Free Republic

DEFENSE Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently declared that the war in Iraq “has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing.” However, since all other reasons for the Iraq invasion turned out to be baseless, some experts are concluding the opposite. Oil and natural gas are playing a growing role in molding U.S. foreign policy and troop deployments, says Dr. Michael T. Klare, a professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. In the current Nation magazine, Klare argues that the administration’s intense desire to protect and control oil reserves is driving U.S. foreign policy. For one thing, he notes, the government is...

It should be the best of times for American conservatism. Republican majorities in the House and Senate, a re-elected Republican president, an increasing number of Republican governors and a rightwards tilt in the judiciary. While the British Tories and German Christian Democrats flounder, America’s right seems to flourish. Well, that’s the cover story. Beneath the surface, however, American conservatism is in increasing trouble. The Republican coalition, always fragile, now depends as much on the haplessness of the Democrats as on its own internal logic. On foreign and domestic policy alike the American right is splintering. With no obvious successor to...

BY JOHN REYNOLDS AVALANCHE-JOURNAL The United States lost the war in Vietnam in part because the U.S. people ultimately came to hate the war and hate themselves because of the war. That legacy, according to Cornell University professor Keith Taylor, is important because it continues to permeate how the U.S. public approaches military conflicts 30 years after the fall of Saigon. Taylor was one of several speakers who addressed aspects of the Vietnam War's legacy on the second day of the fifth triennial Vietnam Symposium. The symposium is held by Texas Tech's Vietnam Center, which also maintains the largest non-governmental...