The American Prospect articles from May 2004

The American Prospect archives from May 2004

Step back: how long is the United States going to be in Iraq? And in whose hands and what shape are we going to leave it? Recent events ought to force us all to re-examine these questions no matter whether we opposed or supported the original invasion.(Prospects)
May 1, 2004... As this magazine goes to press (April 12), U.S. forces in Iraq are facing battles on two fronts, with a new insurrection in Shia cities in addition to continued resistance in the Sunni heartland. Whether the Shia uprising will be a short-lived...

This guy knows.(Correspondence)(intelligence communities' failures in the Middle East)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... JASON VEST LET THE Intelligence community off the hook in his recent piece on the fallout from the Iraq War intelligence fiasco ["The Wrong Target," April 2004]. There is no doubt that George W. Bush and his senior advisers cherry-picked the...

Bum steer.(Correspondence)(misleading review by Laura Secor of "The Sorrows of Empire" by Chalmers Johnson criticized)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... LAURA SECOR'S REVIEW of Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire ["Foreign Discomfort," April] was extremely misleading. The subject of the book is the alarming growth of "militarized and secret institutions" within the executive branch that...

Amen, sister.(Correspondence)(Christians opposed to George W. Bush)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... YOUR WORDS ON THE front cover, "The Christians Who Think Bush Isn't," are a perfect description for Ayelish McGarvey's article "Reaching to the Choir" [April]. Personal experience confirms McGarvey's separation of evangelicals into "freestyle"...

Get real, Neal.(Correspondence)(reply to Neal Gabler's "Liberalism's Lost Script")(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... NEAL GABLER'S "LIBERALISM'S Lost Script" [April] might be a fun piece if the conclusions weren't so wrong. Gabler, who reduces American politics to the scripting of movies, argues that conservatives have turned liberals, typically understood as...

Be unprepared.(Devil in the Details)(effect of Iraq War on military preparedness)
May 1, 2004... JUST IN CASE OUR PLUNGE into Iraq hasn't already made you feel safer--what with all those weapons of mass destruction destroyed and all that Islamic rage dispelled--you might also consider the effect of the war on the readiness of U.S. and U.K....

Insincere monetary fund.(Devil in the Details)(secretive selection of new president of International Monetary Fund)
May 1, 2004... IF THERE'S ONE CAUSE with which the International Monetary Fund has become identified--aside from driving recession-plagued developing nations into depressions by prescribing the same fiscal remedies that worked so well for Herbert Hoover in...

Off the Wall Street journal.(Devil in the Details)(War in Iraq)
May 1, 2004... What do YOU do When the entire premise of your side's argument has collapsed? In this case you are The Wall Street Journal, and for two years you have been editorializing that an invasion of Iraq would bring democracy to the Middle East and...

Brave new words.(Devil in the Details)(government speak)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... ASYMMETRICAL TOOL Retired General Barry McCaffrey's military-speak reference to the tactic of burning the corpses of U.S. security guards in Fallujah, Iraq. STRATEGIC APPROACH Condoleezza Rice's term for the Bush administration's policy of...

Hit the road, George.(Devil in the Details)(federal funds for road construction and repair )
May 1, 2004... WHEN A GALLUP POLL reports that motorists are more concerned about road rage than drunk driving, you know that either rush hour's really bad or MADD's out of a job. Every year commuters idle away 3.6 billion hours and 5.7 billion gallons of gas...

With stratagems like these ...(Devil in the Details)(Republican campaign tactics)
May 1, 2004... WHILE MOST ATTENTION to Republican campaign tactics focuses on dirty tricks and coded appeals to the base, it's worth highlighting the third prong of the strategy: comically lame grass-roots efforts. Observe: The Sloganator. Why hand out...

Realistpolitik: rising on W.'s right flank: the realists, libertarians, and traditionalists who oppose the neocons' imperial designs--and might even vote that way.(Dispatches)
May 1, 2004... JOHN MEARSHEIMER, ONE OF THE PRE-EMINENT representatives of the realist school of international relations, voted for George W. Bush in 2000. But not this time. Come November, he's not only voting for John Kerry but "will do so with enthusiasm."...

John on the spot: there's no question that Democrats are united against George W. Bush. But that's not quite the same thing as being united for John Kerry.(Dispatches)
May 1, 2004... THEY SAY THAT JOHN KERRY HAS THE entire Democratic establishment, and even some outliers, in his corner. "I personally have never seen the Democratic Party more united," says one party strategist. "As in ever." Swearing that the intraparty...

Do fat cats pay less?(The Taxonomist)(investment taxes compared to taxes on earnings)
May 1, 2004... When then-presidential candidate John Edwards complained that "something is deeply wrong when a billionaire has a lower tax rate than his secretary," he was talking about George W. Bush's cut in the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains...

The Rice capades: Condi's problems hardly started with the 9-11 commission. She's been screwing up from the start--and her mistakes tell a larger story about conservative foreign-policy failures.(National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice)
May 1, 2004... BETWEEN MAY AND JULY 2001, THE NATIONAL SECURITY Agency intercepted more than 30 private communications suggesting an imminent terrorist attack. In June, U.S. intelligence discovered that leading al-Qaeda operatives were vanishing from sight,...

Freedom Fraud: president Bush and the neocons say they're today's real idealists; that their foreign policy spreads democracy and doesn't coddle dictators. They say it. They just don't do it.(Cover Story)
May 1, 2004... BY THE FALL OF 2003, THE MAIN ARGUMENT BY WHICH THE Iraq War was sold to the public--that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that it was likely to give to terrorists--was looking pretty threadbare. Tacking with the wind, George W. Bush...

Meanwhile, in Africa ...(United States relations with Eritrea)
May 1, 2004... An interesting case study in the Bush administration's penchant for forging bilateral alliances that are enabling some truly wretched regimes is Eritrea, a small Horn of Africa nation strategically located on the Red Sea, where some on the...

Earth last: environment and Public Works Committee chairman James Inhofe is waging a war on science so extreme that even the Bush administration seems moderate by comparison.
May 1, 2004... AT A RECENT HEARING OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT and Public Works, the Republican chairman, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, confronted Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt with a serious complaint. Leavitt had come to...

Bankers versus base: deficit reduction is the wrong obsession. Democrats need to embrace jobs and growth.
May 1, 2004... THERE MAY COME A DAY, IN JANUARY 2005, WHEN THE Democrats will come back to power. Can we perhaps divert ourselves from the campaign long enough to ask, what then? The Democrats have a problem. Their base wants jobs and security. Their...

American families at risk.(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... A PROSPECT SPECIAL REPORT Ronald Reagan's domestic program was properly understood as a war on the poor. But as this package of articles shows, George W. Bush's is more like a war on the middle class. SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION, THERE...

Middle class and broke: once, the larger society shared the cost of raising and educating the next generation. These days, the responsibilities are falling more to individual families. It's bringing parents to their knees.(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN ARE UNDER ASSAULT. The assault is quiet, attracting few headlines, no congressional investigations, no knowing conversations at the office or at parties. The assault is stealthy, but the effects are profound. This...

Schools of hard knocks: education is the ticket of entry to the middle class. So why has Bush done so little to establish social equity and so much to impede social mobility? Chalk it up to "compassionate conservatism.".(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... THE FIGHTS OVER EDUCATION--SCHOOL VOUCHERS, the No Child Left Behind Act, affirmative action, and access to higher education--resonate deeply with people because they are literally fights over the American dream. Americans used to be able to...

Don't mourn, mobilize: middle-class voters grasp that Bush is not representing their interests. But they don't act on that perception. They might--but it's up to Democrats to motivate them.(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER TO BE MIDDLE class. As a result of the Bush administration's relentless tax-cutting agenda--designed to limit the ability of government to deliver services--the lives of middle-class Americans are becoming more...

Losing ground: outsourcing jobs, harassing labor unions, repealing safety regulations, undercutting benefits: the Bush administration is clearly winning a great victory in its war on America's workers.(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... DURING THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL TV DEBATES, George W. Bush relentlessly repeated the tired Republican mantra that government, especially the federal government, is the enemy of American workers. As president, he's turned that rhetoric into...

Throwing away the rules: in its zeal to kowtow to business, the Bush administration is dismantling a century of regulations that protect middle class consumers from financial fraud and health hazards.(War On The Middle Class )
May 1, 2004... CORPORATE AMERICA'S IDEOLOGICAL ASSAULT ON government regulation has undermined middle America's understanding of why these rules exist in the first place. It is true that some regulations have lived past their prime, protecting monopolies and...

The great tax shift: the president says his cuts are simply a way of "giving people their money back." But the bill will come due one way or another--and lower- and middle-class households will foot it.(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS THAT THE guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it, The reality is starkly different. The tax...

Future retirees at risk: Bush's "ownership society" would replace existing social-insurance systems with personal savings accounts. His approach threatens to make old age and poverty synonymous again.(War On The Middle Class)
May 1, 2004... RETIREMENT SECURITY FOR MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICANS is at risk. First, the push to privatize Social Security has diverted attention from solving the program's financing problems. Second, unchecked reliance on 401(k) plans has made employer provided...

The honorable menace: a new centennial biography of James T. Farrell seeks to revive the truculent author of Studs Lonigan--and to make a neocon of him.(The Literary Life)("An Honest Writer")(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... IN 1954, JAMES T. FARRELL PUBLISHED a collection of essays called Reflections at Fifty. It is long since out of print, like most of his novels and, so far as I can tell, all of his nonfiction volumes. Digging it out now, Reflections is a re...

Father figured.("George Herbert Walker Bush")(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH (PENGUIN LIVES SERIES) BY TOM WICKER * LIPPER/VIKING * 228 PAGES * $19.95 WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT JUST A few years ago that George Herbert Walker Bush would, to put it a bit cruelly, be relevant again? When he...

The constitution in play.("Restoring the Lost Constitution: the Presumption of Liberty")(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... RESTORING THE LOST CONSTITUTION: THE PRESUMPTION OF LIBERTY BY RANDY E. BARNETT * PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS * 357 PAGES * $32.50 EXCEPT FOR CONSERVATIVE ACTIVISTS and a few academics, virtually no one pays attention to right-wing legal...

Dreams and realities.("The American Dream and the Public Schools")(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS BY JENNIFER HOCHSCHILD AND NATHAN SCOVRONICK * OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS * 301 PAGES * $35.00 BENEATH ALL THE CONTROVERSIES that roll America's public schools--bilingual education, school choice,...

Mel, meet Monty.(The Last Word)(Monty Python's "Life of Brian")
May 1, 2004... Hollywood's latest counterpunch to the impact of Mel Gibson's sects-and-violence blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ, is the re-release of Monty Python's masterpiece, The Life of Brian. Henry Jaglom, who is handling Brian's Second Coming,...

Black listed cancer treatment could save your life.(Advertisement)
May 1, 2004... Baltimore, MD -- As unbelievable as it seems the key to stopping many cancers has been around for over 30 years. Yet it has been banned. Blocked. And kept out of your medicine cabinet by the very agency designed to protect your health--the FDA....