Today's Stories

August 1, 2008

Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

July 31, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Next Big Bail Out: State, Local and Private Pensions

Carl Finamore
Protest Politics and the Democrats: A Street Protester Looks Back at 1968

Mike Whitney
What's Going on in Afghanistan

Joshua Frank
Obama's Green Coal: Another Myth from the Change Agent

Andy Worthington
The Peculiar Case of Jarallah al-Marri

Ralph Nader
The Living Legacy of Rosa Parks

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The Wave of Capitol Crimes

Robert Weissman
The Collapse of the WTO Talks

Dave Lindorff
Bush Judge Does the Right Thing on Executive Immunity

Website of the Day
Perils of the New Pesticides

July 30, 2008

Brian M. Downing
Assessing the Surge

Chuck Spinney
Should Obama Escalate the War in Afghanistan? A Thought Experiment

William S. Lind
Why McCain is Wrong on Iraq

David Ker Thomson
Against Bike Lanes

Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Powered Amphibious Assault Ships?

Mike Whitney
Apocalypse Down Under

Martha Rosenberg
Heifer Palooza

James Murren
Where Your Life is Worth One Bullet

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Hearing

Ron Jacobs
A Conspiracy to Kill Iraqis?

Website of the Day
Mapping Job Loss to China

July 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
King of the Hill Indicted! Ted Stevens' Empire of Corruption

John Ross
Return of the Gunboat

Peter Morici
When Will Henry Paulson Learn?

Alison Weir
Israeli Strip Searches

Gary Leupp
"Bewilderment and Confusion on the Left?"

David Macaray
The Calculus of Union Strikes

Brenda Norrell
Censored in Indian Country

Marjorie Cohn
End the Occupations: Of Iraq and Afghanistan

Eric Ruder
A New Consensus on Iraq?

Website of the Day
"If You Could See Me Now ... "

July 28, 2008

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association

Kathy Kelly
Pictures from Summer Camp on the West Bank

Mike Whitney
Bad News and Bank Runs

Peter Morici
Spreading Layoffs, Sagging GDP

Christopher Brauchli
Death by (Power) Surge in Baghdad

Clifton Ross
The Spectacle and the Movement in Colombia

Stephen Lendman
The Bush Administration's Secret Biowarfare Agenda

Website of the Day
Stone's Dubya: the Trailer

July 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How Bush is Wiping Out McCain

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Alaskan Oil Spills

James G. Abourezk
The Surge Has Worked?

Joseph Nevins
Death as a Way of Life on the Borderlands

Uri Avnery
What's Driving the Jerusalem Attacks

Linn Washington, Jr.
Politics and Injustice in Philadelphia

David Yearsley
Sodomy, Snuff Scenes and the Berlin Opera

Binoy Kampmark
Socializing Losses: Bailing Out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Saul Landau
Truth in Comedy: Stop Whining It's All in Your Head!

Joshua Frank
Big Sky Rebels

Brendan Cooney
Europe's Hypocrisy

Jonathan Cook
Settlers Eye Historic Jerusalem Neighborhood

Robert Fantina
McCain, Iraq and the Campaign

Lee Sustar
Will the US Get Its Way with Iran?

Michael Winship
The Company We Keep

David Macaray
Organized Labor Makes a Convenient Target

Missy Beattie
Pelosi's Panhandling

Robert Weissman
The Scourge of the IMF

Kim Nicolini
Batman and the Old Order

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Ford and McEnteer

Website of the Weekend
Bad Hoosiers

July 25, 2008

Harvey Wasserman
NRC: New Nukes Not Ready for Prime Time

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Facts About Israel?

Alan Farago
Where's the Outrage?

Paul D'Amato
The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic and the Selective Prosecution of War Crimes

Gary Leupp
War With Iran? State Dept. Realists vs. Cheney's Ultras

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Eyes Wide Shut in India

Mike Whitney
Obama Dazzles Old Europe, While McCain Cries, "No Mas!"

Paul Krassner
Inside Camp Mogul

Mike Roselle
All Hail Nero!

Website of the Day
Pressing Starbucks

July 24, 2008

Greg Moses
Who Killed Azem Hajdari?

Andy Worthington
Folly and Injustice: Salim Hamdan's Guantanamo Trial

James Bovard
Daniel Ellsberg's Lessons for Our Time

Joe Bageant
Life in the Post-Political Age

George Wuerthner
Boondoggle in the Fields

DC Larson
Shutting Out Ralph Nader

William Willers
The Forest Products Industry in Public Education

David Macaray
On the Prospects for a SAG Strike

Website of the Day
Pacifica Radio Archive of 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago

July 23, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
An Air Force in Free Fall

Paul Craig Roberts
The Mother of All Messes

Ralph Nader
Pavlov's America

Mike Whitney
Visualizing Dow 6,000

Susie Day
Senator Sicko: Jesse Helms and the Theatre of the Depraved

Website of the Day
"A Kinder and Gentler Machine-Gun Hand..."

July 22, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Ten Years On, Bolivarian Revolution at Crossroads

Patrick Cockburn
Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal

Soldz, Olson, Reisner Arrigo and Welch
Torture After Dark

Moshe Adler
Everyone Must Share, Not Just Charlie Rangel

Martha Rosenberg
Protecting Bones from Drugs that Protect Bones

Dan Bacher
Bechtel and the Big Dig

Harvey Wasserman
Is Gore Inching Toward Solartopia?

Anthony Papa
A Slugger's Drug Redemption

Binoy Kampmark
Mad Over Benedict

Website of the Day
Hiroshima: A-Bombed Objects

July 21, 2008

Ishmael Reed
Remnick's Latest Blunder

Mike Whitney
The Democrats are the Real Problem

Andy Worthington
Dictatorial Powers Upheld: the Meaning of the Al-Marri Decision

Scott Pellegrino
Should "Meet the Press" Desegregate?

John Ross
McCain Crosses the Border, Gets No Satisfaction

Robert Weitzel
Blowback Through the Looking Glass

Mike Stark
I was Spied on by the Maryland Police

Website of the Day
Pinky Solves the Illegal Immigration Crisis

July 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
It's a Dull Race

Jeffrey St. Clair
How to Beat a Mining Company: Why a Gold Goliath Threw in the Towel

Dave Lindorff
I Was a Victim of the TSA

Saul Landau
Obits for Opposites: Carlin and Helms

Ron Jacobs
Why Afghanistan is Not the Good War

Uri Avnery
Different Planet:the Israel / Hezbollah Prisoner Swap

Neve Gordon
The Untold Story of Ni'lin

Roane Carey
Dr. Benny and Mr. Morris

Robert Fantina
Ashcroft, Torture and the U. S.

Christopher Brauchli
The General Lied

Fred Gardner
Cannabinoid Researchers Won’t Take the High Road

David Macaray
Labor Unions and the Courts

Richard L. Hutto
The Ecology of Severely Burned Forests

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Mother's Milk of Politics Turns Sour

Ronnie Cummins
Netroots Nation or Nation of Sheep?

David Yearsley
Opera and Globalization

Alison McKenna
A Close Call for Medicare

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight Ascends

Poets' Basement
Ko Un

Website of the Day
What If Edward Said Had Told This Joke?

July 18, 2008

Corey D. B. Walker
A Kinder, Gentler Imperialism?

Mike Whitney
Swan Song for Fanny Mae

Robert Bryce
Iran Rising

Mike Roselle
Ed's Chicken: Fighting King Coal in Appalachia

Bouthaina Shaaban
U. S. to Mandela: Happy 90th and You're No Longer a Terrorist

Eve Spangler
The Deaths of Children

Website of the Day
Lowbagger Needs Your Help

July 17, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Airport Gestapo

James G. Abourezk
Big Oil's Raid on the Great Plains

Ralph Nader
D. C. Socialists Save Crashing Capitalists

Allan J. Lichtman
Conservative Denial

Andy Worthington"Screwed Up" and"Abused": Omar Khadr's Interrogations at Gitmo

Ronnie Cummins
Move Over MoveOn

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

Paul Craig Roberts
War Crimes Paradox

Conn Hallinan
To the Edge in the Middle East

Dave Lindorff
Torture for Torturers?

William S. Lind
Running the Narrows in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Sweepstakes Politics

Website of the Day
History of Iraqi Art

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U. S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U. S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on"Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be"Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U. S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N. D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on"Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

August 1, 2008

The Boot McCain Puts in His Mouth

McCain's Mad Dog Advisor Max Boot

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

While most all of Bush’s neo-conservatives have been discredited, a new generation of imperialist cheerleaders stands to grasp the reins of foreign policy in the event that John McCain wins the November election.  One up and coming hopeful is Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an informal adviser to the Arizona Senator’s campaign.

I first became aware of Boot as a college undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the late 1980s.  At that time, Boot was a columnist for the campus newspaper, The Daily Californian.  While I don’t recall the exact content of his articles, Boot’s tone stuck in my mind.  Haughty and dismissive, Boot seemed to relish his status as a right winger crusading against the excesses of the local radical scene.

A history major like myself, Boot and I wound up in the same seminar in senior year.  The class, which was taught by German Fulbright scholar Nikolaus Hohmann, covered modern European history.  I didn’t speak to Boot over the course of the semester, though I do recall listening to him once as he read from a paper he had written.  As I recall, Boot’s essay concerned Otto von Bismarck and realpolitik in 19th century Prussia. Boot’s paper was well researched but uncritical towards Bismarck’s policies.  I couldn’t help thinking, listening to Boot from the other end of the seminar table, that somehow my classmate admired the Iron Chancellor.

In light of his student journalism and my own personal observations of him in class, I wasn’t too surprised to hear that Boot later made a career out of espousing expansionist U.S. foreign policy abroad.  Apparently Boot’s time at university didn’t make much of a political impact on my former classmate.  Indeed he later remarked that his “core beliefs about liberty and foreign policy and defense” were “not shaken” as a result of his time at Berkeley.

After graduating from school, Boot went on to work as a writer and feature editor at the Wall Street Journal and in 2002 published The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.  In a New York Times book review, Atlantic Monthly books editor Benjamin Schwartz wrote that Boot was “at pains to portray American actions and motives in the best possible light (he's particularly generous in his depiction of what can most charitably be described as America's brutal conduct in the Philippines insurrection [during the Spanish-American War]).”  Boot’s discussion of U.S. overseas counter-insurgency wars served to buttress the author’s overall argument: that America had a “moral-and what he characterizes as an imperial -- duty to act as a global gendarme.”
 
In light of his historical writings justifying U.S. imperialism, it’s perhaps not surprising that Boot would later help to make the case for war in Iraq.  In October, 2002 with the Bush White House spin machine now going into overdrive Boot wrote a column for the New York Times entitled “Who Says We Never Strike First?”  In it, Boot sought to justify pre-emptive invasion by citing previous imperialist misdeeds.
 
“It is certainly true that pre-emptive wars are not the norm in history,” he remarked.  “But they are not as rare as President Bush's critics suggest. The president's pre-emption doctrine -- and its first application, in Iraq -- is firmly rooted in centuries of tradition.  Although England [which attacked the Spanish Armada], Prussia [which invaded Saxony and Bohemia in 1756 when assailed by France, Russia and Austria] and Israel [in the 1967 war] all technically struck the first blow, the consensus is that they were smart to do so.”  Boot did not define who constituted the vital “consensus” on these weighty historical matters (surely not the Palestinians).

It’s a sorry reflection on the New York Times that the paper could publish such a nakedly crude endorsement of imperialism, though perhaps not too surprising given the propagandistic reporting of Judith Miller who peddled the administration’s faulty intelligence claims on Iraq.
 
But Boot was just getting warmed up.  Writing in the New York Times in February, 2003 Boot sarcastically derided the French and Germans for believing that the U.S. sought to invade Iraq in order to control Middle Eastern oil.  Boot took comfort in the fact that “Although Americans are divided on the wisdom of an invasion, only 22 percent of us subscribe to the cynical view that it's just about oil.” 

Fundamentally, Boot argued, the problem with the Europeans was that they had once pursued imperialist policies “driven by avarice.”  To be sure, Boot concedes, in the understatement of the century, “Nobody would claim that America's global intentions have always been entirely pure.”  On the other hand, U.S. foreign policy “from the Barbary war to Kosovo -- has usually had a strain of idealism at which the cynical Europeans have scoffed.”
      
Making the case for Rumsfeld and Bush’s propaganda machine, Boot then asserted “Oil revenues make Saddam Hussein much more dangerous than your run-of-the-mill dictator, because they give him the ability to build not only palaces but also top-of-the-line weapons of mass destruction.”   Ending his column with his typical heavy-handed flourish Boot wrote “In the case of Iraq, they [the Europeans] just can't seem to accept that we might be acting for, say, the general safety and security of the world.  After more than 200 years, Europe still hasn't figured out what makes America tick.”

Fortunately, many people at the time saw through Boot’s lies and bogus historical claims. In cities across the country, demonstrators took to the streets to counter the imminent U.S. attack on Iraq.  Not surprisingly Boot had nothing but contempt for the protesters.  In a Weekly Standard column dripping with sarcasm, Boot returned to Berkeley to assess the state of student activism at his alma mater.
 
Here’s an excerpt from Boot’s column: “anti war crowds are taking to the streets in London and Madrid, Washington, and San Francisco. But what about Ground Zero? No, not New York. That's Ground Zero for terrorism. I mean Berkeley, California, Ground Zero for antiwar sentiment.”

Continuing on in his usual haughty tone, Boot wrote “Ever since Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement electrified the nation in 1964, this city has been famous for its protests against anything and everything. Berkeleyites have marched against apartheid, the contras, sweatshops, plans to build on People's Park, and CIA plots to water down their lattés. Okay, I made that one up.”

Boot then took a stroll down memory lane, heading to Sproul Plaza.  Surveying the landscape, he spotted “a grungy, middle-aged man sat behind a folding table with a large sign that said ‘F— Bush, F— the War.’ The students hurrying by didn't pay him much heed; they're used to the crazy street people who populate the area, some of whom look like they haven't bathed since I graduated more than a decade ago. The times, they are a'changing here in Berzerkeley.”

Proceeding to Berkeley’s Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, Boot delivered some lectures on “liberal imperialism.”  “I expected that such hawkish talk would draw hordes of antiwar protesters, like Deadheads to marijuana brownies,” Boot wrote.   “Just a decade ago, conservative speakers routinely were booed down and sent packing.  Not this time.” 

Boot then declares smugly, “My feelings were hurt. Was I too unimportant to draw protests? But then I thought back to the first Gulf War, when as an insignificant columnist for The Daily Californian I had the campus in an uproar with my articles supporting American military action.”

Boot then pronounced “I almost miss the old Berkeley, now as dated as a Jefferson Airplane LP, though it left some tasty relics behind. For instance, there's Alice Waters's world-class restaurant, Chez Panisse, where I ordered dinner off ‘A Menu for Peace.’ Well, if consuming $8.75 baked Sonoma goat cheese and $18.75 fried quail constitutes a protest against the war, then sign me up. And don't forget the groovy Zinfandel.”

It seems nothing can shake Boot’s “core belief” system.  In a New York Times column appearing in November, 2003 Boot lamented the fact that the U.S. was getting bogged down against the Baathists and jihadis in Iraq.  Boot’s solution to the escalating violence was not to turn the country over to Iraqis but to prosecute a different kind of counter-insurgency war.

Astonishingly, Boot cited the Phoenix program in Vietnam as a worthy plan for U.S. forces to emulate in Iraq.  What proved most “effective “in Vietnam, Boot writes, “were not large conventional operations but targeted counterinsurgency programs like Phoenix.”  True, Boot concedes, there were assassinations under the Phoenix program, but “far more cadres were captured (33,000) or induced to defect under Phoenix (22,000) than were killed (26,000).”  Boot chirped, “We need better intelligence to identify and neutralize Iraqi insurgents, as in Phoenix.” Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, pointed out the realities of programs like Phoenix.  Writing in the Times, Roth remarked in a letter to the editor that “Whether occupying forces themselves use torture, ‘disappearance’ or summary execution -- the usual dirty war tools -- or subcontract these tasks to Iraqis, international law flatly prohibits such brutality. A wink and a nod from United States troops would be no defense to American criminal liability. Brutality…is a recipe for the resentment on which insurgency thrives. That is a lesson from Vietnam that Mr. Boot does not mention.”

Boot continues to make the case for U.S. imperialism on the Lehrer News Hour and on the pages of conservative papers across the country.  He’s just waiting for John McCain to win in November.  With a Republican in the White House, Boot can help to maintain forces in Iraq “for a hundred or a thousand years” if necessary. No one’s going to get in his way, least of all those pesky radicals from Berkeley. 

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008)

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