Antiwar.com Blog

Leon Hadar, foreign policy analyst and author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East, discusses the difference between what the neocons were trying to accomplish, the sad facts of what’s happened and the way things could have been instead.

MP3 here. (38:16)

Dr. Leon Hadar is a former United Nations bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post, he is the Washington correspondent for Singapore Business Times and a contributing editor for the American Conservative magazine. Hadar has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy and has been interviewed by broadcasting outlets like CNN, BBC and FOX News. He has taught at American University and Mount Vernon College and has been affiliated with think tanks such as the Institute on East-West Security Studies and the Center for International Development and Conflict Management. A graduate of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Hadar earned his MA degrees from the schools of journalism and international affairs and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and his Ph.D. in international relations from American University. He is the author of Quagmire: America in the Middle East (Cato Institute, 1992) and of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Bill Minutaglio, author of First Son: George W. Bush & The Bush Family Dynasty and The President’s Counselor: The Rise to Power of Alberto Gonzales, discusses the story of attorney general and his relationship with the President and his likely future.

MP3 here. (15:45)

Bill Minutaglio has distinguished himself as an award-winning Texas journalist with the Abilene Reporter-News, San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News, where he has worked since 1983 as a special writer. His work has appeared in many national publications including Talk, where he is a contributing writer, and the New York Times. He has coauthored two books and served as a contributing author to three others. He lives in Austin with his two children and his wife, Holly.

Today’s spotlight viewpoint is by George Soros, and I think it’s very good, for the most part. But it inspires Jonathan Schwarz to fact-check Slick Willie.

In my review of Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism I mentioned the Cato Institute’s online symposium, which utilizes the book as a take-off point for a discussion about the libertarian movement in general, and I note here the posting of Virginia Postrel’s contribution, which takes the “pragmatist” line: Rand and Rothbard are “dogmatists,” and really, in Postrel’s view, religious rather than political activists. This is nonsense, of course, and the whole thing is really a set-up for La Postrel to wonder why most libertarians aren’t “freethinkers,” i.e. more like herself:

“There’s no libertarian hierarchy to excommunicate heretics, but within libertarian organizations free thinkers do feel informal pressures to conform. It’s safest and most rewarding to stick to a straightforward anti-government script.”

Too bad for those who, like Postrel, yearn for another, more pro-government script. This may be a bit odd coming from a former editor of Reason, supposedly the premier libertarian magazine, and yet when you think about the one big issue on which many alleged “libertarians” have allied with the State — the Iraq war, and the larger “war on terrorism” — this longing for “complexities” and “trade-offs,” as Postrel puts it, isn’t all that hard to explain. If you’re trying to make it in the world of journalism, and selling yourself as a quasi-libertarian pundit, then you don’t want to offend the delicate sensibilities of newspaper publishers and other potential markets by all that “deductive” “dogmatism,” but you still want to somehow preserve your “libertarian” bona fides. What to do? Why, sell out on the war, which Postrel — in the hallowed tradition of Reason magazine — has done with alacrity.

After all, what are you, one of those hated “deductive” “dogmatists”? Why not be a “freethinker” and contemplate the aesthetic glories of state-sponsored mass murder?

Come to think of it, none of the commenters on Doherty’s book so much as mention the Iraq war — and Brink Lindsey was openly supportive of it, as Tom Palmer, another self-styled “moderate,” was supportive of the U.S.-installed “democratic” government, going so far as to travel to Iraq to “advise” the Iraqi parliament. Postrel cites this as an example of how “libertarians” doing meaningful political work may sometimes find themselves in the business of “state-building” — although she doesn’t mention if these “libertarians” will be working under a government contract.

What seems truly odd, however, is that these people are discussing the past, present, and future of a movement — libertarianism — that came to prominence in the modern era largely in opposition to the Vietnam war (along with Nixon’s wage and price controls). Yet one searches, in vain, for so much as a mention of the current war in their commentaries.

Today Daniel Ellsberg, Justin Raimondo, Rabbi Michael Lerner and many others spoke at the Stop Funding the War rally outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

MP3 audio here. (89:54)

(Justin’s part is at 62:46)

Helen Thomas, author of Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public, laments the tragedy of the Iraq war, now beginning its fifth year, the lives/votes trade that the Democrats are so quick to make to gain power, her favorite press secretary, the travesty Judith Miller, Jeff Gannon and how she got her seat back.

MP3 here. (16:23)

Commonly referred to as “The First Lady of the Press,” former White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas is a trailblazer, breaking through barriers for women reporters while covering every President since John F. Kennedy. For 57 years, Helen also served as White House correspondent for United Press International. She recently left this post and joined Hearst Newspapers as a syndicated columnist.

Born in Winchester, Kentucky, Helen Thomas was raised in Detroit, Michigan where she attended public schools and later graduated from Wayne State University. Upon leaving college, Helen served as a copy girl on the old, now defunct Washington Daily News. In 1943, Ms. Thomas joined United Press International and the Washington Press Corps.

For 12 years, Helen wrote radio news for UPI, her work day beginning at 5:30am. Eventually she covered the news of the Federal government, including the FBI and Capitol Hill.

In November, 1960, Helen Thomas began covering then President elect John F. Kennedy, following him to the White House in January, 1961 as a member of the UPI team. It was during this first White House assignment that Thomas began closing presidential press conferences with “Thank you, Mr. President.”

In September, 1971, Pat Nixon scooped Helen by announcing her engagement to Associated Press’ retiring White House correspondent, Douglas B. Cornell at a White house party hosted by then President Nixon in honor of Cornell.

Thomaswas the only woman print journalist traveling with then President Nixon to China during his breakthrough trip in January, 1972. She has the distinction of having traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, during the course of which she covered every Economic Summit. The World Almanac has cited her as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in America.