Features

Had they survived, the Oslo accords would have turned 10 this year. Instead, a disheartening record of on-again, off-again negotiations has been followed by three years of deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Year after year, the Oslo approach and variants thereof have been tried, always with the same dispiriting results: agreements not reached or […]

Few Americans know that we have two armies and that both are acknowledged by the United States Constitution. One is the military that we know best, the regulars: the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy, joined later in history by the Marines and the Air Force. The other, originally known as the militia, is now […]

Since coming into office, the Bush administration has radically altered national-security and military doctrines that had successfully safeguarded American interests for more than 50 years. The changes, as the current crisis in Iraq demonstrates, have actually undermined U.S. security. George W. Bush’s new national-security doctrine, officially promulgated on Sept. 17, 2001, discards the long-standing American […]

George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. In less than three years in office, he has discarded or redefined many of the key principles governing how America engages the world. He has relied on the unilateral exercise of American power rather than on international law and institutions to get his way. […]

A very happy group of men convened at the White House on Sept. 4, 1953, to hear a cloak-and-dagger story that would resonate through all of subsequent American history. Two weeks before, the Central Intelligence Agency had overthrown Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran. It was the first time the CIA had deposed a foreign […]

The smallest crowd of Howard Dean’s Sleepless Summer Tour in late August consisted of about 450 people. They’d gathered at the airport outside Boise, Idaho, on a splash of tarmac surrounded by sparkling, cloudless sky. There, where the crumpled, arid desert gave way to the pine-covered Boise Foothills, amid the mingled scents of jet fuel […]

Throughout American history, the Senate — where small and conservative states have disproportionate weight and where rules allow one senator to block key legislation — has far more often been a force for reaction than for progress. But these are unusual times, and with an ideologically rigid administration and scores of zealots in the House, […]

When Carol Moseley Braun made her formal announcement on Sept. 22 that she was running for president, newspaper stories on the senator-turned-ambassador ran with a paragraph reminding readers that the announcement came on the heels of twin endorsements by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Women’s Political Caucus. The news of that […]

So, is it a wrap for progressive California? According to many political observers, largely but not entirely on the right, the recall of Democrat Gray Davis and the election of Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger mark a tectonic shift in California’s political makeup. Over the past decade, as Latinos have voted in greater numbers and independents have […]

In the context of the democratic primary, retired Gen. Wesley Clark’s campaign seems less like Sherman’s quick and decisive March to the Sea and more like Grant’s shaky, protracted offensive against Vicksburg. Initially some were heralding the general’s candidacy as the beginning of the end for an already-peaked former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.) and an […]