Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, “The United States will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program?
William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free. tors
Did Hitler’s crimes justify the Allies’ terror-bombing of Germany?
Indeed they did, answers Christopher Hitchens in his Newsweek response to my new book, “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War“: “The stark evidence of the Final Solution has ever since been enough to dispel most doubts about, say, the wisdom or morality of carpet-bombing German cities.”
Atheist, Trotskyite and newborn neocon, Hitchens embraces the morality of lex talionis: an eye for an eye. If Germans murdered women and children, the British were morally justified in killing German women and children.
NEWSWEEK’s Tammy Haddad catches up with Pat Buchanan to discuss this week’s NEWSWEEK cover story on appeasement and Christopher Hitchens’ review of his new book.
So asks Newsweek’s cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all.
Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill’s career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power.
That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book “Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War” seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book “stinks.”
The trial is before a court with the Orwellian title of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The accused are Maclean’s magazine and author Mark Steyn. The crime: In mocking and biting tones, they wrote that Islam threatens Western values.
Had Steyn written that, given the Crusades, colonial atrocities in Africa and the slave trade, Christianity had been on balance a curse, he would not be in the dock. In the United States, these charges would have been tossed out by any federal judge, who would have admonished the plaintiffs that, here in America, we have a First Amendment.
By all appearances, Lindsey Graham’s Democratic challenger Bob Conley is a godsend for real conservatives. I’ve been doing some research on Conley this afternoon, and even came across The State’s Brad Warthen’s blog, in which he warned that Conley was even more of a “nativist” than Buddy Witherspoon (my only problem with Witherspoon was his neoconnish “I won’t cut and run” language. Conley is antiwar.) Of course, this accusation puts Conley in good company, with the likes of Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, etc. “Nativism,” like “isolationism,” “xenophobia” and sometimes “racism” are tactical buzzwords designed to put a negative spin on perfectly normal, patriotic, conservative positions.
In attacking my book “Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World,” Victor Davis Hanson, the court historian of the neoconservatives, charges me with “rewriting … facts” and showing “ingratitude” to American and British soldiers who fought World Wars I and II.
Both charges are false, and transparently so.
Hanson cites not a single fact I got wrong and ignores the fact that the book is dedicated to my mother’s four brothers who fought in World War II. Moreover, the book begins by celebrating the greatness of the British nation and heroism of its soldier-sons.
“Both Houses should pass a joint resolution declaring that no appropriated funds may be used for any preemptive U.S. air strikes on Iran — unless and until Congress has authorized such acts of war. If we are headed for war with Iran, it should be the collective judgment of all the nation’s elected leadership, and not done on the whim of a lame-duck president unsure about his place in history,” says Pat Buchanan….”
On Tuesday June 10, a group of citizens associated with 35 different organizations came together in a coalition to prove just how easy it would be for President Bush to talk to Iran. It’s as simple as picking up the phone.
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. … I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Thus did Joe Biden famously describe his rival for the nomination, Barack Obama, to the The New York Observer, a year ago.
Biden, however, thought Obama might not be able to win the fall election, as he is “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate. … I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.”
A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.
by Justin Raimondo
American Conservative Magazine
John McCain’s reputation as a maverick is no recent contrivance. The senator first captured the media spotlight in September 1983, not long after he’d been elected to his first term in the House, when he voted against President Reagan’s decision to put American troops in Lebanon as part of a multinational “peacekeeping” force. One of 27 Republicans to break with the White House, the freshman McCain made a floor speech that reads as if it might have been written yesterday—by Ron Paul:
On June 8, 1967, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was suddenly and brutally attacked on the high seas in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship. We published this article last year, but feel it’s important to post it again on the anniversary the attack where 34 Americans were slaughtered and 174 wounded.
Victims of the Israeli attack being taken ashore.
USS Liberty — New Revelations in Attack on American Spy Ship By John Crewdson – The Chicago Tribune
By Thalif Deen at the United Nations
The Sunday Times Online
NEW YORK – It’s an axiom in American politics that if you publicly criticize Israel or openly support the Palestinians, you are politically doomed either way. And this is more so in a presidential election year, where all candidates aspire to be more pro-Israeli than all of the inhabitants of Israel put together.
Every US politician running for office has only one agenda cast in boulders: the survival of the state of Israel, irrespective of whether Israel is right or wrong, mostly wrong. All other foreign policy issues — ranging from Cuba to Sudan — are way down the list. Unless, they directly or indirectly “threaten” the state of Israel.
Johnny Depp, Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern, Jimmy Buffett
From Oscar-wining director Alex Gibney and producer Graydon Carter comes a probing look into the uncanny life of national treasure and gonzo journalism inventor Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. A fast moving, wildly entertaining documentary with an iconic soundtrack, the film addresses the major touchstones in Thompson’s life-his intense and ill fated relationship with the Hell’s Angels, his near-successful bid for the office of sheriff in Aspen in 1970, the notorious story behind the landmark Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his deep involvement in Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, and much more. Narrated by Johnny Depp
by Patrick J. Buchanan
The American Conservative Magazine
On reading George W. Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”
With the Iraq War entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 to 20 million illegal aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him: “I’m troubled by isolationism and protectionism … [and] another ‘ism,’ and that’s nativism. And that’s what happened throughout our history. And probably the most grim reminder of what can happen to America during periods of isolationism and protectionism is what happened in the late—in the ’30s, when we had this America First policy and Smoot-Hawley. And look where it got us.”
On May 15, the White House Moron, in a war-planning visit to Israel, justified the naked aggression he and Olmert are planning against Iran as the only alternative to “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
But the White House Moron has the roles reversed. It is not Iran that is threatening war. It is Bush. It is not Bush who is appeasing. It is Iran.
Iran has not responded in kind to any of Bush’s warlike moves and provocations. Iran has not sunk a single one of our sitting-duck ships and has not given the Iraqi insurgents any weapons that would easily turn the tide of war against the US.
“Columnists like Pat Buchanan – whose predictions have not only been absolutely right concerning Iraq, but on issues like illegal immigration and NAFTA – are never given the same prominence or paid as handsomely as men like Kristol or Friedman, whose predictions have never come to fruition and couldn’t have been more wrong about the same issues. If opinion makers were judged by the same standards as most American workers – by their job performance – columnists like Kristol and Friedman, would have been fired, disgraced and discredited – not given promotions…..”
When President Bush, before the Knesset, used the word “appeasement” to label those who would negotiate with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he invoked the most powerful analogy in any debate over war and peace.
No man wishes to be regarded as an “appeaser.”
But, as this writer has discovered since my book “Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World” was launched Memorial Day, there is a deep well of ignorance about what happened that September, 70 years ago.
A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.
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