War and Foreign Policy

Ever since World War II, the traditional American foreign policy of nonintervention in foreign affairs has had a bad press. 

The rise in oil prices provoked a frenzy of opportunistic posturing by politicians of both parties. Yet neither Clinton nor Dole will acknowledge the real reasons for sustained high prices—taxes and environmental regulations designed to keep prices high—or the reason for the newest price rise itself. Both are complicit in their genesis, and both are conspiring to keep gas prices high and prevent American consumers from getting relief

The death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in a Balkans plane crash exposed the real reason President Clinton sent American troops to Bosnia: to make the world safe for corporate welfare.

Defenders of the free market are often stigmatized as uncritical apologists for big business. Nothing could be further from the truth, as readers of this book will at once discover.

As I write these lines, an American soldier, no doubt the first of many to come, has been killed while taking part in the American "peacekeeping" mission in Bosnia. Many in Congress, as well as most of the Republican candidates for President, 

Stuff those corks back in the champagne bottles. The Republican leadership in Congress can't celebrate the New Year until it breaks silence on the Mexican bailout. This is a debacle that makes subsidies for midnight basketball seem sensible.

John T. Flynn is best known today as a once-liberal columnist for the New Republic who became a bitter enemy of Franklin Roosevelt and a stalwart of the Old Right. 

"Peace on Earth" should be more than a holiday cliché. The costs of war and its perpetual threat are immense, and threaten freedom and civilization itself. Even with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. finds itself in an endless series of military squabbles, including Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti, with prospects for future involvement in Korea, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda.

Gather round, taxpayers! This is the moment you've been waiting for! Time to calculate your Peace Dividend! Now that our archenemy, the Soviet Union, is disintegrating into throat-lozenge-sized independent republics with names like "Huzzubegonia," whose primary military activity is knocking over statues of Lenin, we don't need a Defense Department anymore. This means that you, the taxpayers, MAY ALREADY HAVE WON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS! SO DON'T THROW AWAY THIS NEWSLETTER, because we are ABOUT TO TELL YOU THE SIZE OF YOUR PEACE DIVIDEND! Get ready! Better lean close to the page so you won't miss it! That's it—just a little closer... here it comes...

Amidst the near-universal hoopla for President Bush's massive intervention into the Arabian Peninsula, a few sober observers have pointed out the curious lack of clarity in Mr. Bush's strategic objective: is it to defend Saudi Arabia (and is that kingdom really under attack?); to kick Iraq out of Kuwait; to restore what Bush has oddly referred to as the "legitimate government" of Kuwait (made "legitimate" by what process?); to dispose and/or murder Saddam Hussein (and to replace him with whom or what?); or to carpet-bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age?