Free Republic

When Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll crashed yet another military funeral (this time for fallen hero Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich) and said to one of the grieving relatives “I want you to know our government is against this war” (while she passed out her quite important business cards to all who would take one—during Communion no less), I wondered to which government the lady was referring. Certainly, it was not the US government. And why did she show up, uninvited, in the first place? One would think, out of any common courtesy, she might have called to ask permission...

Many people have good ideas, but few live to see those ideas define an era and even win a war. George Kennan did, even though he eventually backed away from the ramifications of his idea. In 1946, as the United States was trying to decide how to deal with the post-World War II world, Kennan weighed in with the famous “Long Telegram” from Moscow. The Soviet Union is “impervious to the logic of reason,” Kennan warned his superiors at the State Department, but “it is highly sensitive to the logic of force.” Thus began the policy of containment -- a...