“(A)ny future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as Gen. MacArthur so delicately put it,” Robert Gates has just told the cadets at West Point. America would be …
President Obama is being hailed for toughness in his firing of Gen. McChrystal and brilliance in his replacing him as Afghan field commander with Gen. David Petraeus, who managed the George W. Bush “surge” in Iraq that saved this nation from an ignominious defeat. Herewith, a dissent. By firing a …
On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating the drum for preventive war on Iraq, lest we wake up to “a mushroom cloud over an American city,” The Wall Street Journal introduced an eminent voice to confirm that, yes, Saddam was driving straight for an atomic bomb. “This …
George W. Bush “betrayed us,” howled Al Gore. “He played on our fear. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure, dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9-11 ever happened.” Hearing it, Gore’s rant seemed slanderous and demagogic. For though U.S. policy since Clinton …
Clinton Rossiter begins his classic study of “The American Presidency” by describing the five constitutional functions of the chief executive, such as commander in chief. He goes on to identify five “non-constitutional functions,” beginning with chief of party. In this category, George W. Bush just set the gold standard. In …
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