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Column: Dems in 2004 Should Run on Bush's 2000 Theme: It's Time to Restore Honor and Integrity to the White House

by P.M. Carpenter

Democratic strategists and their presidentially hopeful candidates are of two minds on how best to get out the vote in the coming electoral blood fest. Briefly put, one camp believes in promoting “new ideas” while the other prefers to exploit hardcore anger. This strategic divide may come across as irreconcilable, but the two camps are, or at least could be, much closer in message than usually thought. In proposing new policies to replace the gazillion destructive ones Bush has huckste

Howard Dean Would Be a Disaster for the Democratic Party

by Thomas Fleming

Early in 1948, while he was trying to decide whom he should select to run with him as vice president in the upcoming election, President Harry S. Truman invented a phrase that deserves a long shelf life.  The liberals in the Democratic Party were trying to convince him that he should accept Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas as his running mate. Truman had severe doubts and explained them in his diary as follows: He [Douglas] belongs to t

Are Democrats in Denial About 9-11?

by Daniel Pipes

For about a year, Republicans and Democrats agreed on the need vigorously to prosecute the war on terror. No longer. Nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders as well as other heavyweight Democrats have spoken out against the war on terror, preferring it to be a police action against terror. Howard Dean , replying to a question that if bin Laden should be caught, whether to put him to death:"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I s

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

by Jack Miles

A week or so ago, President Bush scandalized some of his evangelical fans by innocently asserting, during his trip to England , that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Evangelical theologian Richard Land, speaking for the scandalized, rebuked the President for what Land calls playing “theologian-in-chief.” In Land's view, “When President Bush concludes that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, he is simply mistaken.” In my view and that of some evangelicals as well, notably

Lessons from the Mexican War We Ignore at Our Peril

by John C. Pinheiro

Many Americans look no further into their past than the Vietnam War for instructive analogies about Iraq. They had better search further. While comparisons of Iraq with Vietnam may stir Howard Dean's supporters to send him their milk money, they obscure rather than clarify what's needed to "win the peace" in Iraq.The Vietnam experience justifiably impels Americans to question Pentagon statements, presidential promises and the need of armed intervention overseas. Understandab

Should Pete Rose Be Forgiven?

by Ron Briley

So Pete Rose has finally admitted that he bet on baseball while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. His confession and latest autobiography My Prison Without Bars are part of a well orchestrated campaign to convince Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to reinstate baseball's all-time hits leader, paving the way for his induction into the Hall of Fame. Public opinion polls support Rose, and Commissioner Selig, a former used car dealer never known for his strong principled st

Why You Should Still Worry About Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East

by William Lambers

Saddam Hussein's regime is gone. An Iraqi nuclear weapons program is no longer to be feared. Libya has just relinquished its weapons of mass destruction programs. These recent developments no doubt bring comfort to some. But we can't rest easy. The dangers of nuclear weaponry still exist in the Middle East. Israel has nuclear weapons, and its rival Iran is suspected of developing them. Other Middle Eastern nations may resort to nuclear weapons as a response to Israel's and Iran's possession of them. The Middle East can avoid the vicious cycle of nuclear proliferation, as one past example suggests. More than 40 years ago, the nations of Latin America also faced the threat of nuclear weapons in their region. In September 1962, Brazil called for a Latin American nuclear weapon-free zone. Just one month later, the Soviets placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The resulting Cuban missile crisis almost led to a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

America's Abominable Record in Okinawa

by Chalmers Johnson

America's 703 officially acknowledged foreign military enclaves (as of September 30, 2002), although structurally, legally, and conceptually different from colonies, are themselves something like microcolonies in that they are completely beyond the jurisdiction of the occupied nation.1 The United States virtually always negotiates a"status of forces agreement" (SOFA) with the ostensibly independent"host" nation, including countries whose legal systems are every bit (and perhaps more) sophisticat

An Interview with Jon Butler ... Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

by Rick Shenkman

"Religion played very little role in the American Revolution and it played very little role in the making of the Constitution. That's largely because the Founding Fathers were on the whole deists who had a very abstract conception of God."

After Saddam ... Now What?

by Kenneth M. Pollack

The Middle East is in a great deal of difficulty right now, after Saddam Hussein and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Not only do we have a mess in Iraq to fix, but there is an even bigger mess out there in the larger Middle East. We're going to need to deal with that mess, too, if we are going to be able to defend our interests and our own security from the threats we now face in the region. The Arab states are broken. They are absolutely stagnant, politically, economically, and socially. And the

The Historian Who Defends North Korea

by Anders Lewis

University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings is the left's leading scholar of Korean history. In addition to contributing to documentary films on Korean life, Cumings has written a massive and highly critical multi-volume account of the Korean War and published a general history of Korea, titled Korea's Place in the Sun . And he is not shy about his opinions. In a 1997 article in the Atlantic he called for an end to U.S.-Korean hostilities. U.S. troops, he insisted, shoul

Why Profiling Is Necessary (If Its Done Right)

by Daniel Pipes

In mid-November, Yusuf Suleman Motala, a Muslim leader in the United Kingdom said to be highly regarded and have a vast following, was at Heathrow Airport on his way to the lesser pilgrimage in Mecca. But British officers stopped him and Mr. Motala reports they asked him questions about the Islamic religion, the instruction at schools under his guidance, and his association with"jihadi groups." The resulting delay caused him to cancel his pilgrimage. The Muslim Council of Britain respo

Try Saddam In Iraq--But With International Advisors

by Nikolas K. Gvosdev

From Baghdad to Washington, from Teheran to Paris, the world agrees: Saddam Hussein should be held accountable for his crimes. But who should Saddam answer to -- a domestic Iraqi court or an international tribunal? Washington wants to avoid creating something like the Nuremberg tribunal, convened by the victorious Allies after World War II to hold Nazi leaders accountable for "crimes against humanity." Having declined to ratify the 1998 Rome Statute creati

Let's All Agree We Should Aim for Objectivity

by Thomas Reeves

Journalists love to talk about themselves and their profession, and the existence of 24-hour a day news channels give them plenty of opportunity. On a recent Fox News Channel program a panel of journalists argued heatedly about evidence (which is overwhelming) of leftist bias in the major media. At one point, a leading liberal contended that unbiased reporting is just stenography. Surprisingly, a major conservative columnist and television commentator agreed. The liberal then proceeded to not

Who Is Yasir Arafat?

by Barry and Judith Colp Rubin

In the summer of 1994,Yasir Arafat made a telephone call to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with a special request. After months of tortuous secret negotiations that came close to collapse on many occasions, the two leaders had finally signed the detailed deal on how they would implement the peace process. Arafat was about to return to his ancestral homeland to rule the Gaza Strip and Jericho, starting a transition period that - if all went well - would produce an independent Palestin

Interview with Christopher Hitchens

by Jamie Glazov

Following is an interview with journalist Christopher Hitchens. The interview was conducted by historian Jamie Glazov, the managing editor of frontpagemag.com, where the interview was first published. Click here to read a response to this interview by Sean Wilentz:"Mr. Hitchens's Revisionism of His Own History"Glazov: I’d like to begin with your intellectual journey. You were, at one time, a man of the Left and, if I am correct, a Tr

Imagine If JFK Had Been President on 9-11

by Alice L. George

As we've learned in the global age, international crises threaten the United States with unprecedented dangers. Prudent, steady leadership is necessary to manage those threats. Once, leadership safeguarded the nation's interest; today, it threatens that interest. Nothing better illustrates the deterioration in the quality of American presidential leadership than comparison of John F. Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis with George W. Bush's appro

Why Strom Thurmond's Mixed Race Child Ended Up in Coatesville, Pennsylvania

by Anita L. Wills

The first chapter of my book, Notes And Documents of Free Persons of Color, begins in 1950's Coatesville, Pennsylvania. The town is now a household word, being the place where Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the biracial daughter of Strom Thurmond, was raised. Coatesville was a steel town made up mostly of immigrants, many of whom were from Communist countries. The blacks living in the community were by and large from the South. They moved there to work in the steel mills an

Once Again Sex Is Changing American Politics

by Ruth Rosen

I STILL REMEMBER the mixed emotions I experienced when the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. Finally, I thought, women will never again risk their lives with back-alley quacks. At the same time, I dreaded decades of political backlash that might try to repeal women's right to exercise this choice. I wish I had been wrong, but by 1980 abortion had entered American national politics -- as both a political litmus test and the engine that fueled the

It's Time for the State to Get Out of the Marriage Business

by Benjamin Braude

According to the opponents of gay marriage, the Nov. 18 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing same-sex unions threatens hallowed traditions, firmly established in Judaism and Christianity over thousands of years. However, what opponents take as hoary, biblically rooted practice is more hollow than hallowed. Those claiming to defend traditional marriage forget what those traditions were. One revered form of marriage -- espoused in the Bible -- is the polygamy of the patria