaration

When George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, he glowingly referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN in 1948. He said:This morning, I want to speak about the more hopeful world that is within our reach, a world beyond terror, where ordinary men and women are free to determine their own destiny, where the voices of moderation are empowered, and where the extremists are marginalized by the peaceful majority. This wo