by Patrick J. Buchanan

The 50th birthday of the European Union, born in Rome in March 1957 as the European Economic Community or Common Market – of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg – was a pallid affair.

Understandably so. For though the EU has expanded to embrace 27 nations and boasts an economy equal to that of the United States, it is like a man well into middle age whose career accomplishments are behind him.

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“Whatever happens in Iraq, retreat from the world is not an option,” wrote Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens last weekend.

Why not? Because a world map highlighting those regions where the West’s vital resources are located would exactly overlap a map highlighting those regions where state power is crumbling, disease and poverty are pandemic and violence rules.

“The implication of this is obvious,” says Stephens.

“We can proudly declare ourselves isolationists, resolve to eschew ‘imperialist adventures,’ decry liberal interventionists such as Britain’s Tony Blair and damn the neoconservatives around U.S. President George W. Bush. But, one way or another, the West cannot avoid getting involved. On this, moral impulse and hard-headed interests are as one.”

by Patrick J. Buchanan

If the Senate and House judiciary committees issue subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House aides to testify to their roles in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys, President Bush should defy the subpoenas. He should accept the contempt citations and fight it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Indeed, he has a duty to do so. For Bush is today the custodian of an office that is the subject of assault by a partisan and hostile Congress.

by Patrick J. Buchanan

If George W. Bush launches a pre-emptive war on Iran, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bear full moral responsibility for that war.

For it was Pelosi who quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran.

Pelosi’s capitulation came in the Appropriations Committee.

What went down, and why?

“Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy,” wrote ghe Associated Press’ David Espo and Matthew Lead.

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” said Leon Trotsky. And that is surely true of the culture war. Before an editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not only endorsed presidential policy by which active homosexuals are discharged from the service, he declared that policy to be right morally. “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immorality. I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.” Equating homosexual sex with adultery, Pace added, “(I)f we find out so-and-so is sleeping with somebody else’s wife,” we do not tolerate it. As Pace was supporting policy, why did he find himself in a Beltway firefight? The responses to Pace’s moral assertions are indicative of the state of play, the correlation of forces, in America’s culture war…

by Patrick J. Buchanan

In the calendar of the French Revolution, Thermidor was the second month of summer. On 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794), Robespierre was guillotined and the Reign of Terror came to an end. Thermidor has thus come to mean the turning point in a revolution, when the fever passes on and the fury abates. Trotsky called Stalin’s consolidation of power “Soviet Thermidor.” And it would appear Thermidor has come to the world democratic revolution of George W. Bush. In the catechism of the Bush Revolution, liberty is indivisible. If the whole world is not free, America’s freedom is not secure, and we must thus use American power in perpetuity to liberate mankind and, as Bush declared in his second Inaugural, “end tyranny on earth.” No more utopian ambition has ever been declared by an American president. In 2006, however, reality intruded…

by Patrick J. Buchanan

The conviction of Scooter Libby on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice is first of all a human tragedy. A man who served his country at the highest level, who sat in every morning at the senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, has been dishonored and disgraced, and will be disbarred. Unless his conviction is overturned or he is pardoned, Libby will go to prison. His life will end with an obituary that declares in its headline and lead paragraph that he was a convicted Dick Cheney aide. Yet, this was a narrow case. Libby’s convictions call to mind Martha Stewart’s, who went to prison for lying to investigators about a crime she did not commit. Libby has been convicted of lying about the outing of a CIA classified officer, a crime for which no one has been indicted….

by Patrick J. Buchanan
- American Conservative Magazine

If Americans sickened by the carnage of Iraq wish to stop an even more disastrous war on Iran, they had best get cracking. For the “On-to-Baghdad!” boys are back, warning us that the only way to prevent an atom bomb from being detonated in an American city is to attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. And the forces needed to execute an attack are moving into place. Army Gen. John Abizaid has been replaced as CENTCOM commander by Adm. “Fox” Fallon, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, who knows little about counterinsurgency but a lot about co-ordinating air strikes. The carrier group Stennis is headed for the Gulf to join the Eisenhower. Minesweepers are headed for the Strait of Hormuz…

by Patrick J. Buchanan – March 6, 2007

Fifty years ago this October, Americans were jolted by the news that Moscow, one year after drowning the Hungarian Revolution in blood, had put an 80-pound satellite into Earth orbit.
In December, the U.S. Navy tried to replicate the feat. Vanguard got four feet off the ground and exploded, incinerating its three-pound payload. America was humiliated. Khrushchev was Man of the Year. Some of us yet recall the Vanguard newsreels and the humiliating laughter. Stunned, America went to work to improve education in math and science, and succeeded. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of high school seniors began to rise, reaching a high in 1964. However, test scores for high-school students have been falling now for 40 years. In 1984, the Reagan administration issued “A Nation at Risk,” documenting the deterioration of American public education…

by Patrick J. Buchanan – March 2, 2007

Six years after Donald Rumsfeld agreed to a second tour of duty as secretary of defense, to rebuild the military, Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker told Congress his Army “will break” if not relieved of the present burdens. Colin Powell says the Army is “almost broken.” This week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there is a significant risk that the United States today may be unable to respond quickly and fully to another crisis should it arise. Howls erupted across the spectrum for more billions for more men for the Army and Marine Corps. What these revelations ought to trigger, however, are hard questions of our leaders and fresh thinking among our elites about the limits of American power and the extent of American commitments…