“As has been voluminously documented here, one of the most notable aspects of the first year of the Obama presidency has been how many previously controversial Bush/Cheney policies in the terrorism and civil liberties realms have been embraced. Even Obama’s most loyal defenders often acknowledge that, as Micheal Tomasky recently put it, “the civil liberties […]
Archive for the 'Foreign Policy' Category
Nov23rd2009
“True, not everybody agrees that we need to use wartime measures against terrorists. But the Obama administration does. They’ve stepped up Predator strikes. They’re still allowing rendition. They’ve endorsed holding detainees near-indefinitely without putting them on trial. They’re treating Al Qaeda terrorists, in other words, as enemy combatants. And enemy combatants shouldn’t receive criminal trials. […]
Sep17th2009
“Maybe I have a biased selection, but it seems like every sensible economist, political scientist, development worker, and journalist that I know thinks our current course in Afghanistan can have only one outcome — disaster. Disaster for Americans, for our NATO allies, AND for Afghans.” — William Easterly
Sep15th2009
Obama Supports Extending Patriot Act Provisions
Published by in Foreign Policy and ModernPolitics. 0 CommentsYahoo News reports:
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday.
Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve […]
Aug31st2009
Question: Why Are We Still In Afghanistan?
Published by in Foreign Policy and ModernPolitics. 4 CommentsAside from Obama trying to show the world he is “tough” on foreign policy, what other reason could there be for us sending even more troops there?
Whenever you are ready President Obama: You have my support in a speedy exit out of Afghanistan.
Aug31st2007
“I’ve long believed in what I call “the Jimmy Carter test.” The process consists simply in discovering Carter’s opinions on politics and foreign policy and taking the opposite position. Carter was one of our worst Chief Executives, and he surely ranks as the worst ex-president in our history. He has an uncanny ability to say […]
Aug10th2007
Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate in economics, writes:
Incidentally, since I believe private security usually performs very well, I never was convinced by the arguments to federalize employees who search baggage at airports. Private companies would do the job better than a single (monopoly) government employer if the standards of performance were clearly set by the government […]
May16th2007
Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, writes:
Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view.
BY BERNARD LEWIS
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival […]
Feb22nd2007
“Let’s spend a moment or two defining what we mean by freedom and democracy. There is a view sometimes expressed that “democracy” means the system of government evolved by the English-speaking peoples. Any departure from that is either a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured. I beg to differ from that […]
Jan12th2007
Was this:
The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to […]
Dec16th2006
“American prestige is no small thing. Loss of American prestige as a result of Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, Somalia and the bombing of the US Embassy in Lebanon emboldened Osama bin Laden to bomb the World Trade Center. Loss of American prestige gives Kim Jong Il the idea that he can test his nukes […]
Dec9th2006
“If the Japanese had never attacked Pearl Harbor it is likely that America might have never entered WWII or might have done so bitterly divided. The events of December 7th 1941 so united the country that ever afterward we forgot just how viciously divided we truly were. We Americans like to think that we heroically […]
Dec2nd2006
“How odd that today we admire Ronald Reagan whose coattails never could translate into a House majority, who was nearly destroyed by Iran-Contra, and who left office in uncertainty over whether he had really changed much the Cold War calculus. Harry Truman finished with about a 25% approval rating, winning no credit for the birth […]
Nov10th2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Foreign Policy, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Immigration. 7 Comments“Open immigration to America worked well during the 19th century because the government did very little for immigrants and their families. How immigrants voted after becoming citizens also mattered little because government decisions were not so important. With the growth of government during the past half century, neither of these conditions continues to hold, so […]
Nov3rd2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Foreign Policy, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and affirmative action. 5 Comments“Despite much gushing about how we should “celebrate diversity,” America’s great achievement has not been in having diversity but in taming its dangers that have run amok in many other countries. Americans have by no means escaped diversity’s oppressions and violence, but we have reined them in”.–Thomas Sowell, in a WSJ editorial explaining that diversity […]
Oct30th2006
“The American system of government is based on spreading out power so that nobody can mess things up too badly. I’m not sure it does the job as well as it should, but it’s founded on the right idea, and we should be using all our cultural influence to spread that idea all over the […]
