15 Tuesday Jan 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Not long after September 11, Fareed Zakaria published in Newsweek a lengthy essay, subsequently much praised and rightly so, called “Why They Hate Us.” I would like to devote my space this week to a brief survey of the subject, “And Why the Others Have Mixed Feelings.”
08 Tuesday Jan 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
As President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle square off over taxes, the federal budget surplus and the state of the economy, it’s interesting to see how September 11 has reframed the context of our political disputes.
01 Tuesday Jan 2002
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The year came to an end substantially closer to our fondest wishes than to our worst fears, and there’s much to be grateful for in that. But this is no time to start slipping back into a Sept. 10 frame of mind. For all Americans, from the president on down, the proper New Year’s resolution this year is: Be resolute.
31 Monday Dec 2001
Posted in Weekly Standard
Al Qaeda as an NGO.
View this article at The Weekly Standard
President Bush has described the struggle against terrorism in which we are engaged as the first war of the twenty-first century. Presumably he means more by that designation than a nod to the calendar. He is also referring to a new kind of war. But what kind? Well, the novelty is that the United States finds itself at war for the first time against a non-governmental organization.
Such conflicts are not entirely without precedent. Governments have often fought guerrilla movements bent on their overthrow, for example. And history also offers examples of conflicts in which military force has been systematically deployed against non-state actors, for example in the suppression of piracy and the slave trade, or, more recently, in the “war” against drug trafficking. But still, the current war against terrorism is different.
25 Tuesday Dec 2001
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
I think Washington, the city of politics, can use all the inspiration it can get. The city is, necessarily, driven by the clash of monumental ambitions, the spirit of “what have you done for me lately?” and the sense of one’s fellow human beings here (foe and friend alike) as means to an end. This is, for better or worse, the nature of politics, and it is necessarily in many respects a nasty business. But it is also, in many cases, gratuitously nasty, and to my mind anything that might help to check this tendency should be welcomed. I have sometimes found myself reflecting on the application to life here of Jesus’ parable of the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), and the Christmas season seems an especially good time to explore it.
18 Tuesday Dec 2001
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
There really is no excuse for the Senate’s unwillingness to schedule a floor vote on the confirmation of Eugene Scalia as solicitor in the Labor Department. Everyone agrees he is a highly capable lawyer. Therefore, one looks to the partisan politics of the matter to explain the delay. But one should not stop by looking there. These confirmation fights are also an indication of an ongoing struggle for power between the executive and legislative branches of the government.
11 Tuesday Dec 2001
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
LONDON. – The question on this side of the pond boils down to this: What is Tony Blair getting out of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States?
04 Tuesday Dec 2001
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Notwithstanding a torrent of criticism in what amounts to the first major divide in elite opinion since September 11, a large majority of Americans supports the Bush administration’s plans to subject certain non-U.S. citizens linked to terrorism to trial before military commissions, rather than in the U.S. court system or before international tribunals. Likewise, there is little public discontent so far over the hundreds of persons detained on visa and other violations since the attacks, persons whom law-enforcement authorities say they are unable to clear of connections to aspiring terror networks operating in the United States.
27 Tuesday Nov 2001
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Post
Like most people who write about Washington politics, I operate from a bifurcated point of view whose components are A) a set of positions I favor on a variety of issues and B) a curiosity about how the Washington animal works. One must be vigilant against allowing the former to interfere with one’s investigations into the latter. But, of course, this is not an easy thing.
20 Tuesday Nov 2001
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
I came to Washington in 1985 with the expectation that I was going to spend my professional career fighting the Cold War (ideas division, that is). This was just fine with me. I thought the difference between a democratic, free-market system in which civil, political and human rights were protected, on one hand, and, on the other, the expansionist totalitarianism of the Soviet Union was something worth devoting a career to.
Tod Lindberg 