Crude American, Patriotic American

It looks like a double standard, and probably it is, but why is it that when I see obese Americans munching on Coke and giant hot dogs and chanting ‘USA, USA’, it sounds like the worst kind of chauvinism as well as unsportsmanlike conduct, and when I hear the Greeks cheering lustily ‘Hellas, Hellas’, it [...]

U.S. Must Face Up to Chechen Terrorism

The harmful ambiguity of U.S. policy on Chechnya needs to be ended immediately. It compromizes the “war against terror,” jeopardizes national security, and gains nothing at all—least of all any brownie points for the U.S. in the Muslim world. It is high time for the U.S. government to accept that people like [Chechen president'] Maskhadov, [...]

Of Patriotism, War and Revolution

As war is one of the heaviest of national evils, a calamity in which every species of misery is involved; as it sets the general safety to hazard, suspends commerce, and desolates the country; as it exposes great numbers to hardships, dangers, captivity and death; no man who desires the public prosperity will inflame general [...]

The Suffering Georgian Land

Further sign of its American allegiances came on Friday, when Georgia announced that 50 of its specialized mountain infantry soldiers will be deployed to Afghanistan, following two weeks of training in Germany.
These developments seem all the more mystifying in that they have been provoked almost entirely by the Georgian side. If Saakashvili intends to realize [...]

Some Thoughts on Democracy

Democracy is incapable of provoking a ferocious civil war, but prerevolutionary violence, persistent major disorder, and refusal to enforce the law, if carried far enough, can do so.~ Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Civil War, The Soviet Union and Communism

As I was finishing Prof. Payne’s excellent new history of the Spanish Civil War (there is [...]

A Hierarchy of Goods

Unlike Augustine, however, Aquinas lived within a recognizably Christian social order and, for that reason, approached the question of citizenship from a different angle. Whereas Augustine spoke of the theological foundations of citizenship, Aquinas, following Aristotle, thought of citizenship as a natural aspect of human life. Aquinas considered politics to be inescapable because, like [...]

The Suffering Serbian Land

The head of Belgrade’s Kosovo Coordination Centre warned today that Albanian extremists in Kosovo are preparing for a major armed operation.~ B92, Yugoslavia, August 24, 2004

The Suffering Georgian Land

War with Russia is close and it is necessary to prepare the people of Georgia for such an eventuality, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili warned in a newspaper interview published in France on Tuesday.
“We are very close to a war [with Russia], the population must be prepared,” he told the French-language Liberation daily newspaper.
Denouncing military aid [...]

Is Sadr’s Position Reasonable?

Sadr’s condemnation of the interim Prime Minster Iyad Allawi and his dismissal of the June “handover of power” as a farce is justified. Nor has Allawi’s heavy-handed, compliant rule gone down well with most of the Iraqi population – a recent poll showed his approval rating at just 2 per cent, tied with Saddam Hussein.
Nor [...]

Ten-Year War in Iraq?

US planes pounded Najaf’s cemetery and historic centre near the Imam Ali shrine, dimming hopes of a peaceful end to a near three-week stand-off between US-led Iraqi forces and Shiite militia.
As US military officials said it could take up to 10 years to crush the insurgency, nine people, including a Turk, were killed in a [...]