Roundup: Media's Take

Bret Stephens: Is There an Arab George Washington?

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] On learning that George Washington intended to follow up his victory at Yorktown by retiring to his farm at Mount Vernon, George III told the painter Benjamin West: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." The British monarch may have wound up stark raving mad, but he knew a thing or two about the seductions of power. We celebrate Washington today as the

Ross Kaminsky: Barack Carter-Obama Is Back

[Ross Kaminsky is a professional derivatives trader, a fellow at the Heartland Institute, and a frequent contributor to Human Events. He blogs at Rossputin.com.] On Monday's edition of CNN's Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer and political analyst Gloria Borger discussed President Barack Obama's response to the situation in Libya, bringing unwitting clarity to the issue Barack Obama's projected and real weakness. First, they wondered aloud how it could have been that Bar

Leon Hadar: Burying Pan-Arabism

[Leon Hadar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute.] The uprisings in the Arab World have generated two competing narratives in Washington. The first has the making of a Middle Eastern End-of-History prototype: The Arab embrace of liberal democracy is another chapter in the historical epoch evolving since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The competing narrative—a derivative of the Clash-of-Civilizations paradigm—raises the specter of political Islamist radicalization a

Jeffrey Lord: Is Scott Walker the Next Calvin Coolidge?

[Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.]"There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time…"-- Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge to AFL leader Samuel Gompers on the"right" of Boston police to strike, September 14, 1919"…I can't afford to have a fire or crime committed where there's a gap in service. And it ultimately just

Howard W. French: How Qaddafi Reshaped Africa

[Howard W. French is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa. He teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times.] Whenever most of us think of oil-rich, Arab-speaking countries, our imagination performs a trick with our sense of geography, placing us by default in the Middle East. Of the three North African countries at the heart of the popular uprisings that have r

Kevin Drum: Plutocracy Now: What Wisconsin Is Really About

[Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones.]IN 2008, A LIBERAL Democrat was elected president. Landslide votes gave Democrats huge congressional majorities. Eight years of war and scandal and George W. Bush had stigmatized the Republican Party almost beyond redemption. A global financial crisis had discredited the disciples of free-market fundamentalism, and Americans were ready for serious change.Or so it seemed. But two years later, Wall Street is

Joel Pollak: We Must Not Fear the Tyrants of Tripoli

[Joel Pollak was the GOP nominee for U.S. Congress in Illinois's 9th district in 2010.] The favored excuse for President Obama's inaction on Libya is that there were hundreds of Americans stranded on a ferry in Tripoli for several days, waiting for weather conditions to improve before they could leave for Malta. Apparently, President Obama was concerned that any action by the United States -- even direct verbal criticism of dictator Muammar Gaddafi -- could provoke him to take Ameri

Matt Mainen: On Mideast, O must copy W

[Matt Mainen is an Institute for Gulf Affairs analyst.] In his June 2009 Cairo speech on US-Islamic reconciliation, President Obama dedicated 1,020 words to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only 375 to promoting democratic ideals. That reflected a U-turn from the priorities of President George W. Bush -- and Obama's subsequent policies showed the same single-minded belief that delivering a Palestinian state would be the panacea for America's troubles in the region.

Charles Kenny: Iron Curtain Call

[Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, and author, most recently, of Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More. "The Optimist," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly.] Mikhail Gorbachev turns 80 on March 2, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, over which he presided, celebrates its 20th anniversary this fall. In the intervening ye

Richard Cohen: Can the Arab World Leave Anti-Semitism Behind?

[Richard Cohen is an op-ed columnist for the WaPo.] During World War II, the leader of the Palestinians lived in a Berlin villa, a gift from a very grateful Adolf Hitler, who clearly got his money's worth. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and as such the titular leader of Muslim Palestinians, broadcast Nazi propaganda to the Middle East, recruited European Muslims for the SS, exulted in the Holocaust and after the war went on to represent his people in the Arab Lea

Bob Herbert: Unintended, but Sound Advice

[Bob Herbert is a columnist for the NYT.] In Lewis Powell’s now-famous memo to America’s business community, which felt beleaguered in the political environment of 1971, the future Supreme Court justice stressed the importance of organizing. “Strength lies in organization,” he wrote, “in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the p

Lance Price: Don't blame Tony Blair for talking to a tyrant

[Lance Price is an author and political commentator. He is a former BBC correspondent and media adviser in 10 Downing Street.] or a man who has grown used to deflecting unwelcome questions, Tony Blair looked desperately uncomfortable as he sought to give the fewest possible details of his recent calls to Muammar Gaddafi. His evident discomfort was understandable. Despite his reluctance to accept responsibility for many of the consequences of his decisions in office, Blair hasn't los

James Kirchick: The Upheaval in Egypt Reveals True Divide Between Israelis and Neocons

[James Kirchick is a New Republic contributing editor and writer at large with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based in Prague.] Herzliya, Israel—For years, American neoconservatives have been accused of being lackeys for Israel, namely the Likud party. In 2008, Time’s Joe Klein wrote, “The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives—people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary—plumped for [the Iraq] war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the

Ed Kilgore: Republicans Want Wisconsin to Become Just Like the South

[Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic.] As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker tries to strip away the collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions, many liberals have latched onto the idea that his real goal is to dismantle the labor movement and the infrastructure of the Democratic Party. That is almost certainly one of his aims, but it’s not the whole story. Walker also has an economic vision for his state—one which is common currency in the

Edward Rees: The Case Against a No-Fly Zone in Libya

[Edward Rees is senior adviser to Peace Dividend Trust. He previously worked with the Peacekeeping Best Practises Section (PBPS) of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) at the UN Headquarters in New York and as Political Officer to the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy in Timor-Leste.] ...NFZs are not a frequently used tool in the international community's array of potential response mechanisms to internal violence. This is because they only address a symptom of confl

Grégoire Mallard: How the Arab World Can Prevent Another Qaddafi: Share a Regional Bill of Rights

[Grégoire Mallard is an assistant professor of sociology at Northwestern University.] The world has watched and cheered at the peaceful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. But observers in the West have expressed fears that future autocrats might steal their victories. And citizens in Tunisia and Egypt can still be legitimately concerned about the possibility of an Iranian scenario. Will a populist government ignore the rule of law, steal future elections, and develop an adventurous n

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Why Wisconsin Matters

[E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for the WaPo.] This is not the first time that Wisconsin has been at the center of national agitation over the role of unions. The earlier battle was staged in Sheboygan at Kohler, the legendary manufacturer of kitchen, bath and furniture products. The Kohler employees had voted to join the United Auto Workers union, and a strike that began in April 1954 was not settled until the early 1960s. In taking on the unions - as his

Robert Samuelson: Is Organized Labor Obsolete?

[Robert Samuelson is an op-ed columnist for the WaPo.] What we are witnessing in Wisconsin and elsewhere is the death knell of Big Labor. Once upon a time, most Americans could identify the head of the AFL-CIO. He was George Meany, the cigar-chomping ex-plumber who ran the union federation from 1955 to 1979. He was one of the nation's great power brokers, much quoted and wooed by presidents. It's doubtful that as many Americans can name Meany's present successor. (Answer: Richard Tr

Robert Barro: Unions vs. the Right to Work

[Mr. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.] How ironic that Wisconsin has become ground zero for the battle between taxpayers and public- employee labor unions. Wisconsin was the first state to allow collective bargaining for government workers (in 1959), following a tradition where it was the first to introduce a personal income tax (in 1911, before the introduction of the current form of individual income tax

Ahmed Chalabi: The Libyan Uprising: Lessons From Iraq

[Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi legislator.] As we watch Libyan despot Moammar Gadhafi lash out at his subjects with all the murderous force at his disposal, those of us in Iraq are reminded of another uprising and another dictator who butchered thousands to preserve his reign of terror. In 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, the Iraqi people heeded President George H.W. Bush's call to rid themselves of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The regular Iraqi army had either disapp