Vietnam’s been on my mind recently, for obvious reasons. I’ve been thinking and writing so much about it lately that I’ve only just gotten around to reading this article by Stephen J. Morris, which appeared in the Op-Ed page of … Continue reading →
I think my favorite quotation about war is one attributed to Trotsky: You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. It sums up the idea that you can run, but you can’t hide–sooner or later, … Continue reading →
In the course of writing my most recent Vietnam post, I found myself rereading the transcript of the 1971 Dick Cavett Show debate between John Kerry and John O’Neill. I couldn’t help noticing that Kerry does something quite familiar during … Continue reading →
(For earlier pieces in the series, see the right sidebar under “A mind is a difficult thing to change.”) Introduction No, this isn’t the long-promised Part 4C, the post in the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series … Continue reading →
Since we’ve been talking so much recently about Vietnam, this article, entitled “Why Go Now,” in the travel section of Sunday’s NY Times, caught my eye. (By the way, the title of my piece, for those of you too young … Continue reading →
[Previous posts in the series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Interlude Part 4A] There were two widely-circulated and iconographic photographs taken during the Vietnam War. If you were around then, I can almost guarantee that you saw them, and … Continue reading →
(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Interlude) PREFACE Part 4 has been a long time coming. The article itself is long, too–so long that I finally decided it would be best to divide it into segments, so readers might have … Continue reading →
Nuclear deterrence appears to have “worked” during the Cold War to prevent the conflagration most of us who grew up in those times feared and half-expected might happen. If deterrence did work, it was because both the US and the … Continue reading →
I’m getting very tired of the Ward Churchill story, but it retains a certain mesmerizing slow-motion train wreck fascination as his modus operendi becomes more clear. This isn’t about academic freedom anymore; it’s about an academic con artist, as I … Continue reading →
Belmont Club, by way of The American Future, offers the following Guardian quote. : The [Iraq] war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have … Continue reading →
When I turned on the news today, first thing I heard was that there had been another car-bombing of a police station in Iraq, with the death of 15 brave policemen. It seems the bomber got past the guard at … Continue reading →
It’s appeared suddenly on a number of blogs: the well-known Andrew Sullivan’s and the obscure (although not as obscure as me!) Wiserblog. And what is it, you ask? It’s a private e-mail attributed to WSJ journalist Farnaz Fassihi and being … Continue reading →