Foreign Policy & War

America’s Empire of Bases

by Chalmers Johnson April 1, 2004

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize or do not want to recognize that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a ...

Stay Out of Haiti

by Sheldon Richman March 5, 2004

Let’s just get it over with. Let’s make Haiti the 51st state and pump billions of dollars of welfare into it. Then at least the insertion of U.S. troops there, the third time in almost a century, won’t be an unconstitutional act of foreign intervention. But seriously, what the heck ...

Bush’s War Story Is All Wrong

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2004

President Bush likes to say that if his war critics had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. But if we are to believe the president, the same thing can be said about him: if he had had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. A dominant ...

The End Justifies the Means

by Scott McPherson March 1, 2004

There, someone finally said it. Well, to be exact, a newspaper, the Washington Times, said it, in this February 20 front-page headline: “For Iraqi, the end justifies means.” The report began, “An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty prewar intelligence to Washington said his information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons ...

A Lesson from Vietnam, Part 3

by Wendy McElroy March 1, 2004

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 “Counterinsurgency” became the new American buzzword and Vietnam became the testing ground, with American leaders looking to apply its lessons elsewhere — for example, in Cuba. The Kennedy administration developed a policy which broke the containment of revolution into three stages: first, military aid programs; second, counterinsurgency by which American ...

The Civilian or the Soldier? An Answer to Critics

by Scott McPherson February 2, 2004

In response to my January 12 commentary, “Enola Gay, Just War, and Mass Murder,” a number of people wrote me to complain about the following statement: “Can the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima be justified on the grounds that many thousands of U.S. troops would have been killed in an invasion? ”Certainly not. A ...

The Perils of Nation-Building, Part 2

by Doug Bandow February 1, 2004

Part 1 | Part 2 Giving up on expansive nation-building ambitions is the only sensible course of action, for there are few successful models upon which to draw for Iraq. America’s obvious successes are Germany and Japan, yet neither looks like Iraq: both comprised ethnically homogenous populations, possessed democratic traditions, and sported an educated, professional class. The U.S. effort was ...

A Lesson from Vietnam, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy February 1, 2004

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 With American encouragement, Diem defied the deadline for a national election. This signaled the beginning of a struggle to the death with Hanoi. Until then, the North had waited to see whether Ho could be voted into power. The communists themselves were brutal and had violated various terms of the ...

The Hypocrisy of Powell’s Lecture

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 30, 2004

Well, no one can ever say that the retired army general and U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, doesn’t have gall. In Moscow, Powell criticized the Russian government for “certain developments in Russian politics and foreign policy in recent months” which “have given us pause.” In an obvious attempt to extend the world policeman’s ...

Enola Gay, Just War, and Mass Murder

by Scott McPherson January 12, 2004

On December 15, 2003, the new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport, part of the National Air and Space Museum, was opened to the public. The Center boasts a number of high-profile attractions. The SR-71 Blackbird, the Air France Concorde, Russian MIGs, and even the Spaceshuttle Enterprise can all be found in this 294,000-square-foot, 10-story hangar on ...

The International Terror-and-Drug Cop Is On the Beat

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2004

Those who favor the U.S. government’s role as international policeman must be ecstatic that the feds are now expanding their jurisdiction in their decades-long war on drugs to include the entire world. How so? Well, despite the fact that U.S. drug laws apply only in the United States, U.S. military forces are now using their ...

The Perils of Nation-Building, Part 1

by Doug Bandow January 1, 2004

Part 1 | Part 2 The United States easily conquered Iraq, but the war was only the beginning. Winning the peace is proving to be far more difficult. Destroying an unpopular, isolated dictatorship in a wreck of a country was one thing. Creating a liberal, multi-party, multi-ethnic democracy where one has never existed is quite another. Despite the positive tone ...