Roundup: Media's Take

David Broder: FDR Blatantly Invoked Pearl Harbor and WW II at the Time of HIS Re-Election Bid

David Broder, in the Wash Post (March 11, 2004): ... [I]s it, as supporters of John Kerry and other critics suggest, wrong for Republicans to convert the emotions of that national tragedy [9-11] into grist for a political campaign? To answer that question, I went back, with help from Washington Post researcher Brian Faler, to 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost three years after

Did Haiti Benefit from America's Years of Occupation (1915-1934)

From GlobalSecurity.org:Due to civil disturbances and lack of a stable friendly government, the United States occupied and ruled Haiti by means of a military government between 1915 and 1934. During the occupation, a number of infrastructure development projects were accomplished that made real material improvements to the country and the people. These included road and bridge bui

Nicholas Kristof: Gay Marriage a Bad Idea? So Was Interracial Marriage a Few Decades Ago

NIcholas Kristof, in the NYT (March 3, 2004): Shakespeare's"Othello" used to be among the hardest plays to stage in America. Although the actors playing Othello were white, they wore dark makeup, so audiences felt"disgust and horror," as Abigail Adams said. She wrote,"My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the soo

The Media Are Giving Kerry a Free Pass About His Radical Past

Shawn Macomber, in frontpagemag.com (March 3, 2004)By choosing to ignore the giant elephant, er, donkey, that Matt Drudge led into America’s living room, the national press once again showed its true stripes. After all, there is far less proof that Bush was AWOL than there is that Kerry had an affair, Alex Polier’s rote denial notwithstanding. Yet, while America was abuzz with the rumor, not one major cable network was willing to sp

Romania's Former Communist Spymaster Says the Soviets Taught Saddam and Others How to Hide WMD

An interview published in FrontpageMag.com (March1, 2004): Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service. In 1987 he published Red Horizons (Regnery Gateway), reprinted in 24 countries. In 1999 Mr. Pacepa authored The Black Book of the Securitate, reportedly an all time bestseller in Romania. He is now finishing

20 Years from Now, Gay Rights Will Be Taken for Granted

Andrea Georgsson, in the Houston Chronicle (Feb. 22, 2004): I've often wondered what it must feel like to be one of the bigots immortalized in civil rights-era photographs and news footage, sicking dogs on peaceful protesters, shouting and spitting at little children walking meekly into public school buildings -- all those nice housewives with bouffant hairdos vowing in response to reporters' q

Comparing Bush Quotes with Those of Other Presidents

Some of the quotes assembled by Maureen Farrell, in Buzzflash (Feb. 19, 2004): War "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war." – John F. Kennedy, June, 1963"F*ck Saddam, we're taking him out!" -- George Bush, 2002Peace "What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana

How the Head Scarf Became a National Security Threat

Elaine Sciolino, in the NYT (Feb. 8, 2004):WHO would have thought a piece of cloth could threaten the stability of the French state?...Still, it is natural that France's government would pick the Islamic veil as a symbol of everything un-French and potentially dangerous about its Muslim population.Ever since 1789, images and symbols have been used and abused to educate the French people about the republican ideal and the conformity it

Bush: Presidents Shouldn't Micromanage Wars

Christopher Marquis, in the NYT (Feb. 10, 2004):Poor Lyndon B. Johnson. More than three decades after he entered the history books by micromanaging the Vietnam War, President Bush on Sunday invoked his heavy-handedness as the essence of what to avoid on the battlefield. Mr. Bush did not name Johnson; he did not have to. The image of an ill-tempered and stressed president pori

Was Bush a Deserter?

Spencer Ackerman, writing in the New Republic (subscribers only) (Feb. 9, 2004):It's true that Bush isn't a deserter in the narrow sense: He never abandoned his post under attack. But he came as close as one could to deserting the Texas Air National Guard. As The Boston Globe meticulously documented in 2000, Bush's Guard records indicate that he failed to perform a year of

Was There a Connection Between Saddam and Al Qaeda?

From Frontpagemag.com (Jan. 28, 2004: Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Stephen F. Hayes, the staff writer at The Weekly Standard whose recent article, Case Closed, reported on the U.S. government's secret memo detailing the links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. FP: Welcome to Frontpage Interview Mr. Hayes. It’s a pleasure to have you with us. Let’

Daniel Ellsberg: History's Repeating Itself

Daniel Ellsberg, writing in the Guardian (Jan. 27, 2004): After 17 months observing pacification efforts in Vietnam as a state department official, I laid eyes upon an unmistakable enemy for the first time on New Year's Day in 1967. I was walking point with three members of a company from the US army's 25th Division, moving through tall rice, the water over our ankles, when we heard firing close beh

What Paul Bremer Could Learn from the Pilgrims

Sarah Whalen, a teacher at Loyola University School of Law, writing in Arab News (Jan. 22, 2004):Is democracy delayed, democracy denied? In delaying truly democratic elections in Iraq, the US reveals how far removed it has become from its own democratic origins, which commenced not with the colonial revolution or its 1776 Declaration of Independence, but much earli

Iowa Caucuses: WhyThey Became Important

Todd Purdam, writing in the NYT (Jan. 19, 2004):On Jan. 19, 1976, the notion of the caucuses as a big event was such a novelty that the Iowa Democratic Party had raised $4,000 to help defray the caucus costs: selling tickets, at $10 a head and $1 a drink, so the public could watch the national reporters at work on election night..."Caucus" is

Comparing the U.S. Empire with Great Britain's

David Francis, staff writer, in the Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 14, 2004):How does the United States hegemony compare with the famed British Empire of the 19th and early 20th century? Niall Ferguson, a British historian now teaching at New York University's Stern School of Business, finds both similarities and differences:* At its peak, when the sun literally did not set on its empire, Britain accounted for 10 percent of tota

Rob Salem: Jerusalem Does Not Need To Be Divided Over Religion

The battle for control of Jerusalem and its holy places has always provoked passionate and often belligerent emotions from Jews, Christians and Muslims. In the words of historian Karen Armstrong: "Once an issue like Jerusalem is elevated beyond the reach of compromise, the most extreme and immoral actions become not only possible but `holy' to a disaffected minority." Jerusalem need not be the cause of such conflict. The city is often mistakenly portrayed as a source of re

Matthew Continetti: John Roberts's Undergraduate Papers ... What They Show

Matthew Continetti, in the Weekly Standard (8-8-05): John Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in Long Beach, Indiana, but he spent much of his young adulthood--about six years--in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first as an undergraduate at Harvard College, then as a student at Harvard Law. Roberts matriculated at Harvard in the fall of 1973, graduated summa cum laude three years lat

Christopher Levenick: How the Culture Wars Have Changed Since the Scopes Trial

Christopher Levenick, in the WSJ (8-5-05): [Mr. Levenick is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ] ... If the issues at stake in the Scopes trial seem familiar, so too should the way they unfolded. As in any good culture-war campaign, much of the controversy was staged. The law that Scopes broke was a symbolic measure, signed by a governor who thought it would never be enforced. Indeed, its leading advocate thought it should have no penalty provision. S

Mohamad Bazzi: Insurgency Continues Targeting Civilians--Which Is Almost Unprecedented

Mohamad Bazzi, Middle East Correspondent, in Newsday (8-5-05):... while the guerrillas are skilled at modifying their military tactics, they seem indifferent to the political models of past insurgencies. Most successful rebellions in the past century shared two traits: They had widespread public support and a well-articulated political agenda, which usually

James Howard Kunstler: Globalization Is an Anomaly and Its Time Is Running Out

James Howard Kunstler, in the Guardian (8-4-05):[James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.]The big yammer these days in the United States is to the effect that globalisation is here to stay: it's wonderful, get used to it. The chief cheerleader for this point of view is Thomas Friedman, co