by Pat Ryan Like most things in the Middle East the impending train wreck in the Persian Gulf that is...
Indifference to global developments is not a new phenomenon in America’s public life. In recounting the story of the Council on Foreign Relations, Colorado College political scientist David Hendrickson, writing in “Foreign Affairs,” noted the relative ignorance among officials and the public about the world. Of the former he said the U.S. State Department, in the wake of World War I, lacked the “detailed knowledge of European conditions that would be required for redrawing, as fairly as could be done, the map of the world.” Of the citizenry of the day, he said “American domestic opinion was returning with a vengeance, to the insular habits that had long characterized it,” citing as evidence the “Philadelphia Record’s” comment in 1928 that, “The American people don’t give a hoot in a rainbarrel who controls north China.”
The tide of revolt that has swept the Arab World in the last two months has been stunning in scope, intensity and importance. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf autocratic regimes have been shaken and some have fallen in an historic reformation of how Arab countries will manage their affairs. This transformation, dubbed an “Arab Spring,” has also stunned foreign policy making institutions in the United States as America’s values and interests are increasingly at odds with each other.
Thanks to everyone who sent feedback about this week's column, "Memo to Glenn Beck and Fox News Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch." In it I mentioned that President Obama was giving Memorial Day remarks at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois after Mr. Beck and others on Fox News (and elsewhere) asserted that President Obama was skipping the Arlington National Cemetery observance at the Tomb of the Unknowns in favor of a "vacation." [Click on this post title to see the video.]
I did go to Brooklyn Technical High School but it didn’t stick. In other words I am not a rocket...
by Pat Ryan “Certain” was certainly an unambiguous answer to a question, about the likelihood the United States would be...
The “Doomsday Clock” is not really a timepiece. It is a metaphor marking civilization’s proximity to a self-induced conclusion adopted by scientists at the dawn of the Cold War. In 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the clock’s makers, set the time at 11:53 p.m., reflecting the danger of nuclear weapons, the sole province, at the time, of the United States. By 1953 with the introduction of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union and testing of more powerful thermonuclear weapons by both America and Russia, the clock nudged to just two minutes away from humanity’s midnight.
This week I wrote about politicians’ pandering to voters over possible fears of Islam — opposing mosques and Islamic community...
The newest addition to the seemingly unending collection of stories that you just can’t make up is the strange case of General Stanley McChrystal, who until this week was the top military man in Afghanistan directing American and NATO combat forces. The general handed his commander in chief a resignation on Wednesday after the public airing of disparaging comments aimed at American civilian leaders. But there is the unanswered question of why he joined a fight he was sure to lose, and a particularly strange part of the story is the battlefield he chose for the losing campaign. Rolling Stone.
As one of the many Americans who value the real Memorial Day as a very special occasion and who is a regular visitor to family and friends whose address is Arlington Cemetery, it is offensive that the disturbing trend of divisive dialogue in our country’s political life has punctured what should be an off-limits zone. Fox News, keep your hands off our Memorial Day. We want it back.