The Washington Times

No, the U.N. General Assembly summit this month didn’t produce nearly as much agreement on reform as the world body needs. On the other hand, the World Summit Outcome document does have one big item in its favor.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Times

Might as well announce now that New Orleans will be the site of the 2008 Republican Convention. I say this for the same reason that Capt. Ramius, the fictional Soviet skipper in “The Hunt for Red October,” sent a letter to his bigshot pal in the Kremlin announcing his intention to defect to the United States and turn his state-of-the-art ballistic-missile submarine over to the Americans: Ramius wanted to make sure that the officers who were in on the plan with him understood there was no going back.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Times

Would anybody any longer say, as Winston Churchill famously did, that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried”? Churchill was mounting a defense of democracy in the context of his broader view of the irreducible difficulty of politics, an undertaking fundamentally doomed in its ambition to fulfill people’s desire for happiness or justice.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Times

Putting aside, for the moment only, which individuals are guilty of malfeasance in office, it is undeniable that the system America established for disaster relief failed miserably last week – and thousands of Americans died because of it.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Times

Michael Barone’s provocative thesis in his U.S. News column two weeks ago, based on a reading of the most recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey of public opinion from Muslim countries (among others), is that the United States is making progress in turning people away from support for terrorism. “George W. Bush has proclaimed that we are working to build democracy in Iraq not just for Iraqis but in order to advance freedom and defeat fanatical Islamist terrorism around the world,” he writes. “Now comes the Pew Global Attitudes Project’s recent survey of opinion in six Muslim countries to tell us that progress is being made in achieving that goal. Minds are being changed and in the right direction.” Is that really what’s going on, and if so, why? I’d certainly be delighted if it’s true. But I’m not sure we’re there yet.

Read the rest of this entry »