11 Tuesday Nov 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
As one European participant noted at a conference on trans-Atlantic relations here sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, had significant stores of weapons of mass destruction been found in Iraq, Europeans who had opposed, or at least doubted the rationale for the war, would likely have been obliged to concede that the United States and its supporters had a point. There has been no such moral boost for the United States.
04 Tuesday Nov 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Bush administration put a huge bet down on the American economy, and the reported 7.2 percent real GDP growth rate in the past quarter is an indication the bet is paying off.
28 Tuesday Oct 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
When you mention a U.S. military alliance facing trouble deciding where to go from here and divided over such questions as what threats it faces and how to deal with them, the case that probably comes to mind is the NATO alliance and the bitter transatlantic division over what to do about Iraq. Would that our difficulties were as confined as that. Across a different ocean, our 50-year-old military alliance with South Korea is also facing trouble, this time over the question of what to do about North Korea’s apparent determination to acquire nuclear weapons.
21 Tuesday Oct 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
One big question on the minds of politically attuned Californians these days is what people in Washington make of the recall venture here – the process itself, the ugliness of the campaign, the landslide election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I tell them that the view from the east is mired in condescension. Which is too bad, because Californians have taught us some useful political lessons.
14 Tuesday Oct 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
One of my fellow dads angled up to me on the sidelines of our daughters’ soccer game two Saturdays ago, gave me a wry smile and asked whether I thought this leak scandal had legs.
07 Tuesday Oct 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The interim report issued last week by David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group [ISG] looking into Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, ought to dispel all doubt on the central point leading to the decision to go to war: The Saddam regime belonged in the category of those uniquely dangerous to peace and stability. The security concerns on which this war of prevention were based were all too real.
30 Tuesday Sep 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
To judge by my own reaction, perceptions are lagging reality a bit when it comes to the former Yugoslavia. The beautiful lakeside town of Ohrid, Macedonia, was the scene this weekend of a conference bringing together leading officials from the Balkans. The years of upheaval in the former Yugoslavia, all agree, are past. The horrible, bloody and uncertain decade of the 1990s is over. The lives and the opportunity for progress lost are to be mourned. But it is time to move forward, and that was the agenda at Ohrid.
23 Tuesday Sep 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
When I first met Wes Clark at a small Washington dinner party when he was supreme allied commander in Europe, I quickly concluded that he had a bright political future if he was inclined to pursue it. That he might well be so inclined once his military career came to a close was an impression he did little to dispel. In addition to an obvious intelligence and the demeanor of complete self-assurance that is common in the top ranks of the military, he spoke about foreign policy and the importance of the spread of freedom in neo-Reaganite terms. This was especially important to me at the time, coming as it did as some of us were working on making the case for the enlargement of NATO to the territory of the former Warsaw Pact [and since, of the former Soviet Union itself].
16 Tuesday Sep 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Democrats and allied pundits more or less universally panned President Bush’s speech on Iraq from a week ago Sunday. The more responsible voices of opposition welcomed Mr. Bush’s commitment to doing whatever is necessary to ensure that postwar Iraq is a success, taking the $87 billion price tag as occasion to change the subject to Mr. Bush’s tax cut and the ballooning federal budget deficit. This is honest partisan criticism – and a point to which we will return.
09 Tuesday Sep 2003
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Post
In politics, as one of my favorite adages holds, you begin where you are. It is folly to act out of a wish that the past can be undone. Likewise, is it folly to imagine you can skip ahead to the future without the bother of getting there from the here-and-now. Those who fail to appreciate either aspect of beginning where you are usually find themselves vexed by those who get it.
Tod Lindberg 