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Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars

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New York Times foreign-affairs columnist Thomas Friedman laments that most Americans are disengaged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a recent radio appearance, Friedman cited comedian Bill Maher’s complaint that “the enemy” has had to fight only 140,000 Americans rather than all 300 million of us. You hear this a lot. Commentators seem to long for World War II, when “the whole country was at war.” They criticize President Bush for letting most Americans shirk their responsibility. When he’s queried about what sacrifices he’s asked of the American people, Bush says they have forgone peace of mind and paid higher gasoline prices. Naturally, this does not satisfy his critics. Let me suggest that Friedman and Maher couldn’t be more wrong. (Neither could Bush, of course.) It is a good thing that the current wars are not total ...

War, Civil Liberties, and Libertarianism

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For more than 12 years, since I was a high-school freshman, I have counted the champions of freedom as my greatest heroes. I have long admired those who, throughout history as well in the present, have spoken truth to power and stood up against tyranny, especially when it mattered most, and especially when it was most difficult. It was around the time of the Kosovo war, when I was about selective-service-registration age and my interest in foreign affairs began to grow, that I came to recognize the profound significance of war and the warfare state and also the hostility opponents of war often faced. Those who opposed Clintons NATO war were attacked, their motives questioned. I saw leftist critics of the war being called communists, accused of sympathizing with Milosevics communist background. I saw conservative critics criticized for not caring about human rights. As a libertarian opponent ...

Bush and Chavez: A Marriage Made in Hell

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If President Bush didn’t exist, Hugo Chavez would have to invent him. Chavez, of course, is the dictator-president of Venezuela who in recent months has taken steps to centralize control of the country’s economy. His accumulation of power is based on the need to resist U.S. hegemony. Some people think that his goading of Bush — for example, calling him a “devil” at the UN — shows he’s crazy, but that is plain wrong. We’ll never understand people if we attribute their actions to insanity. Chavez is crazy like a fox — he knows the formula for success: portray oneself as the valiant resister of U.S. power. George W. Bush seems willing to accommodate Chavez by continuing the American tradition of treating Latin America like a backyard. This is epitomized by the U.S. policy of pressuring Latin American countries ...