Roundup: Media's Take

Robert Samuelson: It's Not Your Dad's Oil Story

We have all the telltale signs of an inflation breakout: a big jump in oil and energy prices; an increase in the price of gold, often an inflation hedge; a low unemployment rate (5.1 percent in September, despite Katrina) that could push up wages. To anyone old enough to remember, the situation seems eerily reminiscent of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and inflation reached peaks of 12.3 percent in 1974 and 13.3 percent in 1979.Well, folks, it ain't gonna happen this time. Here a

Anna Quindlan: We've Been Here Before (Iraq/Vietnam)

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a tapering wall of black granite cut into the grass of Constitution Gardens. Maya Lin envisioned a scar when she designed it, a scar on this land, which is exactly right. Maybe someday his security detail could drive George W. Bush over to take a look. He'll be able to see himself in the reflective surface. The list of names etched into the wall begins with a soldier who died in 1959 and ends with one who died in 1975. Nearly 60,000 dead are commemor

What Turned Brent Scowcroft Against the War in Iraq

This week in the magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about Brent Scowcroft, the national-security adviser under President George H. W. Bush—and the former President’s best friend—who has been at odds with the current Administration. Here, with Amy Davidson, Goldberg discusses Scowcroft and the divide within the Republican party over Iraq. AMY DAVIDSON: Why is Brent Scowcroft worth writing about now? He’s been out of government for some time. JEFFREY GOLDBERG: For one thi

James P. Pinkerton: America needs a new strategy for dealing with China

The history of the United States is the history of confrontation, even conflict, with the other great powers of the earth. At the dawn of the 19th century, the young Republic found itself confronted with the two great powers of that world, Britain and France. We fought them both. Everyone knows about the War of 1812, but perhaps we’ve forgotten the quasi-war with France from 1798 to 1800; during those years the U.S. Navy seized some 80 French vessels. By the beginning

Frederick Kagan: Force Wielded with Diplomacy Is Vital in Defeating Insurgencies

[Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the co-author of While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (2000). His new study, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy, will be released later this year.] Some will argue that the United States today is in a more complex situation than that faced by 18th- and 19th-century leaders. The terrorist t

Jonathan V. Last: Liberal elites ruined Britain as a hyperpower. Could America meet the same fate?

[Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard and a contributor to the blog Galley Slaves. This piece originally appeared in the October 9, 2005 Philadelphia Inquirer.] WHAT DOES MODERN HISTORY have to teach us about the age of American empire? The final chapters of the British Empire offer lessons and parallels aplenty. Empires don't last forever, and the combination of martial victory, popular ennui, and liberal anti-patriotism is a dangerous mix for a superpower.

Bird Flu Planners Urged To Study 1918 Pandemic

It's all well and good to stockpile flu drugs such as Tamiflu or Relenza, but historian John M. Barry says preparations for a global bird flu pandemic should also include such staples as food and water. The lack of those basic necessities, he warned public health officials yesterday, proved fatal during the 1918 flu pandemic, the subject of his 2004 book, "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History." The American Red Cross reported

Peggy Noonan: America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned.

It is not so hard and can be a pleasure to tell people what you see. It's harder to speak of what you think you see, what you think is going on and can't prove or defend with data or numbers. That can get tricky. It involves hunches. But here goes. I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoti

David Brooks: Patching the Presidency

On Dec. 31, 1986, Robert Novak and Rowland Evans wrote a column with the headline "The Reagan Presidency Is Dead." Halfway into its second term, the Reagan administration was beset by the Iran-contra scandal. Its legislative agenda was in tatters. Morale was low, and the decision-making process was in chaos. Ronald Reagan had to decide whether to hunker down in the storm or break out of it. Pat Buchanan, who was the communications director, recommended that the president b

Shelby Steele: Blacks, whites, and the politics of shame in America

Probably the single greatest problem between blacks and whites in America is that we are forever witness to each other's great shames. This occurred to me in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when so many black people were plunged into misery that it seemed the hurricane itself had held a racial animus. I felt a consuming empathy but also another, more atavistic impulse. I did not like my people being seen this way.... In the '60s--the first instance of open mutual witness between

Joan Vennochi: Rosa Parks and today's white youth

BEFORE RUSHING off to school, my seventh-grade daughter sat at the breakfast table scanning a newspaper story about Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who died at age 92. "Did you know who she was?" I asked. "Oh, Mom, what do you think?" she replied, a pre-teen's too-cool-for-you way of saying "yes." Anna told me she learned about Parks at school, during "that holiday for black people" — which turned out to be not Kwanzaa, but Black Hist

Quang X. Pham: The parallel to Iraq is far from exact, but still might be instructive: It took many years to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam

[A Marine veteran of the Gulf War, Quang X. Pham is an entrepreneur and author of "A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey." This was adapted from a talk he gave last week at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace. www.asenseofduty.com ] Anyone interested in bringing an end to the war in Iraq might want to revisit the waning days of U.S. involvement in South Vietnam. The lesson is that, absent annihilation by nuclear we

Max Boot: The rift on the right that isn't

THE POLITICAL CLASS is either celebrating or lamenting, depending on political preference, what is being billed as the conservative crackup. Conservatives are pillorying President Bush over everything from his profligate spending to his nomination of a constitutional neophyte to the Supreme Court. Even his aggressive foreign policy, a big plus for much of the right, has come under withering fire from two prominent former officeholders. Last week, Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Marine

Frank Rich: Karl and Scooter's Excellent Adventure

... We don't yet know whether Lewis (Scooter) Libby or Karl Rove has committed a crime, but the more we learn about their desperate efforts to take down a bit player like Joseph Wilson, the more we learn about the real secret they wanted to protect: the "why" of the war. To piece that story together, you have to follow each man's history before the invasion of Iraq - before anyone had ever heard of Valerie Plame Wilson, let alone leaked her identity as a C.I.A. officer. I

Delia M. Rios: Americans Turn To Government Often For Help

"HELP US W" You don't need to read between the lines of this plea to President Bush, painted in white block letters onto a street in Metairie near the 17th Street canal. Some anonymous everyman or woman was asserting an American right: calling upon not only the government's resources, but its compassion. Congress already has paid the first installment on that claim, $62 billion in aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It's the American way.

Eric Frey: Since 1989 Austrian Banks Have Invested Heavily In Eastern Europe

Ever since the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Austrian banks have invested heavily in the fledgling - but highly profitable - financial sector in eastern Europe. For Bank Austria Creditanstalt, the rise to the top of the market has even more to do with a series of takeovers that is set to culminate later this month with Europe's largest bank merger. If Milan-based Unicredit succeeds with its bid for Germany's HypoVereinsbank, BA-CA's parent bank, the total assets in central

Andrew Balls: Bernanke Not Soft, But Diplomatic And Open

Ben Bernanke did not look very comfortable in the temporary office he used in a building next to the White House during his short tenure as chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. He looked still less comfortable in public settings as a promoter of the administration's policies. His nomination to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve means that - pending Senate confirmation - he will be returning to a more familiar setting. The chairm

Gordon Russell: Nagin's Role In New Orleans' Evacuation Criticized

Managing what is being called the biggest natural disaster in American history is a thankless task certain to invite criticism. And Mayor Ray Nagin has certainly had his share since Hurricane Katrina came ashore. On a recent national TV appearance, presidential historian and Tulane professor Douglas Brinkley called him "a very lame, ineffectual, wrong-headed mayor for this time," adding for good measure that Nagin has "no leadership abilities" and su

Steve Weissman: Outing CIA Agents

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. During that time, he was a close friend and colleague of Philip Agee. Weissman now lives and works in France, where for the last two years he wrote regularly for Truthout.org.] As we approach the week when Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury will undoubtedly issue indictments against White

Thomas G. Schelling: The Nuclear Taboo

[Mr. Schelling, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, is a Nobel Laureate for economics for 2005.] The most spectacular event of the past half century is one that did not occur. We have enjoyed 60 years without nuclear weapons exploded in anger. What a stunning achievement -- or, if not achievement, what stunning good fortune. In 1960, the British novelist C.P. Snow said on the front page of the New York Times that unless the nuclear powers drastically reduc