Free Republic

April 25, 2004 -- Colossus: The Price of America's Empire by Niall Ferguson, Penguin Press, 366 pages, $25.95 JOHN Kerry makes the case that the present administration has unduly alienated our allies - leaving us alone, isolated and increasingly frustrated in trying to do too much overseas with too few resources. Should we Americans rightly be worried about similar charges from allies and enemies alike of unilateralism, preemption and hegemony? Not to worry, Niall Ferguson assures us in his latest reflection on the state of the world. The problem of failed states, global terrorism and European fury abroad has nothing...

Many in today's political and social arenas view the Constitution as a "living document" with the need to change/reinterpret it's worded meaning to fit with today's modernistic societal trends and fashion. I strongly oppose and disagree with this flawed view...

The murder of four American civilian contractors in Fallujah, and then the instant defilement of their corpses, is conspicuously barbarous. So is the maltreatment of hostages, and the threat to burn them alive. Barbarous but not surprising: people who have been brutalised as thoroughly as Iraqis commit brutalities as though that were normal. Context determines behaviour. For as long as anyone can remember, Iraq has been in the hands of some thug whose will is the only law. No institutions of any kind have ever existed to mediate among interests. To protect themselves, people can only turn to those of...

There is a global war on terrorism that is being fought in many countries throughout the world. The enemies of peace, freedom, and civilization have been fighting this war, unhindered until very recently, for decades. It took us from November of 1979 to September of 2001, an astonishing 21 years and 11 months, to commit ourselves to treating the terrorism on the US as a war on our country and our way of life. In November of 1979 a revolution swept across Iran, resulting in the overthrow of the US backed Shah and the beginning of the radical Islamist movement’s...

Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain and Senator [Esward] Kennedy's father, was awed by the strength of the Nazi military machine. Like most Americans in 1938, he believed the world's democracies had to co-exist with the Nazis. "The horns of the dilemma are economic chaos and war and any step to prevent either of these is worthwhile taking," Joseph Kennedy was quoted as saying at the time. He further angered the British and many Americans by predicting in a newspaper interview, which he thought was mostly off the record, that democracy was finished in Britain and perhaps...

White House spokesman Scott McClellan says the U.S. remains opposed to exiling or killing PA Chairman Arafat (Reuters)

Running the Planet: Not just a job, but an (endless) adventure Many potential new wars are in play among the neoimperialist foreign policy glitterati, still flying high after the Iraq invasion. It wasn't an obvious and immediate national or international tragedy—after all, the world didn't end, did it? No WMDs were unleashed on our troops or American cities. Because, well, there weren't any, even though the danger (but not, mind you, the "imminent" danger!) they posed was the major excuse for the war in the first place. But, hey, look what it did to Qaddafi, the essential post hoc justification...

It is being claimed, ever more widely, that neocon policies are determined by the advantages they bring, manifest or putative, to the State of Israel. Patrick Buchanan, in the current American Conservative, believes this ardently, while the most quoted advocates of neocon militancy, Richard Perle and David Frum, go further than merely to deny that neoconservatism is an Israel First world view. They insist that criticism of neocon policies is, at heart, anti-Semitic. Richard Perle, co-author with Frum of The End of Evil, old acquaintances remember as being for many years on the public scene as an adamant opponent of...

MOUNT PLEASANT, South Carolina When Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, resigned last week, there must have been satisfied smirks at the offices of Fox News. After visiting the United States last year, Dyke had said that he was shocked by "the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriotism." He warned the British media: "In the area of impartiality, as in many other areas, we must ensure we don't become Americanized." . The irony will not be lost on the people at Fox News that Dyke had to step down because the BBC was found to be telling untruths...