The New Republic

July 29, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, Pakistan's interior minister, announced READ MORE >>

Martinsburg, West Virginia READ MORE >>

Late last month, President Bush lost his greatest advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even with the president on the critical question of whom voters trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely as a result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq, Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive 21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even as the president's poll numbers were sliding, his READ MORE >>

In a speech in Hanover, New Hampshire, on January 24, John Kerry chided Democrats for "looking South," for thinking states on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line could bring them the presidency. But fortunately, in choosing North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his running mate, Kerry has done exactly that. More important than the political skill Edwards brings to the ticket is the opportunity he offers to keep the Democratic flame lit in Dixie--a strategic necessity if Democrats ever want to become the majority party READ MORE >>

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Since the joint congressional committee investigating September 11 issued a censored version of its report on July 24, there's been considerable speculation about the 28 pages blanked out from the section entitled "Certain Sensitive National Security Matters." The section cites "specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers," which most commentators have interpreted to mean Saudi contributions to Al Qaeda-linked charities. READ MORE >>

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History is not physics. Studying the past does not yield objective laws that can unerringly predict the course of events. But peoples do draw lessons from history and change their behavior accordingly. Western European countries, for instance, took the experience of two world wars as reason to change radically their relations with one another. The United States took the experience of the Great Depression as reason to alter the relationship between government and the market.Historical lessons can also be unlearned or forgotten. The New Left READ MORE >>

Believe it or not, the United States is on the verge of another donnybrook at the U.N. Security Councilthis time over whether to extend the oil- for-food program in Iraq, which expires on June 3. The Bush administration is divided over what to recommend, but conservatives have been strongly urging the Bushies to let the program die. In the last month, Rush Limbaugh, William Safire, Steve Forbes, Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and various members of the READ MORE >>

Ask pessimists why Iraq will never be a democracy, and they most often cite its ethnic and religious divisions. A post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, they warn, could devolve into an Arab Yugoslavia, with open warfare between the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, and with Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia taking sides. Optimists like The New Republic's Lawrence F. Kaplan respond that a federation could manage these divisions. Except that federations don't work well in countries where mineral wealth is concentrated in potentially secessionist READ MORE >>