Foreign Policy & War

An Astounding Remark

by Sheldon Richman January 20, 2002

When Attorney General John Ashcroft told the nation, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists," he wasn't blazing any new trails. He was merely doing what despots and would-be despots always do: attempting to intimidate into silence those who dare to question ...

Curing the Political Disease of Terrorism

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 12, 2002

Since the U.S. government's bombing of Afghanistan has failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice "dead or alive," the U.S. government has now decided to permanently extend its empire to that part of the world. Moreover, the bombing has killed thousands of innocent civilians, whose surviving friends and family members now have the incentive ...

Protecting Our Way of Life?

by Sheldon Richman January 10, 2002

Even when responding to a monstrous and unjustifiable provocation such as September 11, the U.S. government threatens our liberty. We have much to fear from the power in Washington. At least Osama bin Laden never says he has our interests at heart. We can't be lulled into trusting him. Not so with the U.S. government. It ...

Republic or Empire: Which Path for America in the 21st Century?

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2002

IN THE FIRST ISSUE of Modern Age, a conservative journal of opinion, published in 1957, there appeared an article by the classical-liberal journalist and author Felix Morley on the question of whether America was still a republic or becoming an empire. He later developed this theme in his 1959 volume, Freedom and Federalism. Morley’s point was that ...

Declare War before Waging War, Part 1

by Doug Bandow January 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 LIKE MOST CRISES, the shocking attack on the World Trade Center caused a rush to government for protection. People seemed willing to accept almost any new restriction on liberty or new spending program in the name of fighting terrorism. Few seem willing to criticize the president should he decide to expand the war to Indonesia, ...

A Foreign-Policy Primer for Children: The Fable of the Hornets

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2001

Once upon a time in a faraway land there was a happy and prosperous village filled with industrious and fun-loving people. To protect the villagers from occasional thieves and marauders, the village council had hired a policeman named Oscar. One day Oscar got bored and took a long walk into the woods, where he discovered some ...

Let’s Join the Pope

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2001

After the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, one of the convicted terrorists told a New York federal judge before sentencing that one of the principal reasons he had committed the attack was because of all the Iraqi children who had died as a result of the U.S. government's ...

Self-Inflicted Violence

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2001

IN OUR RUSH justice for the perpetrators of the horrors of September 11, we seem to have forgotten another kind of violence that is ready to befall America: the self-inflicted violence of an open-ended, comprehensive, and essentially secret global war conducted by the U.S. government against an enemy so amorphous it apparently cannot be ...

A New Foreign-Policy Paradigm for America

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 25, 2001

Ludwig von Mises observed that government intervention inexorably leads to more government intervention until the point comes that government assumes total control over the affairs of the citizenry. The idea is that since government interventions always produce perverse consequences, government officials will inevitably enact new interventions designed to fix the problems resulting from the ...

An Unkeepable Promise

by Sheldon Richman November 20, 2001

President Bush should be wary of making promises he may not be able to keep. He’s vowed to prosecute a long and victorious war against “terrorism,” an amorphous “entity” if there ever was one. But before he extends his campaign beyond Afghanistan, which will have as its inevitable casualties a long list of civil liberties, ...

Patriotism and War

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 15, 2001

In every war, controversies over patriotism inevitably arise. Most everyone would agree that patriotism involves the loyalty that a person has toward his country. But there are two conflicting concepts arising out of the application of that principle. One concept dictates that a citizen has a duty to make an independent, reasoned judgment of whether the ...

Winning the Battle and the War (short version)

by Richard M. Ebeling November 9, 2001

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, have aroused a degree of sympathy for the victims and a demand for justice against the perpetrators that have not been seen in America in relation to any other event for many decades. But in this understandably emotional moment it is necessary for every American to step back and ...