Foreign Policy & War

Unnecessary Tragedy

by Sheldon Richman April 2, 2003

The U.S. military’s killing of at least seven Iraqi civilians — including five little children — at a U.S. checkpoint on Route 9 south of Karbala certainly isn’t going to help win the hearts and minds of the people of that war-torn country. Whose fault was it? To answer that question, ...

Obedience to Orders, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 2, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Reader Responses |  Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass |  Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss Last week we posted my article Obedience to Orders, Part 1, which has generated a load of reader responses, including many from cadets and officers from both West Point and ...

Blackmail Bad, Bribery Good

by Scott McPherson April 1, 2003

Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of the Washington Times, is extremely upset. It seems the French, in an attempt to keep Eastern European nations from backing President Bushs war plans, are threatening to withhold European Union membership to countries who sign on to the U.S. agenda. According to Blankley, French president Jacques Chirac revealed himself to be a vulgar, ...

An American Empire! If You Want It instead of Freedom, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 Fifty years ago, the classical liberal author and journalist Garet Garrett published a collection of essays called The People's Pottage (1953). In the midst of the Korean War, he tried to persuade the American people that the United States was on a new course that conflicted with the original conception of the nation. Its ...

War as a Media Subsidy

by Scott McPherson March 31, 2003

One can’t help but be amused by the way television news programs become practically weak at the knees when war looms. The prospect of reporting on a major armed conflict is met with almost universal applause by our friends in the entertainment, oops, the news industry — and it’s ...

Obedience to Orders, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 29, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |  Reader Responses |  Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass |  Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss I couldn’t help but be struck by the photograph in the mainstream press last week in which an Iraqi soldier who had been taken captive was resting in the arms of two American GIs. The prisoner ...

Response from Bill Frist

by U.S. Senator Bill Frist March 19, 2003

This letter from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is in response to Howard Baetjer’s open letter of March 17. Thank you for sharing your open letter with me. For reasons of timing and policy, I cannot in good conscience agree to follow the course you propose in your letter. Your ...

Howard Baetjer’s Rejoinder

by Howard Baetjer Jr. March 19, 2003

This is Howard Baetjer’s rejoinder to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s response to his open letter of March 17. Bill, Thanks for your response. I’m surprised and gratified to receive a response. I had underestimated you. You take five paragraphs to establish the legality of Congress’s abdication of its Article I ...

An Open Letter to Bill Frist

by Howard Baetjer Jr. March 17, 2003

Dear Bill: Working the only way I know for sanity and prudence against the president’s mad rush to war, I offer a complaint and a suggestion to you, both as a Princeton classmate and as U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Background: The framers of the Constitution sought to deny the power to declare war ...

War Logic

by Scott McPherson March 17, 2003

The rhetorical case favoring an invasion of Iraq has gone on for so long that no one is really thinking about the reasons any more. We’ve moved on to more important things, like when the tanks will start rolling. Though it might be far too late, it couldn’t hurt to do ...

Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Saddam?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 17, 2003

I have a confession to make: I’m not afraid of Saddam Hussein. Not a bit. I have absolutely no fear that the man is going to come and get me or that he is going to spray biological or chemical weapons on me or that he will send someone to do the ...

Bomb Them!

by Scott McPherson March 14, 2003

We feel like Greeks, we feel like Romans Centaurs and monkeys just cluster round us We drink elixirs that we refine From the juices of the dying We are no monsters, we’re moral people And yet we have the strength to do this This is the splendour of our achievement Call in the airstrike with a poison kiss — Shriekback, “Nemesis” “North Korean fighter jets threatened an ...