Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
On Lebanon: “You have to resist Hezbollah . . . [and] try to strengthen the moderate Lebanese forces, which is not an easy matter.” ~Bret Stephens, OpinionJournal.com
Thus spake Secretary Rice, who had to have enjoyed the irony of talking about strengthening “moderate Lebanese forces” when the war she and the administration backed 100% did more than anything [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
I found myself on a panel to discuss globalization and offered that conservatives might do well–at the voting booth and otherwise–to push free trade, liberalize markets, rein in farm subsidies, and keep Europe’s door open to Turkey. Nothing controversial for this crowd, I assumed, with the possible exception of the last. ~Matthew Kaminski, OpinionJournal.com
Reading Mr. [...]
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Filed under: politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
I imagine that the appalling Victor Davis Hanson is to blame for most of this. I simply don’t see how one can read Thucydides without coming away with some quite emphatic lessons about the long term costs of imperial arrogance towards one’s political allies, how unnecessary military adventures turn into disasters, und so weiter. Not [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, history, politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
Henry Farrell gets medieval on a pet peeve of mine: neoimperialists invoking Thucydides. I’m not a big fan of our pundit Blavatskys who tell us that the dead would be on their side of some contemporary controversy. Orwell gets this the most of course. But if I was going to pick a historical figure supportive [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, history
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
Card put it on the generals in the Pentagon and Iraq. If they had come forward and said to the president, “It’s not worth it,” or, “The mission can’t be accomplished,” Card was certain, the president would have said “I’m not going to ask another kid to sacrifice for it.” ~Bob Woodward, The Washington Post
In [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
Garner made his final point: “There’s still time to rectify this. There’s still time to turn it around.”
Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. “Well,” he said, “I don’t think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are.”
He thinks I’ve lost it, Garner thought. He thinks I’m [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
Many of this year’s prominent candidates are also surprisingly nationalist on immigration, playing off concerns about declining wages. “I do believe we must gain control of our borders,” Webb said during a debate. “We also must gain control over corporate America’s use of illegals. This, along with the Iraq war, has been the major failure [...]
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Filed under: economics, politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan was under fresh pressure last night after India accused his intelligence agency of masterminding the Mumbai train bombings that killed 186 people.
Hours after the broadcast of an interview in which Gen Musharraf claimed that the US and its allies would fail in their “war on terror” without the support of [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, said any leader who had been aware of Mr. Foley’s behavior and failed to take action should step down. “If they knew or should have known the extent of this problem, they should not serve in leadership,” Mr. Shays said. ~The New York Times
As of right now, that would [...]
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Filed under: politics
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Daniel Larison
Mr. Woodward reports that when he told Mr. Rumsfeld that the number of insurgent attacks was going up, the defense secretary replied that they’re now “categorizing more things as attacks.” Mr. Woodward quotes Mr. Rumsfeld as saying, “A random round can be an attack and all the way up to killing 50 people someplace. So [...]
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Filed under: foreign policy, politics
