Russia’s invasion of Georgia looks like it might be played out, finally. War kills a lot of people for no particularly good reason, and this one is no different. Russia is certainly playing the role of the bad guy in this conflict, as well they should. Georgia may have violated an old [...]

President Bush is struggling to find an acceptable compromise position on global warming. For years, he has said that the time wasn’t right to act on global warming. He rejected the Kyoto Protocol, dismissed setting benchmarks for carbon dioxide emissions, and repeatedly claimed that the issue needed further study. Lately, he’s been [...]

When it comes to freedom, Western Civilization thinks that we’ve cornered the market. Certainly, we’ve had our moments of “liberty, fraternity, and equality”. We like to think of ourselves as being democratic and open-minded. We claim to uphold lofty ideals, like freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. [...]

Would people stop with the Clash of Civilizations arguments already?
The controversial comments by the pope have elicited another round of comments that the globe is headed towards such a monumental event. Google News counts over 1000 articles using that phrase in the last month. There is an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times [...]

I wish someone would tell the Bush Administration that whining doesn’t make good foreign policy. The latest incident, once again, has to do with the French. The Bush Administration had hoped that France would send a couple thousand peacekeeping troops to Lebanon to enforce the ceasefire. Instead, they pledged 200, which immediately [...]

The largest academic group in England has called for boycotting the work of Israeli academics because of disagreements with Israeli occupation policy. For the moment, lets leave aside personal beliefs about whether Israeli policy ought to be condemned (and why Israel is singled out as opposed to other countries with considerably worse [...]

In case you hadn’t heard, Chinese President Hu Jintao is meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office this morning. As one might expect, this has ignited the usual chorus of people concerned that the United States is losing its competitive edge, or that China is becoming a global threat, or that they will [...]

With all the controversy surrounding Iran and the IAEA, I thought it might be useful to talk about nuclear proliferation. Trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a lot like trying to contain a river after its started raining. All you can do is pile sandbags as fast as you can, [...]

Condaleeza Rice was in Germany today, trying to defuse European complaints about America’s handling of the “War on Terror”. She once again asserted that the CIA policies of rendition and of operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe were reasonable and useful policies that make the world a safer place, and once again asserted that [...]

So much of what we read about in the news and talk about on this blog is negative, so its a nice change of pace when I can talk about something good. This morning I was quite pleased to read that the Irish Republican Army has completed disarmament. The IRA hasn’t received [...]