With respect, George Will is wrong about Afghanistan

The time was the mid-60s in Saigon, in many ways the nadir of the American effort in Vietnam, in its way worse than the Embassy rooftop depaftures of 1975. Washington had staged a military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem, the only anti-Communist leader with credentials, then had him murdered. There was a revolving door […]

China’s overlooked role in the not-so-Great Game

It’s become the cliché of clichés that Washington’s effort to stem the return of jihadists to power in Afghanistan and their seizing power in nuclear-armed neighboring Pakistan is The New Great Game. That is, it is successor to the extended and complex struggle between the Russian and British Empires in Central and South Asia throughout […]

Foreign policy playground: Naive, nightmarish, consequential

It comes as a shock for those of us who believed the U.S. for decades has suffered mightily from the hubris and otherworldliness of the U.S. professional diplomatic corps to see what is happening now. The Obama Administration, in a fury to change what it perceives to be, particularly, the style and substance of the […]

What are small countries like the U.S. to the ‘People’s Republic of the World’?

Before the 20th century, the history of the world was taught in the West as a single global story. The key concepts in the Western studies of history were “developed” and “underdeveloped” (countries). The West was mostly developed and the world outside the West mostly underdeveloped. The developed countries, where slavery was only a historic […]

Continuing crisis: Politically backward nations with advanced weapons

Continuing crisis: Politically backward nations with advanced weapons

In a democratic country, everyone may have his or her own vision of the country’s political course after the election. Under Lenin, who died (1924) and was buried grandly, there had been no election, since elections are “tricks of bourgeois propaganda.” It was assumed that the “people” had considered Lenin’s power — their power. However, […]

Unreported: There is evidence that marijuana use can trigger violence by schizophrenics

The following is based on an article by Cliff Kincaid for Accuracy in Media. The liberal media have gone from blaming conservatives for the Arizona shootings to praising President Obama’s speech, in which he said nobody knows why the massacre happened. The media called the speech consoling and inspirational. “Obama’s speech likely bound for history […]