Foreign Policy & War

Statist Follies (Video from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch FoxNews.com)

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2009

Statist Follies (Video from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch FoxNews.com)

Langdon, Stark, Bennington, and the Triumph of a Private Army, Part 3

by Scott McPherson November 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The Battle of Bennington Despite some gallant and spirited attempts to resist Burgoyne’s advance through the summer of 1777, the Continental Army’s Northern Department, first under Horatio Gates, then under Philip Schuyler, then under Gates again, was not inspiring much confidence. “The withdrawal from Ticonderoga reinforced Stark’s view that the northern ...

The Evil of Sanctions, Part 1

by Brian Cloughley November 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 When strong governments wish to impose their will on weaker regimes, they often resort to sanctions. The effects have included the death or debilitation of millions of innocent people. Two good examples are Cuba, on which draconian U.S. sanctions have been enforced since 1960, and Iraq, where brutal sanctions were enforced from 1990 to ...

Intervention and Economic Crisis

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. November 1, 2009

No supporter of the market economy could have been surprised when the recent financial crisis was inevitably blamed on “capitalism” and “deregulation.” The free market, we were told, was a recipe for financial instability. “Advocates of the free market must confront the fact that both the Great Depression and the current financial chaos were preceded by years of laissez-faire ...

Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

by James Bovard October 10, 2009

It seems like only yesterday that President George W. Bush was bragging about having brought freedom and democracy to 25 million Afghans, a key theme in his second inaugural address. For 8 years, the American people have been fed one big lie after another regarding Afghanistan. Now, when the Pentagon is saber-rattling to vastly increase the number of U.S. troops ...

Exit Afghanistan and Leave Iran Alone

by Sheldon Richman October 2, 2009

The Obama administrations quest to control the health-insurance industry has dominated the headlines for months, but finally with the news out of Iran and Afghanistan foreign policy has again asserted itself. It was almost easy to forget that the United States maintains a worldwide empire, but the reminders came leaping off the front pages and the television screens. Word that ...

Langdon, Stark, Bennington, and the Triumph of a Private Army, Part 2

by Scott McPherson October 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 At the end of June, Burgoyne struck south with more than 7,000 men: 3,700 British regulars, 3,000 German mercenaries, 470 artillerymen, 400 Indians, and approximately 250 Canadian and American loyalists, and with the optimistic hope of gaining more Indian and loyalist troops as they went. As his forces approached the ...

How George W. Bush Redefined American Freedom

by James Bovard September 1, 2009

George W. Bush is gone from Washington but his legacy, like an abandoned toxic waste dump, lingers on. Like President Franklin Roosevelt before him, President Bush helped redefine American freedom. And like Roosevelt’s, Bush’s changes were perversions of the clear vision the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. What did freedom mean in the era of George Bush? In Iraq in ...

Langdon, Stark, Bennington, and the Triumph of a Private Army, Part 1

by Scott McPherson September 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Had we a standing army, when the British invaded our peaceful shores? Was it a standing army that gained the battles of Lexington, and Bunker’s Hill, and took the ill fated Burgoyne? Is not a well-regulated militia sufficient for every purpose of internal defence? And which of you, my fellow ...

Bombings Worse than Nagasaki and Hiroshima

by Laurence M. Vance August 14, 2009

The world knows all too well about the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945 (“Little Boy”), and on Nagasaki on Thursday, August 9 (“Fat Man”). “Dropping the bombs ended the war,” said President Harry Truman. They may have ended the war, but they did not end the bombing of Japan. On August 14, 1945, ...

The Media As Enablers of Government Lies

by James Bovard August 1, 2009

Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive ...

A Prudent Foreign Policy

by Doug Bandow August 1, 2009

Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America by Ted Galen Carpenter (Cato Institute, 2008); 352 pages. Change has come to Washington in the form of a new administration. Yet the cast of characters looks much the same. Their philosophies, while differing in degree, remain solidly interventionist. The question ...