Joining the Ranks of Aggressor Nations by Jacob G. Hornberger May 2, 2003 It really doesn’t matter whether U.S. military forces now find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not. From a moral standpoint, it’s too late for that. As everyone knows, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush provided several justifications for the invasion, and people were free to select the one that most appealed to them. Let’s examine the most important justifications that the president provided us. Justification One and Justification Two were closely related and were the ones that were incessantly pounded into everyone’s head for about a year — the so-called need to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Justification One related to Iraq’s supposed breach of UN resolutions that prohibited him from possessing WMDs. Justification Two related to the U.S. government’s ...
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 VMI. Given the nature of the massive attacks on my position by the West Pointers, most of which have been eloquent and passionate, I believe it’s important to publicly address the major points raised in their emails. There was much criticism regarding the VMI cadet corps’s treatment of the tactical officer who placed the VMI first-classman (senior) on report for possession of liquor, knowing that it would result in his immediate expulsion from the Institute. Maybe you just had to be there to understand the context of the situation — that is, life at a military school from 1968 to 1972, at the ...
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 a little thinking before the bullets begin to fly and young Americans start coming home mangled and dead. A good starting point would be to stop seeing Iraq through the narrow view provided by the president, and instead place the actions of Saddam Hussein in the broader context of our bungled foreign policy of the last 50 years. For instance, why do so few people seem bothered by the fact that the “Madman of Baghdad” was once — and not that long ago — our ...
Bush to Chavez: Just Ignore Your Constitution by Jacob G. Hornberger January 22, 2003 President Bush’s recent advice to embattled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez reflects Bush’s cavalier attitude toward constitutional restraints. In the midst of all the political turmoil in Venezuela, Bush, who apparently despises Chavez, aligned himself with his political opponents and called for early presidential elections, with the aim ...
Leave Iraq Alone by Jacob G. Hornberger January 6, 2003 Despite the fact that he is amassing an impressive display of military armament in the areas near Iraq, President Bush says that he still hasn’t made up his mind on whether to order an invasion of Iraq. That would imply that despite the array of intelligence and information that ...
Why Submit to Blackmail When Bribery Is Available? by Jacob G. Hornberger January 2, 2003 President Bush says he’s not going to submit to blackmail by North Korea, but apparently he has nothing against bribery because he’s now offering North Korea fuel, food, and an easing of U.S. sanctions in return for North Korea’s promise not to produce nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the president and other members of the federal government, including ...
With Friends Like These by Jacob G. Hornberger December 2, 2002 Without any shame whatsoever, President Bush has returned John Poindexter, Elliott Abrams, and Henry Kissinger to the federal government. Poindexter is in charge of “Total Information Awareness,” a government information-gathering operation straight out of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Abrams has been appointed as top National Security Council envoy to the Middle East. And ...
The Folly of Protecting Teens from Work by James Bovard October 1, 2002 Protecting teenagers from work is one of the worst things you can do to kids. Some child-labor groups are campaigning to impose new restrictions on freedom of contract. While some prohibitionists might have good intentions, pervasive restrictions on youth labor would be a menace both to kids and to society. The Associated Press reported that 73 teens were killed on ...
Can We Call It an Empire Yet? by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2002 Once upon a time people who favored an aggressive global military policy for the United States avoided the word “empire.” They instinctively sensed the anti-American ring to it, so they found euphemisms and dismissed charges of U.S. imperialism as delusions from the fevered imaginations of unpatriotic agitators. Now that has begun to change. First the new imperialists approached the issue ...
Book Review: Communism by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2002 Communism: A History by Richard Pipes (New York: The Modern Library, 2001); 175 pages; $19.95. IT SEEMS HARD TO BELIEVE that it is already more than 10 years since the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union in December 1991. It was only about 10 years earlier, in 1981, that the conservative French social critic Jean-François Revel first published his book ...
A Devotion to Democracy? by Jacob G. Hornberger April 20, 2002 What’s with the love fest between U.S. officials and army generals? We have, of course, (retired) Army General Colin Powell serving as U.S. secretary of state. And we have (or will have) military tribunals manned by army officials, rather than jury trials by civilians, for foreigners accused of terrorism. There is Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani army ...
The War on Terrorism by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2001 With the publication of the first issue of Freedom Daily in January 1990, we made a vow that we have repeated every year since then: Never will we compromise that which we consider to be right and true. Since then, as long-time supporters and subscribers know, we have never hesitated to fulfill that vow, no matter what ...
