Ten Years After September 11, 2001

Ten years ago today, our country and my family received a terrible blow.  We were attacked.  Our countrymen were murdered.  We were shaken. 9/11 is an important historical event that has defined much of the last ten years, but it was also a family tragedy for me, as my Uncle Donnie Regan gave his life [...]

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Obama’s Imperial War With Libya

The UN, having obtained US Support, has now moved to create a “no fly” zone over Libya.  Oh, what can we say. Obama is now getting on the train he couldn’t get off after saying–unwisely in my opinion–Kaddafi must go.  That’s the problem with threats . . . they cascade upon themselves. This appears chiefly [...]

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Lions Led by Donkeys

That’s what they used to say about World War I:  you had armies of lions led by donkies.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s clear that the grand strategy–democratic nation-building in the Muslim world–will do little to make us safer from terrorism and requires an impossible tutelage of proud, xenophobic Muslims by secularized America and its [...]

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Conspiracy of Silence

Probably the biggest way the establishment and its lapdog media aid the President and reveal their intrinsic biases is by their silence.  We have an ongoing war of indeterminate success in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Gone are the protests, editorials, mock graveyards, and Michael Moore propaganda films of only four years ago.  Gone is the concern [...]

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Obama’s Quest for Global Popularity

Obama’s noises about abandoning nuclear weapons, his release of torture memos, and his sucking up to Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Cuba at the Summit of the Americas all have the same source:  his belief that the U.S’s disproportionate strength, global perceptions of our arrogance, and our shoddy record all combine to make the rest [...]

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Obama’s Latest Leftist Revelation

Obama’s increasingly apparent leftism has many marks: unnecessary snubs of our British allies, a penchant for the most indefensible and ideological spending, the hoary politician’s trick of shifting costs to future generations, his incoherence on foreign policy, a lack of moral clarity in dealing with terrorists, and a petty conflation of his critics with a [...]

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Moral Midgets at the Helm

Ross Douhat and Jeff Maximos had the following remarks on the peculiar kind of meritocracy at work at both the Ivies and Wall Street, a new model of leader combines great intellect with a great sense of entitlement, and a very meager sense of civilizational responsibility. Ross begins: I don’t often plug my first book, [...]

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Bush’s Legacy of Crony Capitalism

Bush was never a real believer in Free Markets. He instead believed in preserving the power and privilege of people like him. He sold it as a new kind of middle way, so-called “compassionate conservatism.” Bush did not work hard to get where he was, instead inheriting his name, his network, and most of his [...]

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Palinphobia and the Future of Conservatism

I think it’s low down and pathetic that McCain’s operatives are blaming Palin for his loss.  If anything, she pumped him up.  Surely the proposed Lieberman pick would have been a complete flop.  McCain did better in the popular vote than I ever expected considering what an unpleasant mediocrity he was on the stump and considering how [...]

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General Sanchez, Loser

I think it’s remarakable that General Ricardo Sanchez, former Corps Commander of all coalition assets in Iraq, is now pointing the finger at everyone–including Rumsfeld, Bremer, Casey, Bush, etc.–when he was so singularly incapable of getting the mission accomplished in Iraq. He failed to keep control when the daily numbers of IED and other attacks [...]

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Atrocities in Burma, Darfur, and Turkey

Which one of these is not like the other? We’ve condemned Burma, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, and even powerful Russia for each country’s mistreatment of ethnic minorities. Yet Turkey continues to play the victim, campaigning for EU membership even as it eschews European values, not the least of which is recognition of human rights for ethnic [...]

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The Emerging Bush-Clinton Duopoly

It’s a sign of real degradation in our republic that two families, whose claim to authority chiefly consists of great skill in acquiring power and dispensing benefits to loyalists, are now alternating rule in our country. Where are we . . . Iraq? Since 1988, either a Bush or a Clinton has been President. If [...]

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Bush’s Rhetorical Failure

Bush’s defense of his more controversial stands in the war on terror has been Clintonian. First, he denies that something is taking place. Then, when that something–in this case, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is exposed–he simply denies without explanation a reasonable characterization by critics: these techniques constitute torture. Now, I do not support [...]

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A Thought On the Illogic of Petraeus’ Anti-Surge

General Petraeus advocated a surge. Then he, inexplicably, said it was working so well that it was time to change course again and reduce the surge. I discussed this illogic here. Andrew Bacevich–Army veteran , BU Professor, and father of deceased Army Lieutenant KIA in Iraq–explains the political roots of Petraeus’ backing down from his [...]

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Calhoun, Neoconservatives, and Liberty

Lawrence Auster has an interesting post today that notes that one of the prime engines of neoconservative folly is this idea that everyone “deserves” liberty and that we, therefore, having the ability, owe it to strange peoples to “give them freedom.” His post reminded me of something I read long ago in the Liberty Fund’s [...]

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