The most disturbing aspect of the sorry spectacle of President Bush's last State Of The Union Address —his airbrushed rendering of his Mideast misadventure. Where it concerned the situation in Iraq the president's address wasn't any realistic accounting of the state of affairs. It was a delusional display of false premises and distorted fantasy.
If you want to see the Cold War as chapter behind us (and that is arguable), the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan was the last proxy war in the contest. As the new film "Charlie Wilson's War" points out, the support for "freedom fighters" in that conflict was ultimately bipartisan in nature. Bipartisan and, in the end, never truly interested in freedom for the Afghan people. With the help of Pakistani intelligence forces and funding from Sunni extremists in...
It was October 2004. I had come to this beautiful rural retreat in the Berkshires to hear Robert Bly and Coleman Barks conduct a seminar on “the poetry of the ecstatic.” Barks had become famous over the years for his translations of the Sufi mystic poet, Rumi and Robert Bly …well, he was Robert Bly. He had become just a bit more famous with his best seller “Iron John” back in the nineties, but that was only to augment...
One of the things Benazir Bhutto was arguing for, as she campaigned for the upcoming elections, was a rejection of that false choice between security and freedom. She wanted to see beyond the spectacle of political violence and terrorism. She wanted that for her own people, but just as importantly she wanted the world to see this. She had pledged to confront the violent extremists, not to abide by them and she planned to do this with something much...
In actuality Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran pose no threat to America or her interests with any form of arms capacity. What does stand as a challenge, and what is suddenly showing in rather stark light, is the frail logic of our policies. With regard to arms, with regard to the exercise of power, in the Mideast and around the world, what is being called into question in our confrontation with Iran is the generalized doctrine American exceptionalsim, "The Because...
It might be that this country has finally lost its capacity for outrage, has long since surrendered the idea of reproach or redress when lied to. We have become the Orwellian farm animals who find it too troubling to remember the promises once posted on the stable wall.
I’ve been trying to make sense out of the immigration debate, as it’s currently framed, for quite a while now. And, to borrow a phrase, “it’s hard work.” I’ve been on hand a couple of times when people I know have taken up the subject and suddenly taken on an extreme and angry demeanor. People who I just know cheat on their taxes (a little), who disregard highway speed limits (almost always), and who most certainly “inhaled” in college...
It’s going to be Halloween soon. And in the spirit of the season, The Republican National Committee has introduced a fun little interactive page on their website called “Scariest Democrat”. On the opening page, a picture of each of the Democratic candidates for president is shown. Each is captured with a menacing (or goofy) expression on their face. Along side each such image, they display the results of some sort of polling activity where they’ve actually been trying to...
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