Free Republic

There’s an article in the May/June Boston Review on an interesting study that seems (I wonder why?) to have gotten little attention. Neil Malhotra, of Stanford Business School, and Yotam Margalit, who teaches political science at Columbia, report on a survey of 2,768 American adults in which they “explored people’s responses to the economic collapse and tried to determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis.” They asked, “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?”, with respondents given five categories: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all....

There’s an article in the May/June Boston Review on an interesting study that seems (I wonder why?) to have gotten little attention. Neil Malhotra, of Stanford Business School, and Yotam Margalit, who teaches political science at Columbia, report on a survey of 2,768 American adults in which they “explored people’s responses to the economic collapse and tried to determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis.” They asked, “How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?”, with respondents given five categories: a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, not at all....

Barack Obama spoke at the National Archives last Thursday on the war on terror (not that he used that term). After paying tribute to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and before turning to a defense of his policies, the President of the United States said: I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn of their truth when I lived as a child in a...

From White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs’s press briefing today: Q ... Is this something that is being considered, by the president, for reversal? Or is this the policy that will go forward? And does he have any anxiety about the potential consequences of the release of these photographs? MR. GIBBS: Well, obviously the president has great concern about any impact that pictures of potential detainee abuse, in the past, could have on the present-day service members that are protecting our freedom either in Iraq, Afghanistan or throughout the world. That's something the president is very cognizant of. And we are...

"We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history," President Obama said when he ordered the release of the Justice Department interrogation memos. Actually, no. Not at all. We were attacked on 9/11. We responded to that attack with remarkable restraint in the use of force, respect for civil liberties, and even solicitude for those who might inadvertently be offended, let alone harmed, by our policies. We've fought a war on jihadist terror in a civilized, even legalized, way. Those who have been on the front and rear lines of that war--in the military and the intelligence...

"Liberty" isn't a word you'll find in President Obama's Iranian New Year message to "the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Nor is "freedom." Nor "democracy." Nor "human rights." Nor will you find any expression of solidarity with the people of Iran--though you'll find plenty of solicitude for their rulers. The president bends over backwards to reassure the mullahs that our government wishes them well. You'll find a paragraph addressed to "the people and leaders of Iran," as if the people and leaders were in harmony, and shared a need to be reassured that we seek "a...

World dispatch -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues Monday August 19, 2002 A little-known fact about Richard Perle, the leading advocate of hardline policies at the Pentagon, is that he once wrote a political thriller. The book, appropriately called Hard Line, is set in the days of the cold war with the Soviet Union. Its hero is a male senior official at the Pentagon, working late into the night and battling almost single-handedly to rescue...

I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, it didn’t take me long this weekend to find my copy of “The Marx-Engels Reader,” edited by Robert C. Tucker — a book that was assigned in thousands of college courses in the 1970s and 80s, and that now must lie, unopened and un-remarked upon, on an awful lot of rec-room bookshelves. My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama’s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser. Obama was...

The Shape of the Race to Come By WILLIAM KRISTOL April 7, 2008 I’ve spent a fair amount of time the last couple of weeks with conservatives of all ages and leanings. Call it my very own listening tour. It began with a series of conversations with a group of Weekly Standard subscribers. Then, last week, I had lunch with the only three conservatives in Cambridge, Mass.; participated in an event in New York with the leadership of Vets for Freedom; mixed and mingled with Republicans before a speech in Michigan; and, on Friday, attended a reception for friends of...

IN 1972, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was looking for a conservative columnist for his left-leaning Op-Ed page. At a charity dinner, he wound up sitting next to William Safire, the Nixon White House speechwriter who coined Spiro Agnew’s famous denunciation of the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism.” They soon had a deal. But, as described in “The Trust,” the authoritative history of the family that has controlled The Times for more than a century, Sulzberger neglected to involve John Oakes, his cousin and the editor of the editorial page, in the decision. Oakes...

For me, therefore, the most interesting moment in Saturday night’s Republican debate at St. Anselm College was when the candidates were asked what arguments they would make if they found themselves running against Obama in the general election. The best answer came, not surprisingly, from the best Republican campaigner so far — Mike Huckabee. He began by calmly mentioning his and Obama’s contrasting views on issues from guns to life to same-sex marriage. This served to remind Republicans that these contrasts have been central to G.O.P. success over the last quarter-century, and to suggest that Huckabee could credibly and comfortably...

Letters To the Editor: Re “The Times Adds an Op-Ed Columnist” (news article, Dec. 30): It was with disappointment that I learned that The New York Times has hired William Kristol as an Op-Ed page columnist. I subscribe to The Times and look forward to a balanced and diverse opinion page. But Mr. Kristol, who with other neocons argued for the military strikes that led this country into the debacle of Iraq, has suggested that we do the same to Iran. I think Mr. Kristol’s opinions on our foreign policy in the Middle East are misguided and dangerous. I urge...

One current permathread on Big Orange is that Krugman and Obama are feuding or having a vendetta. Which, when you take a step back, is bizarre. That movement conservatives and Villagers like stone Bush enabler William Kristol, like David Brooks, Broderella, and Andrew Sullivan are all good with Obama isn’t even mentioned in passing by Obama’s fan base. And yet those same enthusiasts spend inordinate amounts of time vilifying Paul Krugman, a true progressive who was there for us from the earliest dark days of the Bush regime. Curious. What’s really happening? Krugman doesn’t have a problem with Obama; Krugman...

What a way to begin the fall! Perennial college-football power University of Michigan was ranked No. 5 in the preseason polls. It paid little Appalachian State University of Boone, N.C., about $400,000 to have its football team visit Ann Arbor to serve as a season-opening tune-up for the Wolverines. In a stunning upset, Appalachian State won 34-32-- kicking a field goal with 26 sec. left, then blocking a Michigan field-goal attempt on the game's last play. Lesson: the improbable sometimes happens. And what's true in sports is true in politics. There hasn't been a major upset in a presidential-nomination race...

In the frenzied final week of the Iraq Study Group's deliberations, co-chairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton took time out to pose for a photo spread for a fashion magazine, Men's Vogue. This might seem a dubious decision given the gravity of the moment and their self-appointed roles as the nation's saviors. The "wise men" who counseled Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam and the members of the Kissinger Commission who tried to reshape Ronald Reagan's Central American policies did not sit for Annie Leibovitz in the middle of their endeavors. Nor did they hire a mega-public relations firm to sell their...

Foreign policy realism is ascendant these days, we are told. This would be encouraging if true, because our foreign policy must indeed be realistic. But what passes for "realism" today has very little to do with reality. Indeed, if you look at some of the "realist" proposals on the table, "realism" has come to be a kind of code word for surrendering American interests and American allies, as well as American principles, in the Middle East. Thus, the "realists" advise us to seek Syria's help in Iraq even as the Syrian government engages in a concerted campaign of assassinating every...

Surrender as 'Realism' Retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries. Foreign policy realism is ascendant these days, we are told. This would be encouraging if true, because our foreign policy must indeed be realistic. But what passes for "realism" today has very little to do with reality. Indeed, if you look at some of the "realist" proposals on the table, "realism" has come to be a kind of code word for surrendering American interests and American allies, as well as American principles, in the Middle East. Thus, the "realists" advise us to seek Syria's help in...

Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe "pops up" isn't quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let's just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had "resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation...

U.S. MARINES are under investigation for alleged misconduct in the deaths of Iraqi civilians. The inquiry into the events at Haditha last November 19 is ongoing--but the Nation's editors already know what happened: A U.S. "war crime"! A military "massacre"! A "cover-up"! (And also a "willful, targeted brutality designed to send a message to Iraqis"--something a cover-up would seem to make more difficult.) The anti-American left can barely be bothered to conceal its glee.As for the pro-American left, they write more in sorrow than in anger. Here's The New Republic's Peter Beinart:  Americans can be as barbaric as anyone. What...

LAST FRIDAY, a memo to White House staffers was issued (and released to reporters): Time to go back to class! All White House staffers with security clearances were instructed by the president to attend ethics briefings, including on "the rules governing the protection of classified information," beginning this week. A senior White House aide told the Washington Post that the decision was arrived at in a meeting involving the president, chief of staff Andrew Card, and White House counsel Harriet Miers, who will be conducting the mandatory classes. Also on Friday, the president refused to comment on deputy chief of...

The Bush administration's second-term bear market has bottomed outLAST WEEK THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S second-term bear market bottomed out. On Monday, Bush nominated as the next Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who of all the leading candidates will be the central banker least hostile to tax cuts and least likely to direct monetary policy to any end other than combating inflation. At the end of the week, the Commerce Department announced that economic growth in the third quarter had been 3.8 percent, suggesting that, thanks in large part to Bush's supply-side tax cuts, our economy may remain strong enough to overcome...

The man backed by many in the Bush administration to head Baghdad's postwar government said Sunday that documents uncovered over the weekend show that Saddam Hussein tried to recruit U.S. citizens to undermine the Bush adminsitration's war effort in Iraq. "We have captured a great many files of Saddam's services and there is astounding information about the extent of their networks and their efforts to recruit foreign nationals - including Americans - to work in the Mukabahrat [Iraqi intelligence service]," said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. "I think that this is something that must be pursued,"...

It isn't just about abortion. To William Kristol, one of the nation's most influential conservatives, the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court breaks a bedrock campaign promise President Bush made to the Republican right about "the future of American jurisprudence." If the Senate confirms the White House counsel and longtime Bush adviser to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Kristol said Wednesday, "Bush would end up not having moved the court to the right at all," despite having appointed both Miers and newly sworn Chief Justice John Roberts. Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and a prominent conservative commentator...

...Then the Weekly Standard arrived in 1995, and Washington was suddenly a two-magazine town. William Kristol, Fred Barnes and John Podhoretz came up with the idea and Rupert Murdoch came up with the money.... Ever since, the Standard has proudly flown the banner of conservatism from Washington each week, sometimes conservatism of the "neo" sort.... "The Weekly Standard: A Reader" offers an impressive sampling from the magazine's first 10 years. Irving Kristol, William's father, defines neoconservatism, insofar as it can be defined -- he calls it a "persuasion," not a movement or ideology. Andrew Ferguson, tired of hearing Edward R....

With a Republican Senate, President Bush has the chance to succeed where Reagan failed by getting a conservative constitutionalist confirmed to the Supreme Court.ON OCTOBER 23, 1987--a day that lives in conservative infamy--Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by a Democratic Senate. Now, 18 years later, George W. Bush has the chance to reverse this defeat, and to begin to fulfill what has always been one of the core themes of modern American conservatism: the relinking of constitutional law and constitutional jurisprudence to the Constitution.The restoration of constitutional government has been the one area in which modern...

He stands accused of being a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy." Nothing could be further from the truth.THE ASSAULT ON JOHN BOLTON--a collaborative effort of Senate Democrats, the liberal media, and some quasi-Republicans resentful of his success--has now degenerated from an earnest (if misguided) critique of his views to a pathetic attempt at character assassination.I worked with John Bolton in the first Bush administration. I know many people who have worked with him and for him in this administration. Carl Ford's characterization of Bolton as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" is disingenuous. No, let's call a spade a spade--it's...

Liberal college students have once again illustrated their never-ending quest for tolerance and their vast ability to think critically about ideas in opposition to their own. Yes, I’m talking about yet another pie-throwing incident involving a conservative speaker on a college campus. The latest chapter in this pathetic story took place at Butler University on Wednesday, April 6. Conservative activist and President of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture David Horowitz was early in his lecture at Butler when he was struck with a pie. “There’s a wave of violence on college campuses, committed by what I’d call...

Well, it's official: Don Rumsfeld has been declared the fall guy for the Bush Administration's prosecution of the War in Iraq. What was that, you ask? "Who made the declaration?" Why, it was those unlikely bedfellows, William Kristol, the New York Times, and Norman Schwarzkopf (Gen., US Army, ret.). Apparently, everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, has been President Rumsfeld's fault: He sent insufficient numbers of men to fight the war, he was responsible for the torture at Abu Ghraib, and worst of all, he was insufficiently deferential to the G.I. who asked him at a December 8...

The hair-pullers and teeth-gnashers won't like it, of course, but we're nevertheless inclined to call this a Mandate.IT HAS HAPPENED AGAIN. Here at home, a great many people who fashion themselves his moral and intellectual superiors turn out once more--as he might put it--to have misunderestimated George W. Bush. And it has happened abroad, as well, where the president's opponents and enemies--which is to say America's opponents and enemies--must now be pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth with frustration and resentment. The exit polls said Kerry would win. The New Yorker had endorsed him. And still those idiot Americans...

The Kerry campaign's extraordinary response to the newly released tape from al Qaeda's leader.IN THEIR FORMAL STATEMENTS reacting to the new videotape from Osama bin Laden, both President Bush and John Kerry were statesmanlike. Each man called for Americans to unite against terror and vowed to defeat bin Laden and al Qaeda.The Bush campaign wisely avoided going political. But the Kerry campaign--in comments from a top adviser and the candidate himself--did not.Kerry gave what appear to be his first extemporaneous comments about the tape in a previously scheduled satellite interview with Kathy Mykleby, a veteran anchor with WISN TV in...

If Kerry had been president, Saddam would not have been gone; if Kerry becomes president we won't fight to win in Iraq. "It's absolutely impossible and irresponsible to suggest that if I were President, [Saddam] wouldn't necessarily be gone. He might be gone."--John Kerry  SOME PEOPLE WORRY that John Kerry doesn't know what he will do once in power. But that's not the half of it. Kerry doesn't even know what he would have done had he already been in power.Last night, Tom Brokaw gently pushed Kerry into yet another remarkable instance of utter incoherence. Brokaw, to his great credit,...

LAST FRIDAY, Charles Krauthammer argued in his column, Sacrificing Israel, that the currency with which a Kerry administration "would pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support . . . is obvious: giving in to them on Israel." Krauthammer pointed out that Kerry has emphasized over and over again his desire to move closer to our allies and to re-engage with the "international community." The easiest way to do this would surely be to accommodate other nations' distinctively less friendly view of Israel, and their desire for the U.S. to pressure Israel into concessions for the sake...

The unmentionable odor of death Offends the September night -W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939" And so it does, once again. Three years ago, the terrorists attacked symbols of U.S. strength. Last week, they struck at the children of School No. 1 in Beslan. In between, the forces of barbarism, holding high the banner of jihad, have murdered innocents from Bali to Istanbul, from Jerusalem to Madrid, Falluja and beyond. Will the forces of civilization be found wanting in the struggle against terror? Perhaps. They were, after all, often found wanting in the last century. The 20th century spawned the twin...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: WILLIAM KRISTOLSUBJECT: CFR Report on IranOne has to hand it to the Council on Foreign Relations. Just as Iran has spent the last several months reconfirming why it was a charter member of the "axis of evil," a CFR taskforce, led by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former DCI Robert Gates, has concluded that the time is now ripe for a policy of "engagement" with Iran. This, in spite of the fact that: Iran continues to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency - along with the British, Germans and French - to stuff it...

Did al Qaeda and Iraq have a "collaborative relationship"?THE FINAL REPORT from the 9/11 Commission is scheduled to be released this Thursday. It will be a dense thicket of chronology, narrative, analysis, and proposals for reform. But one issue is likely to be prominent in the news coverage. In fact, it already has been. "9/11 Report Is Said to Dismiss Iraq-Qaeda Alliance." That was the headline over a July 12 New York Times report. We hope the Times is mistaken. It doesn't have a great track record on the issue, insisting (erroneously) that the commission's staff statement last month found...

How Dean Could Win . . . By William Kristol Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27 Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes. The Democratic presidential candidate has, alas, won the popular presidential vote three times in a row -- twice, admittedly, under the guidance of the skilled Bill Clinton, but most recently with the hapless Al Gore at the helm. And demographic trends (particularly the growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the Democrats going into 2004. But surely the fact that Bush is now a proven president running for reelection changes everything? Sort of. Bush is also likely to...

WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH first entered the White House, the conventional wisdom was that his inexperience and lack of vision in foreign policy would be compensated for by his wise and experienced cabinet. This may or may not have been a reasonable view at the time. Right now, however, it is clear that the most visionary and, yes, the wisest and most capable foreign policy-maker in the Bush administration is the president himself. Let's hope the team around him proves willing and capable of fulfilling his clear and historic grand strategy. This past week has been an extraordinary one for...

Bush has made it clear that the only exit strategy from Iraq is a victory strategy, with victory defined as "democracy." WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH first entered the White House, the conventional wisdom was that his inexperience and lack of vision in foreign policy would be compensated for by his wise and experienced cabinet. This may or may not have been a reasonable view at the time. Right now, however, it is clear that the most visionary and, yes, the wisest and most capable foreign policy-maker in the Bush administration is the president himself. Let's hope the team around him...

THE FRONT PAGE of the November 7 Washington Post says it all. The first headline, in large type: "Bush Urges Commitment to Transform Mideast." Below, in slightly smaller type: "Pentagon to Shrink Iraq Force." And below that: "Iraqi Security Crews Getting Less Training." It's a jarring juxtaposition. The president eloquently makes the case for a necessarily and admirably ambitious foreign policy. Yet his own administration's deeds threaten the achievement of his goals. In his fine speech to the National Endowment for Democracy last Thursday, the president made the case for "a forward strategy of freedom" in the Middle East. He...

By Jonathan Wright WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The hard-liners in and around the Bush administration may have lost some influence because of Washington's problems in Iraq but their views still count and they are not about to lose their jobs, analysts say. The hard-liners, or neoconservatives, who argued that Iraqis would welcome the U.S. invasion and embrace Washington's vision for their future, have had to postpone some of their more ambitious plans to reshape the Middle East in U.S. interests. Neoconservative columnist William Kristol, for example, said last month he would rather be talking about the "next regime-change candidates" instead of...

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N....

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N....

The case for the war in Iraq, with testimony from Bill Clinton. "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent...

Realities are sometimes unpleasant. Presidents are elected to confront such realities, and to deal with them. Evading them doesn't work. Pundits can afford to indulge in wishful thinking. Partisans can choose to preoccupy themselves with rock-throwing and blame-casting. But presidents have to govern. They have to deal with difficult realities — even if disingenuous liberals are capitalizing on them, and Democrats are distorting them. Perhaps the biggest such reality for President Bush is the disarray within his administration. That disarray has been highlighted by reactions to the leak in mid-July of the name of an undercover CIA employee — the...

Every Tuesday morning during the Iraq war Washington's opinion-makers and journalists knew there was only one place to be: at the "black-coffee briefings" held at the American Enterprise Institute, a fortress-like building on M and 17th streets, opposite the main offices of the National Geographic magazine. Technically, AEI is a thinktank. More than that, though, it is the headquarters of the intellectual movement known as neoconservatism. Its staff includes famous names such as Richard Perle, Irving Kristol and Newt Gingrich. The magazine Weekly Standard, the neocon bible, is published at the same address. Black coffee was not strictly compulsory at...

NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER Condoleezza Rice gave an important speech a couple of weeks ago, in which she called on the United States to make a "generational commitment" to bringing political and economic reform to the long-neglected Middle East--a commitment not unlike that which we made to rebuild Europe after the Second World War. It was a stirring speech, made all the more potent by the knowledge that it reflects the president's own vision. President Bush recognizes that, as is so often the case, American ideals and American interests converge in such a project, that a more democratic Middle East will...

The United States must be serious about its "generational commitment." NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER Condoleezza Rice gave an important speech a couple of weeks ago, in which she called on the United States to make a "generational commitment" to bringing political and economic reform to the long-neglected Middle East--a commitment not unlike that which we made to rebuild Europe after the Second World War. It was a stirring speech, made all the more potent by the knowledge that it reflects the president's own vision. President Bush recognizes that, as is so often the case, American ideals and American interests converge in...

THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION will be the biggest in at least a generation. Perhaps more. The choice between Bush and Dean/Kerry/Hillary (to list Democrats in the order of their chance to become the nominee) will be the starkest since Reagan-Mondale in 1984. More will be at stake in terms of the direction of the country than in any election since 1980, or perhaps since 1964. After the last decade's noticeably smaller elections, in terms both of starkness of choice and magnitude of consequence, 2004 will be the real thing. Let's start with foreign policy. The Bush administration's response to September...

THE GOOD NEWS is that we may turning the corner in the debate on post-war Iraq. The phony Niger/uranium scandal has run out of steam: There never really was enough oxygen there to sustain a firestorm in the first place, and the release of excerpts from October's National Intelligence Estimate has made the notion of systematic deceit and deception incredible. More important, and despite the continued killings of American soldiers, the situation on the ground in Iraq may well be turning. Aggressive military tactics may be breaking the back of the several thousand Baath die-hards, and we're probably closing in...

"George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago."-- Rep. Richard A. Gephardt(D-Mo.), July 22President Bush's 16 words on uranium and Africa in his January State of the Union address -- "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" -- have become famous, or infamous. But Dick Gephardt's 16 words, spoken in the course of a major foreign policy speech this past Tuesday, are the ones that matter.Bush's words, though probably a mistake, didn't change anything. The vote to authorize war had taken place months...