With President George W Bush below 30% approval rate in national opinion polls and the Republican Party facing the prospect of significant, and maybe colossal, losses in Congress in the fall, the currency of the GOP has hardly been lower in living memory. This is as it should be because the party is not merely [...]
Author Archive for N J Barnes
Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme
Calvin Trillin
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Hardcover
128 pages
When it Comes to Iraq, Honesty is the Best Policy
Published by March 30th, 2008 in Iraq, Middle East and War. 0 CommentsThe ongoing fighting in Basra and Baghdad between forces of the Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the militia of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr should explode the comfortable notion held by proponents of the occupation in Iraq that the so-called “surge” of American troops was primarily responsible for the quelling of [...]
One of the more dire warnings repeated endlessly by George W Bush and other war supporters is that if the United States withdraws, al-Qaida will gain a safe haven in Iraq. It should not surprise us to hear this nonsense from Bush himself; I mean the man will say almost anything to justify his policies in Iraq –even something [...]
Bush Fear Mongering Cowes Democrats - Old News
Published by August 4th, 2007 in Politics. 0 CommentsI suppose we should be grateful that the bill just passed by Congress to allow the Bush administration expanded authority, for unsupervised snooping on communications between suspected terrorists abroad that are routed through the United States, has a shelf life of only six months. Maybe that will be long enough for Congressional Democrats to grow [...]
The Three Pillars of Support for Bush’s Iraq War
Published by July 29th, 2007 in Iraq and Miscellaneous. 0 CommentsDespite mounting opposition in Congress, the media and in the country at large to his policy in Iraq, George W Bush appears more, rather than less, confident that he will be able to resist calls for a significant change in direction. His confidence is not misplaced. Why is that?
The answer is that he has the [...]
A story in the Sunday New York Times highlights the absurdity, not to mention immorality, of the Bush administration’s detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Ahktar Qassim Basit and a group of four other Muslim men who are ethnic Uighurs from western China were held in Guantanmo detention for four years, after being handed [...]
I am a huge fan of the United States Marine Corps and its history of exemplary service to this nation. That said I have to say I’m not sorry that the first Marine Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, will not be reappointed to a second term as the president’s top [...]
I was listening to NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’ recently when they played an excerpt from the most recent debate of GOP presidential hopefuls. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was saying that he could not imagine pursuing the war on terror and leaving Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq. It struck me that Mr Giuliani doesn’t have [...]
When General David Petraeus reports to Congress and the American people in the fall he will, no doubt, put his best face on the short-term results of the increase of US combat forces in Iraq that has come to be known as the “surge”. He will fail.
He will report some successes. Yes, some neighbourhoods in [...]
Can We Do Counterinsurgency?
Published by May 21st, 2007 in Iraq, Miscellaneous and al Qaeda. 0 CommentsThe United States and NATO campaign in Afghanistan to support the democratic government of Afghanistan and to defeat the al-Qaida/Taliban alliance has always represented something of a balancing act. The challenge is to accomplish these critical and difficult tasks without alienating a population that has always been suspicious of and resistant to anything they perceive [...]
