PETER J. WALLISON:Reagan Co-opted
Diggins, John Patrick
Reagan Co-opted Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History By John Patrick Diggins (W.W. NORTON, 493 PAGES, $27.95) B O O K S I N R E V I E W HIS IS A BOOK I VERY MUCH...
...There are also good pieces on the Victorian sporting novelist Robert Surtees and the irascible Cambridge literary pundit, F.R...
...Countries began privatizing government-held assets and freeing up markets in order to capture some of the growth and innovation that was so obvious in the United States...
...Not until March, did it start to recognize that the violence was truly serious...
...In fact, Americans seem to have broken the code...
...He also raises the possibility of computer science wedding with neuroscience to create a super brain...
...Again, there are no citations that identify these “conservative hawks...
...Gorbachev’s role is to initiate domestic reforms, while Reagan’s is to act on a fear of nuclear escalation...
...Diggins’s text mostly cites Lou Cannon’s book—President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime—the title of which suggests the arch way in which, at the time Cannon was writing, many people in the press thought of Ronald Reagan...
...After a long and bitter struggle, the Christians managed to retake part, but not all, of the [European] territory they had lost...
...The full details of the scandal were uncovered by Iraq’s Bureau of Supreme Audit, a number of whose members were assassinated...
...After a brief stint in London, Sha’alan now resides in Jordan, and, according to Allawi, part of his stolen money is used to finance the insurgency (sources here in Baghdad concur...
...We had 350...
...Most spectacular was the theft of over one billion dollars by the minister of defense, Hazem Sha’alan, with the connivance of other top Iraqi officials...
...The key is freedom —freedom of thought, freedom of information, freedom of communication...
...officials were slow to recognize the extent and significance of resistance from the old regime...
...If he or his immediate successors fail to eliminate terror and the terrorists strike successfully again, who doubts that even the Land of the Free will find itself governed by generals...
...Still, the Cannon book is one of the fairest and most balanced available...
...He sees all three as real threats to modern society...
...the second, ‘restructuring,’ the Deja Reviews: Florence King All Over Again – Selections from National Review and The American Spectator “The lady knows nothing of mediocrity...
...Finally, there is the sheer quality of the writing...
...Tolicity of the editors this volume is, of course, a tribute to the cath, Hilton Kramer and impression that editing is minimal...
...In our own time, we have seen the end of that [period of European] domination [of the Middle East...
...But in the context of Reagan’s thought, that turns out to have a quite different meaning from what Diggins gave it...
...No wonder Reagan is a great president...
...When Europe attacked Asia and Africa, it was...
...But without this context, Diggins seems to take Reagan’s words literally, summarizing what he believes Reagan was saying as follows: “God created the world to bring forth the affluent society of sheer abundance...
...Throughout the book, Diggins refers to these war-loving advisers as “neocons,” who are constantly in his narrative skulking in the background, but he never identifies who they are...
...Whether produced by a new Stalin or by some crank aided by a band of true believers, our central government could be decapitated...
...At present, if we do not extirpate terror, it seems to me that the days of American democracy are numbered...
...Citing Reagan’s suspicion of government as a concern about the people’s liberties is certainly accurate, but that does not in any sense mean that Reagan believed there was no need for “compulsory authority...
...But the sphere of government and international affairs is marked by alternating periods of advance and decline...
...In late April 2003, U.S...
...Nor is the policy debate over going to war in Iraq properly described as one between “realists” and “neo-conservatives,” whom Allawi casts in a villainous light...
...They believe in smaller government, popular sovereignty limited by natural or God-given inalienable rights, individual self-reliance, and economic self-determination for individuals freed to the extent possible from government regulation...
...This is a very important task which, so far as I know, is undertaken by no other periodical...
...Rhetorically, President Bush embraced democracy for Iraq, but in practice, policy flip-flopped...
...Down through the centuries, a new beginning has followed each demise and new civilizations have been built on the ruins of the old...
...This is ironic, because Reagan’s role in this momentous historical event is the one thing that caused Diggins to classify him, along with Lincoln, as 7 2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W one of the greatest American presidents...
...As for protecting government from decapitation, Iklé details his proposals under headings that adumbrate the problems that must be confronted, “Assuring the Continuity of the U. S. Government,” “Mobilization Laws,” “Guarding Territorial Sovereignty,” and, most important, “National Unity”—“of all the ingredients needed to defeat an attempted annihilation from within,” the old strategist writes, “perhaps the most important is national unity...
...In the sense that Reagan is the icon of conservatives and Republicans, it can fairly be said that most Republicans and conservatives are classical liberals...
...None of these statements, regrettably, is accompanied by footnotes, or references to things Reagan actually said...
...Because of the growing violence, the ministry of defense was given $1.7 billion to create two divisions of rapid deployment forces...
...Yes, it is the American liberal view of the Cold War...
...Secondly, the paper and its contributions avoid any commitment to ideology and party but have a general disposition or temperament inclined to recognize the merits of long-established cultural facts, and to subject all novelties to skeptical scrutiny...
...Had Stalin lived, Mutual Assured Destruction might have been put to the test...
...Nor is it accurate to place Reagan in opposition in any sense to the ideas of the Founders or even the two authors of The Federalist Papers, Madison and Hamilton, especially if the point is that Reagan wanted to loosen the reins of social control and free “the will of the people...
...A major theme with him is that “Science makes cumulative discoveries and hence can advance at an accelerating pace...
...If a life devoted excessively to an evanescent materialism and its “petty pleasures” filled Tocqueville with “religious dread,” it delighted Reagan...
...This view remains unproven...
...The ignorance, inexperience and simple anxiety about the unknown that was the mark of many newly arrived administrators from the Coalition played into the hands of crafty and skilled manipulators from the totalitarian bureaucracy...
...W ting that Reagan ignored hawkish conservative hawks...
...forces chose to guard...
...The second distortion is Diggins’s idea that Reagan could “call off” the Cold War...
...The history of the human race,” the erudite Iklé concludes, “is a saga with many sad endings...
...should 2004, as the United States prepared to hand over power to the interim government, his home was raided and searched for alleged misdeeds at the ministry of finance...
...The Defense Department and Vice President’s office had wanted to develop Iraqi institutions before the war, such as a military police, but the CIA and State Department opposed anything that might give the Iraqi exiles a leg up in the new Iraq...
...Thus, there is no paradox in his promoting classical liberal ideas as an “emblem of conservatism...
...The sudden burst of growth starting in 1983, with the elimination of inflation and the decline in unemployment, impressed governments and economic advisers around the world, and could not have failed to impress Gorbachev...
...What Diggins never asks, however, is why Gorbachev felt the need to restructure Soviet society with glasnost and perestroika...
...Reagan was not talking at all about religion or God when he mentioned “the spirit...
...Its coverage of Reagan promoted the idea that he was simply an actor going through the motions as president—reading from speeches written by his staff, dutifully following the directions of his shrewd advisers, falling asleep in cabinet meetings, and generally sleepwalking through history...
...The Pentagon and Vice President’s office had another—a democratic form of government that would end the dictatorship of Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs and accommodate the Shia majority, as well as the Kurds...
...idea after the fall of Baghdad was to turn authority over to the largely exile Iraqi politicians, with whom Washington had dealt throughout the 1990s...
...B O O K S I N R E V I E W Dean, head of English at Oxford’s famous Dragon School, is one of our top grammarians...
...British literary and arts subjects also command attention from minds ranged on both sides of the Atlantic...
...901, Arlington, VA 22209 attempt to reorganize the economy closer to a free market system...
...In foreign policy, conservatives who align themJ U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 69 B O O K S I N R E V I E W selves with Reagan are idealists, believing that all people are basically the same, respond to the same economic incentives, and will if given the opportunity prefer democracy and self-determination to state controls...
...The latter, in my view, see people primarily as members of groups rather than as individuals, believe the power of the state is necessary to protect individuals and groups from economic exploitation, and do not see the United States as an unalloyed force for good in the world...
...As Allawi scathingly writes, Bremer “was not in the first division of American career diplomats or Republican foreign policy experts...
...Again, Europe counterattacked, this time more successfully and more rapidly...
...The first is the belief that there are absolute standards, not just in literature and the arts, but in public conduct and philosophical treatment of fundamental issues...
...From 1973 to 1976, Iklé was the director of our Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and in the Reagan administration he was undersecretary of defense for policy, where his skepticism about Mutual Assured Destruction must have complemented the President’s own skepticism over MAD...
...Thus, immediately after his “spirit” remark, Reagan continued with this: But progress is not foreordained...
...This conservatism descends from Edmund Burke’s respect for society’s institutions, and especially their effect in preventing turbulence and chaos...
...Yet America is at war...
...Iraqis are grateful Saddam is gone, but there is electricity only one or two hours a day, because insurgents are toppling the transmission towers...
...This was a completely different template for running the presidency from the one FDR pursued, and Reagan showed that it could be successful...
...His reference to “the spirit” in Genesis was metaphorical, not literal...
...B O O K S I N R E V I E W B O O K S I N R E V I E W told them that Donald Rumsfeld had agreed to the formation of a Provisional Government, based on a leadership council they had recently elected...
...As Allawi reports, an Iraqi prosecutor (favored by the State Department) “laid a series of patently false charges against [Chalabi], including counterfeiting of currency—about three dollars’ worth...
...Reagan’s rejection of authority and his celebration of the people thwarted efforts to limit their will...
...It seems to me that Diggins’s error here arises from not understanding Reagan’s attachment to a classical liberal philosophy, and thus not understanding his words in this context...
...The idea was to assure the people’s liberties...
...First, of course, was the U.S...
...The consequence will be vast casualties, perhaps a plague that defeats our greatest scientists, possibly a dirty bomb...
...became too powerful...
...He was reciting one element of views he had always held: that material progress and abundance come from human freedom —by which he of course meant the freedom of people to communicate and innovate without the intervention of government...
...Deterrence during those four grim decades, he argues, was an illusion...
...government is the problem” could be construed as loosening government’s limitations on the “will of the people,” but that is of course not what Reagan had in mind...
...They are our Garbos...
...J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 3 B O O K S I N R E V I E W In either case, Reagan saw the buildup as a key element of his policy toward the Soviets, which he pursued from the beginning of his presidency...
...Iklé in his slim volume discusses a vast range of strategic problems that might in the future set humanity back into a dark age...
...An individual with no significant background in the Middle East and no experience managing a large organization, L. Paul Bremer, was named top civilian administrator...
...In any event, Diggins praises Reagan for ignoring the advice of the “conservative hawks,” whoever they might be: He saw history as open to change and freedom...
...There are two implications here, both of which reduce Reagan’s actual role...
...There is nothing formulaic about the journal, none of the emollient uniformity that made the New Yorker, J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 8 1...
...Reagan thought] Our beliefs about God no longer repress but liberate as though Christ died on the cross so that we might better pursue happiness, not the salvation of our souls...
...Whenever a nation or an empire had lost its power, pride, and glory, the waning societies have been replenished by a new influx of people —or alas, have been superseded by multitudes of barbarians...
...Reagan was a believer in what I’ll call the spirit of enterprise—the entrepreneur’s ability, if given the necessary freedom, to innovate and create value...
...Once, when asked whether he was But there is in fact an explanation for Reagan’s success...
...Nothing at all came of this, and Chalabi would go on to become deputy prime minister in the transitional government, following the January 2005 elections...
...Lewis’s is a lecture he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in March...
...Now with the fecundity of science and the efficiency of globalization, weapons of mass destruction have multiplied and spread...
...If you’re a scholar and believe this stuff—and why not?—you’re not going to make your reputation by studying the Reagan presidency...
...in the world, and with our troops still engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, I am going to put Paris and Britney on the back burner...
...Its subtitle seems to reflect the view of most Iraqis, to The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace By Ali A. Allawi judge from this reviewer’s expe- (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 518 PAGES, $28) riences in Baghdad in recent weeks...
...It has acquired an inner dynamic of progress that is self-sustaining...
...Rather, he seemed to have been chosen “precisely because of his lack of prior involvement” with Iraq...
...Now he serves on various defense boards, most notably the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board...
...The real control HE SHEER RANGE AND VARIETY of the essays in even in its bes of quality is exercised by the selection of the writers who are notable for their clarity of expression, their t days, so tiresome...
...In the hands of leaders who lead unfettered by Western ethics, such a super brain might outthink our best statesmen and generals—he seems to be contemplating such developments in China...
...And there is little doubt that if Reagan could have controlled entitlement spending, he would have done so, but the Democratic constituency for entitlements was too strong during his tenure as president...
...Both have made profound contributions to how we might get out of our imbroglio with savages and back to the enigmas of Paris and Britney...
...Religious faith depends upon the fecundity of plenty...
...But read carefully, the book gives the real credit to Gorbachev...
...Some of sciB O O K S I N R E V I E W ence’s advances have dual purposes, one for good, the other deleterious: nuclear energy, nuclear bombs...
...Iraq thus “parted with more than a billion dollars, moved into the accounts of unknown people in a foreign country...
...they understand and welcome change and what Schumpeter called “creative destruction,” despite its propensity for risk, turbulence, and uncertainty...
...Fortunately for history, Reagan had ceased listening to his advisers and started listening to himself...
...Anthony Daniels and Theodore Dalrymple are our two leading commentators on physical, mental, and indeed spiritual health, and Paul Paul Johnson’s many books include Modern Times, Intellectuals, A History of the English People, and A History of the American People...
...First, the suggestion that Reagan was merely following Jimmy Carter’s initiative in pursuing a military buildup is a badly distorted summary of reality...
...Thus, despite Allawi’s claims, the professor of political philosophy, Leo Strauss, had nothing to do with the Iraq war...
...A third and important propensity is an eagerness to rescue from oblivion writers, artists, and ideas that have fallen from favor but are still relevant to our needs, and enjoyable...
...Who can argue with that...
...He was elected as a conservative, but had the sense to become a liberal...
...In May ’ be compared to that of Ahmad Chalabi, the CIA HE TREA s leas TMENT ACCORDED Sha’alan et al...
...The book would be a more useful contribution to an understanding of its subject if we had been given examples of Reagan doing or saying something that would give Diggins’s observations more substance...
...This spring my attention has been absorbed by lesser figures, the British historian Bernard Lewis and the legendary strategist, Fred Ikl...
...He writes with great knowledge and surprising Will We Always Have Paris...
...Possessed of a “smug indifference,” the CPA viewed the violence as “the desperate acts of the remnants of a defunct regime...
...Allawi is excellent in recounting those events in J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W which he was directly involved, particularly economic matters, but he can be surprisingly off-base on issues remote from his own experience...
...Gertrude Himmelfarb has some wise and penetrating things to say about Lord Acton...
...As far as I can tell, the sole support for these interpolations of Reagan’s philosophy is his statement about “the spirit” in Genesis at Moscow State University...
...Reagan was successful again and again in getting the things he wanted most—the tax cuts, spending cuts, tax reforms, increases in military appropriations, and other priorities seemed to fall into his lap...
...economic or military power in dealing with other countries and is more sympathetic than most Americans to conciliation with hostile groups...
...Incidentally, this does not mean getting rich...
...Britney Spears also must have serious qualities that I have missed...
...to stand by our side, not ride on our back...
...7 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 Annihilation From Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations By Fred Charles Iklé (COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 130 PAGES, $24.50) Reviewed by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...The first expression signified ‘openness,’ the attempt to free up the political mind...
...He writes: Reagan’s political philosophy is also problematic because his theory of government has little referJ U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 1 B O O K S I N R E V I E W ence to the principles of the American founding...
...The CIA provided a list of two or three candidates for each ministry, among whom Ayad Allawi could chose...
...Allawi dubs this “The Old Bureaucracy Inside the ‘New Iraq’” and believes that de-Ba’athification did not go far enough...
...Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it...
...Reagan’s role, according to Diggins, was to overcome the fear of Communism and the Soviets that gripped Washington, to recognize the overwhelming danger of nuclear war, and to persuade Gorbachev that the United States had no military or other designs on the Soviet Union...
...One gets the , Roger Kimball, who between them have a detailed ability to organize their material, and their liveliness knowledge and acute feelings about most of the glo- of idiom...
...Emphasis added.] There are no citations for “Reagan’s rejection of authority” or his “celebration of the people” and none for the rather unconventional idea that the Constitution was intended to check the demands of the people rather than the power of the government...
...The first is from the beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the Middle East and beyond...
...The review is suspicious of relativism in any form but especially of its moral manifestations...
...This question would seem incoherent to Reagan conservatives, who believe themselves to be, and in fact are, liberals in the classical sense...
...Reagan did not suddenly have a revelation that a nuclear war was an intolerable prospect...
...For example, in what is one of the book’s few quotations from Reagan, Diggins cites the following sentence from a lecture Reagan delivered at Moscow State University: Even as we explore the most advanced reaches of science, we’re returning to the age-old wisdom of our culture, a wisdom contained in the Book of Genesis in the Bible: In the beginning was the spirit and it was from this spirit that the material abundance of creation issued forth...
...The possibility has engendered in Iklé’s famously inventive mind proposals he now has urged on the government...
...That was not the end of the matter...
...They, like the journal that gives them the ries of our culture, as well as strictly disciplined detes- hospitality of its pages, form a wide but also intimate tation of trends and individuals that disgrace it...
...The crowning blow appears to have been Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev apparently feared...
...Are these the “conservative hawks” whom Reagan ignored...
...Around that time, the White House decided on bringing Bremer home and installing an interim Iraqi government...
...The same problem arises with respect to Diggins’s discussion of Reagan’s political philosophy...
...Most of the cited works are by journalists, and cover specific issues in Reagan’s political life, or memoirs by journalists or figures in the Reagan administration...
...Reagan’s political philosophy is presented as inconsistent with the political philosophy and objectives of the Founding Fathers—an eccentric view, to be sure...
...Where have we heard it before...
...Thus far, no luck...
...When Reagan made these points in Moscow, and tied them to the open society and individual freedom that was the central point in his classical liberal philosophy, he was once again putting on display his belief in the power of ideas...
...Yet if Reagan carried forward the message of liberalism, why did he become the emblem of conservatism...
...In one sense, it’s true that the government grew under Reagan, but not for the reasons Diggins assigns...
...Tand the nature of the conservative mo , eral philosophy HEFAILURETOUNDERST his belief in the po ANDREAGAN’S wer of ideas classical libvement , itself seems to have led Professor Diggins to ascribe a more limited role to Reagan in the downfall of Communism in the Soviet Union than in fact he played...
...in military power, or bankrupting their economy if they actually tried...
...The bulk of those contracts were signed with a small, recently established company, with only $2,000 in paid-up capital...
...Reagan conservatives, on the other hand, admire entrepreneurs and innovators...
...officials in Baghdad Laurie Mylroie is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein’s War Against America (AEI Press...
...This is indeed a radical idea—that God wants mankind to seek and enjoy material abundance, in fact He created the world for that purpose—but there is no hint of support for the proposition that Reagan actually believed this...
...It was the fault of the United States, of our xenophobia, obsessive anti-Communism, and war-like behavior...
...Restoring the American people’s faith in themselves...
...The Soviet government could not hope to maintain control of the information its population would receive and still keep up with technological developments in the West, and particularly the United States...
...A e t of his T IS HERE ory comes into play THAT BERNARD LEWIS . H ’S magis is our civilizaterial sense t the American Enterprise Institute’s March lecture, he asseverated: President George W. Bush pursuing the war on terror...
...Reagan did accomplish a great deal,” he writes, so much so that he may be, after Lincoln, one of the two or three truly great presidents in American history...
...Since war never broke out in Central Europe during the forty years when the largest military in history divided the continent, it is tempting to assume nuclear deterrence preserved the peace...
...Individual liberty expands and is suppressed again...
...is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator and the author most recently of The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President’s Life After the White House (Thomas Nelson...
...Reagan was, without question, a liberal in this classical sense...
...He had a strategy for his presidency in which he would govern with principles and ideas rather than by constantly intervening in the decision-making process of his administration...
...This distinction becomes important when we get to considering the role that Diggins ascribes to Reagan in the collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union...
...As Diggins notes, “Reagan thought ideas were real and could move mountains...
...The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans did not generate intelligence—it was the policy office that dealt with Iraq and Iran, given, perhaps, an ominously inappropriate name as war with Iraq loomed...
...Otherwise, despite Diggins’s praise, Reagan—in the Diggins account— really seems to have had little to do with these events...
...Kramer asks, “Does Abstract Art Have a Future...
...Reviewed by Peter J. Wallison nation for this...
...Far less obvious, however, is the essay on “Thomas Kuhn’s Nationalism,” contributed by the science writer James Franklin, or the reassessment of Edward Bellamy’s utopia novel, Looking Backward, by that sharp-eyed literary critic, Martin Gardner...
...The water supply is erratic, because it depends on electricity, and fuel is expensive and in short supply...
...They believed that Russia could be cowed into surrendering...
...His advisers were the secretaries of state and defense, the national security adviser, the director of the CIA, and his chief of staff...
...One of the remarkable things about Reagan is the dearth of serious scholarly works about his presidency...
...Any attempt at transition between the blasts would be ludicrous, like playing a waltz between artillery barrages...
...In his speech to the students and faculty of Moscow State University in 1988, Reagan cleverly emphasized the development of computers and the microprocessors, and made clear that this innovation would either break open closed societies or leave them in the dust...
...The saga of the grand theft of the Ministry of Defense,” Allawi concludes, “perfectly illustrated the Panglossian spin that permeated official pronouncements of the government, the U.S...
...For example, Diggins writes: “The neocon hardliners sought victory, not peace, or a peace by fear rather than trust until the enemy collapses in exhaustion...
...I enjoyed too Mark Steyn’s appreciation of that accomplished man of the theater, George Abbott (“Missing Mister Abbott”), and the treatment of the “New York School Poets” by the Broadway critic John Simon...
...In my book on Reagan, I pointed out this difference in approach and strategy, in the hope that it would attract the interest of historians and political scientists...
...As an Englishman, I am envious and sad that we have no equivalents...
...Here are a few more examples: Reagan would use the language of idealism to rationalize the schemes of materialism, forgetting altogether Jesus and poverty and humility in order to reconceive Christianity to make it serve the interests and power of the rich classes...
...Sha’alan, it would emerge from Iraqi intelligence files, was an agent for Saddam until at least January 2003...
...There is, of course, another strand of conservatism which is not associated with Reagan...
...Under Reagan, Americans could live off the government and hate it at the same time...
...I would hate to have to choose between them...
...Perhaps more important was the enormous impact that Reagan’s policies of deregulation, open trade, and tax cuts had on the U.S...
...None, Iklé assures us, has the strategic prowess of Stalin or of Hitler and Lenin, but Iklé fears it is only a matter of time before such evil geniuses arrive on the scene...
...Uninhibited by moral restraints, science eventuates in annihilation...
...To the extent that Reagan wanted to reduce the weight and impact of government, it was certainly not to loosen the reins of social control or satisfy the appetites of the people...
...T t-favorite exile politician...
...Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Hitler had also believed so...
...Leavis...
...What he meant was not that people should expect or demand more from government, or that he wanted government to reduce its traditional role in law enforcement and social control, but that he was going to remove government as an obstacle to economic growth...
...war with Iraq were firmly grounded in national security concerns, above all, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, and he is too quick to embrace the now-conventional wisdom that Saddam had no such weapons nor significant ties to terrorists...
...Naturally, the bulk of the material deals with American creators, personalities, and issues, none of them hackneyed, however, and some of them important but difficult subjects overlooked by the rest of the media...
...But there is another and perhaps more practical explaYork Times...
...The general idea here, I guess, is that Reagan— while denouncing government—actually presided over its enlargement, and that was because he did not want to interfere with the will of the people...
...He concentrated almost entirely on these—and achieved them all...
...foster productivity, not stifle it...
...Each has its strengths and limitations...
...68 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 working as hard as he should, Reagan responded, “Well, they say that hard work never hurt anyone, but I say, why take a chance...
...Reagan is not a factor in Gorbachev’s actions...
...That’s why American liberals today call themselves “progressives,” and why conservatives can identify themselves as such without fearing that they will be considered hidebound or defenders of the status quo...
...In fact, in an important sense the military buildup was a risky policy, since it might have induced the Soviets to consider a first strike, before the U.S...
...No other modern president, from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush, has ever actually cut non-entitlement spending...
...First, that Reagan had a romantic and transcendentalist personal philosophy, similar to that of Ralph Waldo Emerson...
...Our government has responded only fitfully...
...In other words, the book does not fail in its conception, but in its persuasiveness...
...military buildup— not a very American liberal thing to do—which really seems to have shaken Gorbachev’s confidence in the ability of the Soviet Union to keep pace with the United States in the military sphere...
...These charges were so contrived that the Interim Government’s Minister of Justice threatened to resign,” if the indictments were not withdrawn...
...After 9/11, those still unexplained anthrax attacks, terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world, and with our troops still engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, I am going to put Paris and Britney on the back burner...
...The renowned scientist, scholar, and founding father of this university, Mikhail Lomonosov, knew that...
...Here, in place of the familiar Reagan of personal responsibility, freedom of the individual, and small government, we have a figure who is skeptical about the fundamental precepts of Christianity, and believes that God wants people to create and take pleasure in material abundance...
...The two Allawis are cousins...
...The CIA and State Department, reflecting an Arabist perspective oriented to the Sunni Arab regimes allied with the United States, had one vision for Iraq—essentially to reproduce a regime like theirs...
...Iklé writes from the perspective of five decades of service in the domain of strategic thought, beginning at the Rand Corporation where his apprehensions over the possibility of accidental nuclear war inspired him to develop trigger locks on our arsenal that even gained the support of Gen...
...Iklé writes about the globalization of devastating new weapons that could fall into the hands of terrorists, anarchists, and doomsday cults...
...An arrest warrant was issued against him and another entirely spurious warrant” issued against his nephew, Salem Chalabi...
...Allawi has written an important book, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, the first major work by an Iraqi on this conflict...
...Reagan worked to free the American people to be economically productive but certainly not to “live off the government...
...In 1950, after Stalin ordered North Korea to attack South Korea, Moscow had maybe five atomic bombs...
...The one exception was the Oil Ministry, which U.S...
...One wonders if these are the same neocons who have been condemned as hopeless idealists for believing that Iraq, after Hussein, could emerge as a secular Arab democracy...
...To illustrate these points, I will focus on two central ideas in the book...
...Osama bin Laden saw it otherwise, saying, “We have met, defeated, and destroyed the more dangerous and the more deadly of the two infidel superpowers...
...The fact that this imagery fit neatly with the interests of some of his staff in exaggerating their own importance was lost in the media’s pell-mell acceptance of this narrative...
...Rather than use the Trade Bank of Iraq, established to finance government letters of credit, the defense ministry sent the money to private accounts in a Jordanian bank (a facility Saddam had used to siphon money from the UN’s Oil for Food program...
...J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 9 B O O K S I N R E V I E W The Muslim attack on Christendom… has gone through three phases...
...HICH BRINGS ME to Professor Diggins’s book...
...They succeeded in recovering Russia and the Balkan Peninsula, and in advancing farther into the Islamic lands, chasing their former rulers from whence they had come...
...Civil libertarians are properly concerned about the state of our civil liberties with “Decapitation” is another of the terrible possibilities raised by this book...
...From this phase of the European counterattack [the late 16th century] a new term was invented: imperialism...
...In a series of “brazen decisions that broke every contracting and procurement rule,” the defense ministry began awarding “huge contracts without any bidding and with 7 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W minimal documentation...
...In turn, Iraq received equipment it could not use, such as Soviet-era helicopters, 30 years old...
...Yet after we came to the South’s defense, Stalin, undeterred by our nuclear preponderance, sent Soviet fighter pilots against us in Soviet aircraft—a detail the American left ignored, much as it ignores today Iranian agents in Iraq or terrorists using civilians as shields...
...His admiration for Tom Paine came from the sense that, again in an economic context, revolution—“creative destruction” in Schumpeter’s phrase—was a positive good...
...This concerns me, because it will be historians and political scientists who will ultimately establish Reagan’s place in history, and it would be a shame if he does not get the recognition he deserves because of a misplaced view by academics about the reasons for the success of his presidency...
...There are no footnotes or other support for these assessments, or for any of the others about the “neocons...
...It is important to notice the respective roles of the two actors here, Reagan and Gorbachev...
...And second, although Diggins regards Reagan as great primarily because he ended the Cold War and the totalitarian Communist threat without firing a shot, he is somewhat unclear about what Reagan actually did to achieve this extraordinary historical triumph...
...Soviet archival documents released so far do not provide an answer...
...Ministries were not only methodically picked over, but were then ransacked and burnt down.… In a few government departments, enterprising individuals were able to spirit away key records.… The Coalition laboriously had to reassemble organizational charts and decision-making structures in an environment of great fear and uncertainty...
...80 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 Indispensable Encounters Fperiodicals have played a major part in the culgh Review Edinbur the OR MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES , serious , beginning with , well-written ture of the Anglo-Saxon world...
...Reagan Co-opted Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History By John Patrick Diggins (W.W...
...Both are indispensable...
...Accordingly, Reagan’s views of government were much in tune with those of the Founders, including the authors of The Federalist Papers, who—far from wanting a strong government to restrain the people—were at pains to demonstrate that the Constitution had limited the power of the government through the checks and balances in the Constitution’s separation of powers...
...People magazine This is a limited time offer...
...It means being productive so that others can live better lives...
...John Gross, former editor of the Times Literary Supplement, is perhaps our outstanding man of letters...
...Now there are very few of them...
...Traditional conservatives of this stripe—true to their fear of chaos—generally see value in large stable corporate bureaucracies and defend government regulation that helps fend off risk and promote confidence and stability...
...Tis fundamental to where this book g HE because it seems to consider Reagan without MISPERCEPTION about Reagan’s philosophy oes wrong, any philosophical or political context...
...That badge does not seem appropriate for what we know of these people...
...The same risk was associated with the Strategic Defense Initiative, which Reagan saw as having two purposes—to show the Soviets our technological prowess and to persuade them that their nuclear power was a wasting asset...
...The United States long had great difficulty finding and working with Iraqis to replace Saddam’s regime—and this did not change with President George Bush’s decision to oust that regime or even with its fall...
...If you don’t believe me about Reagan’s view of law enforcement, ask the air traffic controllers...
...In general, and thanks certainly to the consistency with which Kramer and Kimball have conducted the journal, the New Criterion is notable for four qualities...
...Thus, American liberalism’s foreign policy is suspicious of and generally hostile to the use of U.S...
...During Reagan’s two terms, they included Alexander Haig, George Shultz, Cap Weinberger, Bill Casey, Robert Gates, Bud McFarlane, John Poindexter, Frank Carlucci, Jim Baker, Don Regan, and Howard Baker...
...This sounds vaguely familiar...
...Meanwhile, most of the culprits fled the country as the transitional government assumed office...
...In the American idiom, oddly enough, classical liberals are called “conservatives...
...Unfortunately, as we have witnessed our National Unity unravel since the invasion of Iraq, I am not optimistic that “National Unity” or any of Iklé’s other topics is going to be solved soon...
...Lewis asserts that phase three of the Muslim attack on Christendom began with the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, which Americans have seen as a “Western victory—more specifically an American victory—in the Cold War...
...were quite willing to continue the confrontation with the Soviets, as they had for almost 40 years, and Reagan’s unique contribution was to transcend the views of his advisers and try to make peace...
...He straddled “two antagonistic camps” and “the process that led to his appointment was short and hasty.… The recruitment process for the leadership of a country of over twentyfive million people would not have passed muster with even the most indifferent of corporate headhunters...
...Iklé’s greatest fear is a new Stalin or Hitler, a brute with the strategic sense that bin Laden lacks, who might take over a nation-state after practicing “annihilation from within...
...modernity’s tenebrae...
...Tocqueville presaged Reagan in sensing that the American people, instead of seeking to be right with Jesus, or putting the public good ahead of all other concerns, only loved “material enjoyment...
...Full payments of the contracts were often made in advance with none of the usual requirements for performance bonds or guarantees...
...This is reflected in Diggins’s bibliography...
...In the meantime we have to worry about one of the smalltime thugs—Osama bin Laden or another crank from a doomsday cult—getting WMDs...
...There is a wonderful piece by James Penrose, the journal’s regular music critic, on Donald Francis Tovey, author of the British classic, Essays in Musical Analysis, and Brooke Allen, author of that excellent book, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, contributes a delightful and (to me) nostalgic piece on that rascally but endearing novelist, Simon Raven...
...Only if communication were freer would this technological innovation be of any value...
...Sha’alan has been indicted in Iraq, but Jordan refuses to extradite him or even answer questions about the stolen AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD MARCH 20, 2007 funds...
...Two momentous urgencies—Gorbachev’s desperate need to initiate domestic reform, and Reagan’s growing fear of nuclear escalation veering out of control—converged to change the course of history...
...It is rather to make it work—work with us, not over us...
...While classical liberals are called conservatives in today’s America, there are important differences between classical liberals and what I will call American liberals...
...When this did not prove to be a sufficiently persuasive limitation on government power, the Founders endorsed the adoption of the Bill of Rights, without which it is doubtful that the Constitution would have been ratified by the people of the states...
...Weinberger and Casey were the only ones who might come close...
...Stalin is gone, but he has been replaced by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of thuggish leaders...
...To be sure, there is something here—Reagan was certainly an idealist with great faith in individual effort and especially the American people—but the only way to say that Reagan was an Emersonian and had views that differed fundamentally from traditional Christ70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W ianity is to tear Reagan from a philosophical context of his own construction...
...It is one of the chief reasons why I always look forward with relish to opening a copy of the New Criterion...
...And second, that Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War and the threat of Communism was the result of his conversion, once he became president, to views about the dangers of nuclear war that one would normally associate with American liberals...
...the entire minuet around the Reykjavik summit seems to have been choreographed by Gorbachev in order to eliminate SDI as a threat to the Soviet nuclear deterrent...
...That decision was soon reversed, however, and Iraq was to fall under American-British occupation...
...NORTON, 493 PAGES, $27.95) B O O K S I N R E V I E W HIS IS A BOOK I VERY MUCH WANTED TO LIKE...
...In Britain, since the extinction of Encounter, there are none, unless you count Prospect, which is a bit too attached to the European Union to qualify as a politically independent magazine...
...Okay, that’s mostly accurate...
...Because of the publicity it has received, this book could encourage some scholars to look more carefully at Reagan, but it won’t persuade anyone to accept Reagan’s greatness by the force of its argument...
...Ition’s greatest living historian of Islam...
...these were the advisers he met with regularly...
...The true conservatives, the founders, framed a specific system of authority in government to check the demands of the people...
...Reagan’s role is different: “To be sure,” Diggins notes, “Reagan supported the arms buildup, actually begun under President Jimmy Carter, but he soon came to see that the only answer to the cold war was to call it off...
...Historians and political scientists read the New Peter J. Wallison is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency (Westview Press, 2003...
...Diggins writes: In confronting the Soviet Union, Reagan invoked the principles of freedom, human rights, democratic elections, and self-determination, liberal ideas derived from the natural rights legacy of John Locke and the foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson...
...While Rumsfeld dismissed the looting that followed Baghdad’s fall as “stuff happens,” former regime loyalists “operating under the cover of looters and arsonists” set about destroying Iraqi government data bases...
...They circle of civilized men and women who light wise make an unusually well-matched team, and both candles in a world that often seems threatened by make characteristic contributions to this volume...
...After 9/11, those still unexplained anthrax attacks, terrorist attacks elsewhere R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Iklé lays down how it must be defeated in a book that should be read by every serious citizen, especially those responsible for our national survival...
...U.S...
...They will tend to see the United States as a force for good in the world and in this sense have some kinship with a Wilsonian foreign policy...
...Lewis continues: “This belief was confirmed in the 1990s when we saw attacks on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind—only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote and uninhabited places...
...Notably they failed to recapture the Holy Land...
...It is common knowledge,” he said, “that the achievements of science are considerable and rapid, particularly once the yoke of slavery is cast off and replaced by the freedom of philosophy...
...The Islamic world, having failed the first time, was bracing for the second attack, this time not conducted by Arabs and Moors, but by Turks and Tartars...
...That list in itself shows the breadth of the British reservoir of talent from which the New Criterion draws its authors...
...J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 7 5 Present at the Destruction A . ter of trade and briefly minis the U LI ALLAWI S.-led Coalition Pro , AN ECONOMIST BY TRAINING ter of defense under visional A ,was minisuthority (CPA) and then minister of finance following the 2005 elections that established Iraq’s transitional government...
...elegance about the dangerous divergence science took 250 years ago from its inhibitors, religion and government...
...In the end, Diggins, despite his high regard for Reagan, actually underestimates Reagan’s contribution to the collapse of Soviet Communism...
...Reagan certainly enlarged government spending on defense, and was unable to stem the growth of entitlements, but as my colleague Veronique de Rugy has pointed out, while Reagan boosted defense outlays by 26 percent during his first term, he cut inflationadjusted non-defense spending by 9.7 percent...
...So the AmericanBritish plan for governing Iraq in the postSaddam era was to rely on the existing bureaucracies, removing only the top officials...
...Yet significant elements within the Iraqi bureaucracies remained unreliable, indifferent to the new order, if not loyal to the old, even as many of the Americans sent to run Iraq knew little about the country...
...Neither Rumsfeld nor Cheney, strong advocates of the war, fit easily into the latter category...
...This is pure Reagan, pure classical liberalism...
...First, although Diggins makes a lot of interesting and controversial assertions about Reagan and what he achieved, he doesn’t take the time to support these statements with examples...
...Press coverage, often cited as the first draft of history, is really quite a bit more influential than that...
...The implication here is that the U.S...
...All earlier presidents believed that the cold war could be stabilized and communism at best contained….The startling breakthrough came with Reagan in the mid-eighties, which forecast the beginning of the end of the superpower rivalry...
...handling of Iraq that have contributed significantly to present difficulties, yet which have failed to receive the attention they merit...
...Peace is followed by war...
...In the anthology under review, of the 40 or so authors, Roger Scruton is a well-known English philosopher, jack-of-all controversies, and rider-tohounds...
...What we needed, they suggested, was a corporate presidency, with several executives dividing up the work...
...In fact, he does not give us much to celebrate about even in the aftermath of the Cold War...
...Allawi attributes the shift to pressure from the U.S...
...It’s both natural and right for a journal of this kind to write about “The Legacy of Russell Kirk” and “The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky”—and both are dealt with in authoritative and trenchant fashion...
...M HY ges THIS EMPHASIS on unnamed neocons and y guess is that sugadvice enhances his role in bringing down Communism and ending the Cold War...
...Reviewed by Laurie Mylroie In short, life is difficult here, and Allawi’s firsthand account of events helps explain why...
...But Reagan made the job look easy—so easy that he was accused of being lazy...
...Ayad Allawi, a one-time Ba’athist who had broken with Saddam, was made prime minister...
...They saw history as dark and foreboding, the liberal world too naïve to understand what needed to be done and the communist world forever stuck with communism, as though condemned by a curse...
...Kenneth Minogue, the economist, though antipodean by birth, is very much part of the London intellectual scene...
...Yet Diggins, a renowned intellectual historian, puts Reagan in an intellectual context that most of us—and certainly Ronald Reagan—wouldn’t recognize...
...Curtis LeMay, builder of the United States Strategic Air Command...
...With these caveats in mind, Americans will learn much from this book, not only about Iraqi perspectives on the war, but about very major problems in the U.S...
...Because of the way Reagan conducted his office, he had a very limited number of direct advisers on foreign policy, so we can almost name them all...
...Compelling the Soviet Union to come to the bargaining table though a military buildup...
...surge” has improved security somewhat, but Baghdad remains dangerous...
...The U.S...
...In the United States, happily, there are still one or Counterpoints: Twenty-Five Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts Edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer (IVAN R. DEE, 500 PAGES, $35) two which keep the tradition going, notably Commentary and the New Criterion...
...For just $24.95 (includes S&H) take a trip down memory lane, or begin the journey anew with these delightful selections of Miss King’s voluminous collection of essays from 1991-2002...
...If he had asked this question, he would have been 74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B O O K S I N R E V I E W able to identify more clearly Reagan’s role in bringing about the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet system...
...The “spirit” Reagan was talking about was the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation...
...If Reagan was driven by a fear of nuclear war, he was not following a policy that was the most likely to avert it...
...new vaccines, enhanced biological warfare agents...
...Major bombings began in August, targeting the Jordanian embassy, then UN headquarters, where 22 people were killed, including Sergio de Mello, the UN’s Special Representative in Iraq, and then a major Shia politician, Ayatollah Baqir al Hakim, murdered in yet one more bloody blast that month...
...Please call 800.524.3469, visit www.spectator.org/DejaReviews, or mail a check to: The American Spectator, 1611 N. Kent Street, Ste...
...Before Reagan became president many observers of the presidency concluded that it was just too big a job for one person...
...Unquestionably, Gorbachev read this speech, and was smart enough to realize that the totalitarian game was up...
...James Clapper, head of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency during Operation Iraqi Freedom and now undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told reporters in the fall of 2003...
...But here fashion gets short shrift, and every kind of specious neologism and euphemious dodging is cracked down on hard...
...One component of its strategy—now keenly felt in Baghdad—was to render ineffectual the administration of the new order...
...An American president had interns to chase and impeachment to thwart...
...Although Professor Diggins could describe him as one of the three greatest presidents in American history—the others being Lincoln and Roosevelt—the number of scholarly books on Reagan, almost two decades after he left office, can be counted on one hand...
...He does not understand that the reasons for the U.S...
...Dictators, not democratic leaders, are probably best equipped to deal with terrorists...
...Similarly, Reagan’s political philosophy is presented as inconsistent with the political philosophy and objectives of the Founding Fathers—an eccentric view, to be sure...
...Not because it was supposed to reflect a liberal’s awakening to the importance and significance of Ronald Reagan, but because I hoped it was a book by a member of the academy that took Ronald Reagan seriously...
...Tstanding of Reagan’s political philosophy vide a comple t only to pro failure no HE MAIN PROBLEM WITH THE BOOK, I think, is its te under, but to offer a complete understanding of the meaning of the terms “liberalism” and “conservatism” as they are used in the United States today...
...To say that Florence King doesn’t suffer fools gladly is an understatement akin to suggesting that Fred Astaire could maneuver quite nicely on the dance floor...
...Dealing with the soft, pampered and effeminate Americans will be an easy matter...
...The attacks on Iraq’s infrastructure started in earnest in the summer of 2003, with assaults on oil and electrical facilities...
...But then he continues: Reagan, the scourge of big government, made it inevitable...
...When the peoples of Asia and Africa invaded Europe, this was not imperialism...
...Both are highly literary and lightly (but firmly) edited, and both do honor to their country...
...The interim government consisted of the CIA’s favorites among the Iraqi exiles, producing “a version of the Arab authoritarian state with its semi-democratic embellishments...
...Reviewed by Paul Johnson However, the New Criterion, as this compilation shows, goes some way to supplying the lack of a truly civilized and intelligent review on our side of the Atlantic, for many of its contributors are British, and the topics touched upon often involve English literature...
...Corruption had been a problem under the CPA, but the interim government produced an “explosion in corrupt practices, bordering on the open plunder of the state’s resources...
...In addition, speeches that Reagan made before he became president—and featured in Lou Cannon’s work—show that he was following a considered strategy of either showing the Soviets that they could not compete with the U.S...
...They failed to retake North Africa or the Middle East, which were lost to Christendom...
...David Pryce-Jones is our leading expert on the Middle East...
...embassy, and the MNF [Multi-National Force...
...Thus, Diggins spends a good deal of time attempting to identify Reagan with Emerson’s transcendentalism, in which Emerson articulated an idealistic view of human nature that transcended Christian notions of sin and evil...
...Although this is a book about Ronald Reagan, there is very little Reagan in it...
...Genuine originality, provided it is combined with skill and experience, is always acceptable and applauded...
...Without this political and philosophical context, Reagan’s statement in his first inaugural address that “government isn’t the solution to our problem...
...economy...
...Commentary is stronger on religion and politics, the New Criterion on literature and the arts...
...By this I mean two things...
...He doubts that the world can stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but he outlines plans for detecting them and perhaps rendering them useless...
...WISH I HAD MORE TIME to interest myself in the drama of Paris Hilton...
...I]n the end,” Diggins writes, “what brought down communism was liberalism itself, specifically Gorbachev’s introduction of glasnost and perestroika...
...This seems rather shocking, since the book has gotten a lot of attention precisely because it cites Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War as the reason he should be considered a great president...
...If Professor Diggins had followed this line of approach to Reagan, rather than trying to convert him into an American liberal, his astute observation that Reagan was one of our greatest presidents would have had greater substance and been more persuasive...
...B O O K S I N R E V I E W • Forcing American companies to compete by freeing trade...
...As Diggins acknowledges, “Reagan’s reputation has suffered from northern liberal biases that dominate the teaching and writing of American history today...
...John Derbyshire, a columnist for National Review, has a well-judged essay on Aldous Huxley...
...Iklé’s contribution is a provocative new book, Annihilation From Within: The Ultimate Threat To Nations...
...Anyone who understood Reagan’s philosophy and outlook would have instantly known what he was saying...
...To be sure, there were some problems with this story...
...Tom Paine, Reagan’s hero, is anathema to most conservative intellectuals, who prefer The Federalist Papers as the foundation of political wisdom...
...Which may be why any collection of her writings goes off like a fireworks display...
...The consequence for world peace and for America’s democratic order would be catastrophic...
...The views of American liberals would be completely foreign to Ronald Reagan, and I would say to most Americans...
...The original U.S...
...and gives a gloomy but well-reasoned answer, and Kimball offers his thoughts on re-reading John Buchan, that ambitious Scots imperialist who combined high-minded statesmanship with the enviable ability to tell a rattling good adventure tale...
...As he said that day: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government...
...Thus, Iraq’s interim government was very much a U.S...
...But neither was clearly out for war, just military strength...
...That began early on...
...He also selected four objectives that he wanted to achieve: • Reducing the role of government in the economy through tax and spending cuts...
...Paul Greenberg, Introduction to Deja Reviews Get the very best of Miss Florence King from both National Review and The American Spectator in our new book, Deja Reviews...
...Gorbachev is thus seen as an independent actor...
...Carter’s military buildup, such as it was, did not begin until after he was shocked by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an event quite late in his presidency, after he had told the American people to get over their “inordinate fear of communism...
...A knowledgeable Iraqi source here says that Saddam’s weapons were moved to Syria between November 2002 and February 2003—essentially what Lt...
...Lewis concludes: “The third phase” of the Muslim attack on Christendom “has clearly begun...
...But we actually know who these people were...
...creation...
...State Department and the British...
...She fills so much space in our media that there must be something fascinating behind her stupid blondness and insipid utterances...
...was the culpable party—that various groups in the U.S...
Vol. 40 • July 2007 • No. 6
