National Review articles from April 2003

National Review archives from April 2003

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
April 7, 2003... --I usually enjoy Ramesh Ponnuru's articles, but one statement in "This Will Hurt" (Feb. 24) inflamed me: Without citing any statistics or sources, he asserts, off the top of his head, that "the average elderly American spent more every year...

The Week.
April 7, 2003... -- As NR goes to press, the dictator of Iraq is still alive. We make no guarantees for next issue. -- It's become a cliche in punditland that President Bush mishandled the diplomacy before the war. Some liberals say that they used to be...

AT WAR: The Task Ahead.
April 7, 2003... President Bush gave a war deadline of 8:00 P.M. (EST), March 19 -- seven hours after we go to press. The elements of the struggle have been so long in place, however, that there is perhaps less need than usual to write from the news. ...

OBITUARY: Howard Fast, R.I.P.(Obituary)
April 7, 2003... Some years ago the caller identified himself as Howard Fast. We are representatives, he said, you and I, of different faiths, and I would like to dine with you. We did this, and some weeks later he joined the editors for dinner. The friendship...

Notes & Asides.(Column)
April 7, 2003... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: For almost two years I have tried to be a regular subscriber to NR. I have really tried! Sadly, only an occasional issue is delivered to me. Despite my several letters to your customer-service people, I do not receive...

Democrats in a Time of War: We're looking at another liberal crackup.
April 7, 2003... Scoop Jackson is dead. So is the hawkish wing of the Democratic party that the late senator once led. Its absence could make the Democrats unelectable for years. It's true, of course, that many Democrats in Congress voted for the...

The Eternal U.N.: Is there anything America can do?
April 7, 2003... 'One thing is certain," runs the magnificent old journalistic cliche, "things will never be the same again." The correct response, usually, is a dry "Oh, really?" But the war that is about to burst upon us almost certainly justifies this...

Trouble in My 'Hood: The Muslim question in Brooklyn.
April 7, 2003... Brooklyn Most Americans don't live among Muslims, and so the debate over whether they mean the rest of us any harm remains largely theoretical. Jihad- loving fifth columnists or misunderstood, peace-loving minority? These questions are...

East Is Best: America's friends in Europe, and what they understand.
April 7, 2003... 'What's the easiest way of gaining security and prosperity for our country?" ran the Communist-era joke in Poland. Answer: "Declare war on the United States, and hope that they invade and occupy." Let us hope there is an Arabic version of this...

Heeere's Johnny!: Doesn't anyone else want to be Senator from Georgia?
April 7, 2003... Only one Republican wants to be the next senator from Georgia -- or so it seems, three months after Democrat Zell Miller said that he would not seek a new term in 2004. Congressman Johnny Isakson let a mere seven days slip by before announcing...

The Castro in Caracas: Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, in Fidel's image.
April 7, 2003... It's a little after midnight in Caracas, and Hugo Chavez has just finished his weekly visit with the Venezuelan people. In tonight's four-hour address, the president has blamed the country's woes on the United States, the international...

Unpatriotic Conservatives: A war against America.
April 7, 2003... "I respect and admire the French, who have been a far greater nation than we shall ever be, that is, if greatness means anything loftier than money and bombs." -- thomas fleming, "hard right," march 13, 2003 From the very beginning of...

Fight on the Right: 'Muslim outreach' and a feud between activists.
April 7, 2003... In February, a long-simmering and mostly behind-the-scenes feud between two prominent conservatives, tax-reform advocate Grover Norquist and national-security expert Frank Gaffney, burst into the open. At issue was the conduct of Norquist's...

The Long View.(Column)
April 7, 2003... Headlines from the Future(tm) Special Wartime Lead Edition! From the Baghdad Intelligencer, March 27, 2003: GLORIOUS VICTORY FOR IRAQI PEOPLE! COUNTRY REJOICES! From the deserts of Tikrit to the outskirts of Basra, all Iraq...

Out of the Quagmire.("Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War")(Book Review)
April 7, 2003... Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War, by Henry Kissinger (Simon & Schuster, 640 pp., $18) We have all heard the story. The peaceful rice farmers of Vietnam had succeeded in...

Paradise, No.("Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order")(Book Review)
April 7, 2003... Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, by Robert Kagan (Knopf, 103 pp., $18) 'It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world,"...

Temper, Temper!
April 7, 2003... When Alfred A. Knopf published my book, Temperament, in late 2001, the last thing I expected was a political response. The book traces the evolution of an argument that began as far back as the 5th century B.C., and that found temporary respite...

Shelf Life: The War for Islam.(Book Review)
April 7, 2003... Bernard Lewis is justly regarded as the world's premier living authority on the history of the Middle East and the Arab world; any further praise of his work, therefore, is superfluous. But not so fast: In his new book, The Crisis of Islam:...

Music: A Fink to a Flop.(Sound Recording Review)
April 7, 2003... Shall we start with some singers? Not long ago, Bernarda Fink appeared in New York with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. She sang a Handel cantata and a Bach cantata -- and she sang them brilliantly. This is a singer with everything: voice, of...

City Desk: The Cutting Edge.
April 7, 2003... So much of New York life revolves around gratifying the appetites of people who do not care. That is one of the definitions of a trendsetter -- being impervious to the trends one sets. "There's nothing in the world so fashionable," wrote the...

On the Right.
April 7, 2003... POTUS with The Press NEW YORK, MARCH 7 A post-post-mortem on President Bush's press conference, conducted with a friend who has been intimately involved in the past, reminds us that what's important to every president is to get said...

What's Right.
April 7, 2003... Support Your Police My family recently traveled through a small airport. I breezed through the security checkpoint, but my wife and our 15-month-old baby were pulled over for a more thorough search. As the guard passed the metal detector...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
April 21, 2003... --Byron York's article ("Fight on the Right," April 7) is, as far as it goes, an important contribution to arousing conservatives to the danger posed by the Islamist/Wahhabi agenda in America and the role Grover Norquist is playing in enabling...

The Week.
April 21, 2003... -- We regret to announce that the media's patience with this war is exhausted. -- Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's briefings have taken on "an even crustier, testier tone" (New York Times). "The lines of strain are visible" on his face...

AT WAR: Thus Far.
April 21, 2003... In the first two weeks of war, our coalition forces have advanced quickly toward Baghdad; secured Iraq's southern oil fields; captured several bridges over the Euphrates; and taken complete ownership of Iraqi airspace. We have lost no...

OBITUARY: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, R.I.P.(Obituary)
April 21, 2003... In the bustling side room of the synagogue where the memorial service for Allard Lowenstein would soon begin, family, speakers, and special friends milled about waiting for the signal to file out to their appointed places. I was chatting with...

The American Way of War.
April 21, 2003... (1) As always, the American military does not like fascists, and it thus will unleash horrific power to eliminate such autocrats as Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein. (2) It is as difficult to provoke the United States as...

Notes & Asides.(Column)
April 21, 2003... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: Being a fan of N&A, and feeling envy for your contributors' command of the English language, I would like to opine on this subject. The basic purpose of any language is to communicate. If what has been said or written...

A World Shaken Up: Consequences of the first important event of the 21st century -- good and bad.
April 21, 2003... The Anglo-American action in Iraq, to which the Arab terrorist attack on September 11 was the prolegomenon, is likely to rank as the first important event of the 21st century. The reasons are twofold, the first negative, the second positive....

Fighting Fair and Foul: 'Asymmetrical warfare' in the Land of Saddam.
April 21, 2003... We feed and heal Iraqi prisoners; they shoot ours -- and sometimes their own who surrender. NBC and CNN reporters hector coalition generals in public press conferences; Ba'athist officers run coerced televised interrogations of our captured...

The Turkish Dilemma: This is no time to burn bridges with the only modern -- semi-modern -- Islamic country.
April 21, 2003... As Anglo-American troops march relentlessly toward military victory in Iraq, American diplomats nervously contemplate the growing wave of hatred and suspicion toward the U.S. in the Islamic world. Some of this hatred is inspired by a false...

A New Horror of War: What kind of country sends its girls and mothers into combat?
April 21, 2003... From the comfortable safety of editorial offices, the capture of Specialist Shoshana Johnson by Iraqi irregulars is heralded as a welcome opportunity for someone else's daughter to face violent abuse or a horrific death on "equal footing" with...

It's Getting a Little Drafty: Our armed forces need expansion. How to go about it?
April 21, 2003... We need more troops. Ever since the Clinton administration drew down our military, while simultaneously undertaking humanitarian interventions in places like Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, our armed forces have been overstretched. During the...

Balkan Ghosts: Mistakes of the Clinton team, mistakes of the Bush team.
April 21, 2003... In 1999, President Clinton took the United States into war confident that Slobodan Milosevic would yield in a matter of days. The Serb forces were more like gangs of roaming thugs than a real army. And as for Milosevic's regime, it was...

Lancers, Fusiliers, Rats . . .: The ongoing glory of the British regiment.
April 21, 2003... When the British, over 40,000 strong, arrived in the Persian Gulf, they brought more than troops, hardware, support staff, and supplies. There was history, too, in their baggage. One need look no further than the names of just some of the units...

They're in the Army Now: Not really. Most 'embedded' journalists are fish out of water.
April 21, 2003... Central Iraq The embedding effort in the current war is like nothing I've ever seen before. No corporation, no educational institution, no other government agency has ever invited me and other reporters into their war councils, let me read...

How to Be a Drama Queen: The war in Hollywood is a special kind of thing.
April 21, 2003... In the mid 1960s, a friend of mine landed his first job as a comedy writer. He was hired by Jackie Gleason's manager, or "wrangler," to use the term we prefer to describe the guy whose job it is to mollify, coddle, and keep tense company with...

Shame and Honor, Terribly Twisted: A central truth of Arab culture is on full display in Iraq.
April 21, 2003... Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party loyalists are fighting for their lives. The conventions of war mean nothing to these masters of brutality and ruse. They employ death squads to massacre their own people in order to prevent them from...

Headache upon Headache: We're in, we'll win, but what will we do?
April 21, 2003... Wolf Blitzer of CNN recently asked secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld about widespread concern that the war in Iraq would help al-Qaeda recruiting and, in general, increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks against the United States....

The Long View.
April 21, 2003... MEMORANDUM from: Marketing and Creative Affairs, Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation to: Hussein, Saddam Hussein, Uday Hussein, Qusay Arnett, Peter Promotions and Special Events Department Syndication Sales Department ...

Signposts of the Divine.("Modern Physics and Ancient Faith")(Book Review)
April 21, 2003... Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, by Stephen M. Barr (Notre Dame, 312 pp., $30) Anyone who read Superman comics as a kid will remember Bizarro World. This was a planet, way out in the far reaches of space, where everything was exactly the...

Shyster Heaven.("The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law")(Book Review)
April 21, 2003... The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law, by Walter K. Olson (St. Martin's Press, 352 pp., $25.95) Responsibility used to be the hallmark of American freedom. Act as you wish, but accept the...

Sultry, Sexy, and Smart.("Waiting for April")(Book Review)
April 21, 2003... Waiting for April, by Scott M. Morris (Algonquin, 352 pp., $24.95) 'There's nothing to read," you sometimes hear. All the good literature is in the past, and what we have today is trash or pretension. Well, that's not true. I could give you...

Army Aunts.("The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military")(Book Review)
April 21, 2003... The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military, by Dana Priest (Norton, 384 pp., $26.95) From the late 1940s until the end of the 1980s, a single unambiguous mission concentrated the minds and energies of America's armed...

Not Old School.("Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice")(Book Review)
April 21, 2003... Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice, by Clint Bolick (Cato, 277 pp., $12) When Clint Bolick learned that Wisconsin had enacted America's first true school-choice program, he called the legislation's sponsor, state...

Books in Brief.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
April 21, 2003... Purgatorio, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander (Doubleday, 56 pp., $35) With this Purgatorio, the Hollanders take a large step forward with one of the most exciting literary and scholarly projects of our...

The Straggler: The Home Front.
April 21, 2003... T. S. Eliot got it wrong. For the suburban homeowner it is March, not April, that is the cruelest month. Over a matter of days, the forgetful snow (you can play "spot the Waste Land allusions" with this piece) has all melted, revealing the...

On the Right.
April 21, 2003... What Mr. Bush Left Out NEW YORK, MARCH 18 The finality of the long -- seemingly endless -- period of indecision, fractured alliances, ambivalent allies, and fruitless diplomacy had an unusual touch. The president flew two thirds...

What's Right.
April 21, 2003... A Perle Before . . . It's 1974. U.S. presidents are clinking champagne glasses with the masters of the Kremlin -- and foreign-policy realists are quietly urging Americans to take whatever deals they can get from the Soviets: Our side is...