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In a move sure to make me question the soundness of my judgement, George Will has come to a similar observation as I did a few weeks ago:
In his second Inaugural address, the president said: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” You have said: “In today’s globalized world, the […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
“There is blood on the steps of Pakistan’s Supreme Court,” said Ahsan. “The people of Pakistan have a right to protest, yet they have been brutally attacked. This whole situation is as noxious as the tear gas itself.”
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The crackdown on the protest came just two days after the Supreme Court, lead by Chief Justice Iftikhar […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
I have noted my points of disagreement, but this densely footnoted and courageous book deserves praise rather than abuse. The Israeli liberal daily Haaretz stated that it would be irresponsible to ignore [the earlier article’s] serious and disturbing message that the Israeli government must understand that the world will not wait forever for Israel to […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
One of Sullivan’s readers wrote:
Although I despise Bush, I have to confess admiration for his unequivocal statements against the junta and in support of the protesters. It’s more than can be said for Russia, China, and India. One should expect this kind of thing from Russia and China I suppose, but India, the nation which […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Hypocrisy has become so commonplace among isolationist conservatives that it doesn’t always register, but this time it’s too blatant to ignore. ~Scott Paul
There are no real isolationists in Congress. You certainly can’t find any of these people calling for withdrawal from Iraq or calling for an end to overseas intervention. (The only people who might […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
About two-thirds of the way through the JRC debate on Iraq, Peter Brimelow had what I think was the most important point, and one entirely consistent with my general hostility to optimism:
“Not all problems have solutions.”
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
At the fine foreign policy blog of McCarthy, Antle and Spencer called Exit Strategies, Dan McCarthy writes an excellent post on Leslie Gelb’s much-touted review of The Israel Lobby. As I have suggested before, Dan notes that Gelb concedes or supports the thesis of the book on a crucial point when he says: “As it happens, America’s commitment […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
It is unfortunate that Mr. Hawkins has written this. It is unfortunate because it is an attack on his former colleagues, but even more because it is an embarrassing spectacle. Yes, Murray Rothbard opposed unjust wars and pernicious foreign policy, for which he was scurrilously attacked after death by Mr. Buckley. If anyone would like to take […]
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Filed under: politics
All this makes a murderous backdrop for what will be Mr Cameron’s second, and possibly last, conference as Tory party leader. He was the future, once. Now we are in the extraordinary position where serious Tories talk about Mr Cameron being gone by Christmas, after losing an autumn election — and ask whether the Tory […]
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Filed under: politics, Britain
The Economist has an editorial and two articles on the developing situation in Burma. The second article makes a necessary point about the futility of sanctions:
Shareholder-activists and ordinary consumers have also done their bit to encourage a boycott. But the campaign to punish the regime sometimes seems to have lost sight of its real goal, and […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Oh, the horror:
According to EUobserver, the Commission’s plan was to “change the map of Europe currently seen on the ten-cent to two-euro coins into a larger one going east to the Caspian Sea and including Turkey”.
However, while the final result includes Belarus and parts of Russia, poor old Turkey is conspicuous by its absence.
In other […]
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Filed under: politics, Europe
The transcript shows that Bush consciously intended to go to war without a United Nations Security Council resolution. The United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a treaty signatory (so that it has the force of American law), forbids any nation to launch an aggressive war on another country. ~Prof. Cole
This is all […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
I’ve made mistakes in the past, and I’m going to keep making them. ~Bill Richardson
That’s our governor–no spineless flip-flopper is he! Anyone can stick to his guns when he’s right, but this kind of steadfastness in error is exceptional. Now you can begin to understand the bizarre nature of New Mexican politics, in which this guy […]
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Filed under: politics
Apparently, Daniel thinks I spend a good deal of time saying nothing more substantive than that I do not agree with things I disagree with. ~Will Wilkinson
In the two particular cases in question, I think that a skeptical reader might not find that much more to the arguments Mr. Wilkinson advances beyond his assertion of moral […]
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Filed under: politics, economics, immigration
Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia seems to be working to his advantage back home and in our own press to some extent. Bollinger’s introduction has been the focus of much of the criticism, which has apparently helped to create sympathy for Ahmadinejad. It would have been better had the exchange never took place if the only “acceptable” […]
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Filed under: politics, history, foreign policy
But can China compel the junta to do the right thing?
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Surely China will have to “fix” the problem, analysts argue, because of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
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Last night I saw the news reports saying two military divisions had arrived in Rangoon, including the 22nd —one of the same units deployed to Rangoon in 1988. ~Melinda […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy, sport
Simply excellent.
Via Ambinder
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Filed under: politics
So if it’s wrong to consign someone to second-class citizenship based on skin color, why should we feel any more comfortable about forcing someone to live someplace horrible like Zimbabwe simply because that’s where he happens to have been born? ~Tim Lee
Because we’re not “forcing” someone to live in Zimbabwe (or wherever), but rather preventing […]
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Filed under: politics, economics, immigration
When will Christopher Hitchens berate those lousy Buddhist monks for sowing “discord” and “hate” in Burma? After all, he knows how religion poisons everything*, so I anticipate his denunciation of those troublemaking fanatics any day now.
*I hadn’t thought of it before, but this is just an adaptation of a phrase attributed to Mao: “religion is poison.” Keep the […]
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Filed under: politics, religion, foreign policy
I used to think that it really mattered whether or not I referred to Burma as Myanmar or Burma. No, really. I can remember when the change happened. The Economist suddenly started talking about Yangon and Myanmar out of the blue. Oh, the treachery, I thought. SLORC said Myanmar, so obviously all right-thinking people had to say […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy, language
Sigh. It’s enough to make you despair for your “national coalition,” also known as a “country.” It never fails to amaze me how those who are keen to talk about the constructed nature of identity and social conventions seem to think that it is therefore somehow illegitimate to maintain identities and conventions once they have been constructed. The […]
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Filed under: philosophy, politics, immigration, ideology, libertarianism
Preliminary reactions from abroad suggest that, far from appearing ridiculous and laughable, as an American audience naturally takes him to be, Ahmadinejad is winning plaudits for his performance in more than a few corners at home (at least in the Iranian establishment) and getting credit for enduring Bollinger’s supposedly “harsh” introduction. Of course, the “harsh” introduction was a […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
“The government has ordered the 22nd Division troops to pull out of Karen state and return to Yangon,” Colonel Nerda Mya of the Karen National Union told the news agency. “We believe the troops will be used as in 1988.”
Troops from remote areas, unfamiliar with current events in the big cities, were deployed at that […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Our basic advice to Mr. Bollinger from the start of the whole tragedy at Columbia has been that, when it comes to the war the Arabs are waging against Israel, he is eventually going to have to choose sides. ~The New York Sun
This is almost too easy. Does Lee Bollinger live in Israel or in […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Today we regard a Northerner circa 1855 who transported, housed, and concealed from authority a fugitive slave as a moral visionary, despite the fact that he was flouting the laws of his time. Is there any morally relevant distinction between that individual and someone today who smuggles a refugee from Zimbabwe into the United States, […]
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Filed under: politics, economics, immigration