As we enter Christians’ Holy Week, which culminates with Easter, the day of Jesus’ resurrection and the beginning of God’s new creation, it’s an apt time to reflect on Christ’s lasting teachings. Prior to Jesus’ incarnation, God had directly communicated His Law through the Ten Commandments. Number 6 reads “Thou shalt not kill.” Of...
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If the Obama administration steps up involvement in Syria and sends boots on the ground to support the rebels, Washington will be siding with forces reportedly responsible for this: A rebel mortar attack on a school outside Damascus on Tuesday killed 29 people, Syria’s state news agency SANA said. According to the report, 28...
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In last night’s presidential debate, both candidates claimed to run on a promise of peace and against the policies of George W. Bush. Obama criticized the Republicans for going to war in Iraq and took Romney to task for his bellicose rhetoric. A bit more surprisingly, Romney congratulated Obama on executing bin Laden but...
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I’m going to keep saying it until the American-Israeli threats against Iran stop. Reuters reports what everyone should know: The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from...
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In light of Obama’s “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Order, I’d like to comment on a troubling trend I’ve seen in American discourse about war since 9/11. From left to right, it was often said that the U.S. government’s interventions abroad as well as its activities at home did not rise to the level of...
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In 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration made its case for war with Iraq. There were assertions given about Saddam’s maintenance of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. What was never said explicitly, however, was that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Yet by late 2003, seventy percent of polled Americans thought...
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December 7 marks seventy years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This incident finally broke the non-interventionist spirit that had characterized the American people—an attitude that was informed by the utter failure of the United States’s very costly entry in the last world war to bring about the democracy that was promised of...
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Ivan Eland‘s new book, No War for Oil: U.S. Dependency and the Middle East, challenges a long-standing pillar of U.S. foreign policy—the belief that U.S. national and economic security require that American taxpayers fund the military protection of oil-rich foreign lands, especially in the Persian Gulf. According to Eland, senior fellow at the Independent...
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Since we’re heading into the second decade of the war on terrorism, I thought I’d add to Mary’s fine recommendation that everyone read Crisis and Leviathan. I can’t strongly enough echo her suggestion, and it’s a perfect one for this time in particular. But I fear this particular crisis, to say nothing of its...
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There is no joy in saying “We told you so,” when the dangers against which we warned turned out to have been realized, and, indeed exceeded, so far beyond anyone’s imagining. As longtime observers of political economy, and the lessons so succinctly laid out by Robert Higgs in his masterful Crisis and Leviathan, we...
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