Free Republic

The following is a conclusion of a long article by a philosopher Lee Harris where he is deconstructing a frequently heard lately charge of "blowback" to US actions in the world (i.e. that 9/11 was a "blowback" for the United States' foreign policy toward the Muslim world over the past half century or so, going back to the CIA engineered coup in 1953 that ousted Iranian leader Mossadegh, and that  "we had it coming" as a response to "American imperialism") ...This conclusion, however, poses a radical dilemma. A libertarian can plausibly argue that politicians should not interfere with domestic affairs,...

The people fuming that President Bush engineered the overthrow of Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide are pretty much the same people who cheerfully would have charged Dubya with imperialistic meddling had he sent in the Marines a week ago. The White House should pay little attention to them, or indeed to Aristide himself, kvetching away in his safe haven. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Aristide did in fact get hustled aboard a plane at the point of American guns. He should only thank his lucky stars. Else he would be chuck roast today. There was, flatly, no salvaging the...

Columbia's conference on U.S. imperialism in the 21st century this Friday, so soon after the deadly suicide bombings in Turkey, shows how willful ignorance is rotting the core of this University's intellectual life. The now almost-daily terrorist attacks around the world raise a number of questions. Were there cultural reasons for the terrorist bombings that spilled the blood of innocent Turks in Istanbul? Are there other cultural processes at work when the Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq declares that only direct democracy is acceptable in setting up a new Iraqi government? One would hope that the Middle East and Asian...

In our conversations about Iraq the dreaded I-word keeps barging its way in unwanted, like the drunken uncle at a wedding. Every time we think we have decisively smacked it down it just pops up again somewhere else, like [hold on tight, I'm going to switch similes here] one of the frogs in that frog-and-mallet fairground game. This thing we are trying to do in Iraq — isn't it really...I mean, doesn't it amount to...shouldn't we just say it frankly...IMPERIALISM? Well, maybe we have embarked on an imperial adventure, and maybe we haven't. If we have, though, we are in...

The question of the moment is not "When will the MET-Alpha team find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" (we've all long ago exhaled on that one), but rather "When will the neo-imperialist intellectuals go into hiding?" George W. Bush may be mildly vexed over the failure thus far to unearth vats of VX and anthrax. But Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol, and the other strategic brains behind the operation should be absolutely mortified over the past few weeks of Iraq's unraveling and America's postwar failure to secure and consolidate its dazzling military victory. The president, after all, can deal...

From Nazi Germany to Haiti, the lessons of regime change are clear Iraq need not be a disaster. Its long-term future could be reasonably stable, secure and prosperous. The conditions for success are no secret. We have been here before several times. Iraq is not the first country to undergo regime change in the past few years. Some have been, and remain, appalling failures. Others have been at least partial successes. The horrific murder of the six British military policemen on Tuesday, after the killing of many more American servicemen in recent weeks, does not mean certain failure. The security...

Indoctrination at CornellBy Joe SabiaFrontPageMagazine.com | June 23, 2003 Cornell University’s professors and researchers are becoming increasingly brazen in their ideological war against President George W. Bush.  During the last several weeks, a professor in the Department of Asian Studies has developed and advertised a new course on President Bush’s attempt to create “an imperial empire.”  At the same time, a university-funded Latino research center is proudly selling propaganda posters that compare President Bush to former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.Asian Studies Professor Brett de Bary is promoting a course that he says will be “team-taught” by the Cornell Forum for...

When asked upon leaving the Constitutional Convention what kind of government he and his fellow delegates had delivered to the American people, Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have answered, "a republic, if you can keep it." Franklin's famous reply echoed a sentiment shared by most of the other founders, whose view of the world was informed by the cautionary history of ancient Rome, a republic that degenerated over time into a despotic, all-powerful empire. The founders visualized a different scenario for the fledgling United States of America; it would be and remain a true republic - a representative democracy -...