Foreign Policy & War

Government the Exploiter, Not Protector

by Sheldon Richman July 14, 2006

If you begin with an incorrect premise, you are bound to arrive at bad conclusions. Nowhere is this more true than in matters of government. The debates over the “war on terror,” the Iraqi occupation, and the Bush administration’s casual approach to civil liberties are premised on the idea that the ...

Americans Should Be “Anti-American”

by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2006

“The Iraq war has also made anti-Americanism respectable again, as it was during the Cold War but had not been since the demise of the Soviet Union.” Those words come from Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, writing in the June 18 issue of the Washington Post. In his article ...

Killing in the Name of Democracy

by James Bovard June 1, 2006

President George W. Bush perpetually invokes the goal of spreading democracy to sanctify his foreign policy. Unfortunately, he is only the latest in a string of presidents who cloaked aggression in idealistic rhetoric. Killing in the name of democracy has a long and sordid history. The U.S. government’s first experience with forcibly spreading democracy came in the wake of the ...

Monsters, Inc.

by Samuel Bostaph June 1, 2006

In 2001, an animated film from Pixar Animation Studios was released and became extremely popular with both adults and children. Monsters, Inc. is set in the city of Monstropolis, where all monsters live. A corporation that gives the title to the movie employs scarers, monsters who venture out of the city every night to enter the human world through ...

U.S. Hypocrisy in Cuba

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 26, 2006

If there was ever a charge against the U.S. government on which most foreigners would agree, it is the charge of hypocrisy. Most Americans continue to view their federal government as a beloved parent, one who never lies to them; who takes care of them and gives them “freedom” in the form of ...

Moussaoui and Foreign-Policy Unrealities

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 22, 2006

Writing about the Zacarias Moussaoui case in the Washington Times, Suzanne Fields displays one of the major maladies that typify conservatives — their propensity to create their own realities with respect to foreign policy in order to avoid confronting the harsh consequences of U.S. foreign policy, especially in the ...

Hearing Moussaoui

by Sheldon Richman May 15, 2006

You had to read the papers very closely to see what Zacarias Moussaoui, who got life imprisonment after pleading guilty to conspiring in the 9/11 attacks, had to say at his sentencing. Most newspapers either buried his statement or left it out of the story altogether. Curious, isn’t it? Don’t the newspapers ...

Nonsense on the Inevitability of Democracy

by James Bovard May 1, 2006

Many Americans are being lulled into assuming that democracy is inevitable. This is a favorite theme of President Bush’s beating on the same drumhead used by President Clinton, President Wilson, and other notable demagogues. But the fact that politicians agree does not make something true. Since Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that ...

The American Heritage of “Isolationism”

by Gregory Bresiger May 1, 2006

You’re against the war in Iraq. In fact, you’re skeptical about the concept of nation-building and wonder about all of the U.S. interventions in history, from Haiti to the Philippines, the latter resulting in a bitter insurgency at the beginning of the 20th century in which U.S. ...

Conservatism vs. Libertarianism

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 12, 2006

The Conservative: I’m a conservative. I believe in individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government, except for: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Medicaid; 4. Welfare; 5. Drug laws; 6. Public schooling; 7. Federal grants; 8. Economic regulations; 9. Minimum-wage laws and price controls; 10. Federal Reserve System; 11. Paper money; 12. Income taxation and the IRS; 13. Trade restrictions; 14. Immigration controls; 15. The postal monopoly; 16. Foreign aid; 17. ...

Bush Pledges More Mayhem in the Middle East

by Sheldon Richman March 31, 2006

Asked recently about his position on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, President Bush said, “I made it clear, and I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.” This statement brought precisely zero reaction from the public and the media. Do the American people fully appreciate ...

Bush, Chavez, and Hitler

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 6, 2006

U.S. officials become angry and indignant when someone compares the Bush administration’s policies to those of the Hitler regime. Even government officials at the local level get upset over the comparison, as reflected by the public schoolteacher who is under investigation for comparing Bush’s policies to those of ...