Roundup: Media's Take

Maureen Dowd: Gallipoli with the Murdochs

Maureen Dowd is a columnist for the NYT. As a young journalist during World War I, Keith Murdoch became famous when he visited the Gallipoli campaign and broke censorship rules barring any criticism of the conduct of war or tally of casualty figures. He wrote home to the Australian prime minister, a family friend, and he sneaked off to London to blow the whistle there — in a jingoistic, exaggerated way his son would appreciate — about the incompetence of the British command in charge of the decimation in Turkey, where 120,000 soldiers died, including 8,500 Australian infantry and light horsemen.Old posters for the brilliant 1981 movie “Gallipoli” give Rupert Murdoch a producing credit. He financed half the movie to show the world why his father had been right.Rupert wanted to avenge his father with the British establishment, and what sweeter way to do it than to take over the British press, including its most prestigious broadsheet, The Times of London, and help decide who runs Britain.

Pankaj Mishra: Today Maoism Speaks to the World's Poor More Fluently than Ever

Pankaj Mishra is an Indian author and writer of literary and political essays. His book The Awakening in Asia and the Remaking of the Modern World will be published later this year. In 2008 in Beijing I met the Chinese novelist Yu Hua shortly after he had returned from Nepal, where revolutionaries inspired by Mao Zedong had overthrown a monarchy. A young Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, Yu Hua, like many Chinese of his generation, has extremely complicated views on Mao. Still, he was astonished, he told me, to see Nepalese Maoists singing songs from his Maoist youth – sentiments he never expected to hear again in his lifetime. In fact, the success of Nepalese Maoists is only one sign of the "return" of Mao.

George Grant: Is Britain's Decline and Fall Unavoidable?

George Grant is the Director for Global Security at The Henry Jackson Society and co-author with Bernard Jenkin MP of The Tipping Point: British National Strategy and the UK’s Future World Role, released in July 2011. The United Kingdom in 2011 is at a strategic tipping point. We have to decide whether we wish to remain a global power, with a global role, or whether we are to accept the supposedly inevitable and decline to the status of a middling European power with only a regional one. Many believe that the UK has already arrived at the latter destination. They are wrong. In spite of our small size, the UK retains a number of significant comparative advantages over other medium-sized states that continue to afford us a unique and important place in the modern world. These include the status of English as the global language of business and diplomacy, our permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the international predominance of English common law and the unique set of diplomatic and trading relationships afforded by the Commonwealth.

Paul Begala: I Miss Bob Dole

Paul Begala was an advisor to President Clinton.The government shutdown of 1995, dramatic though it was for the country and damaging though it was to the GOP, looks like the height of Republican reasonableness compared with today’s brinksmanship over default.So much is different from 1995. The economy is weaker. Experts say the economic consequences of default may far exceed a mere government shutdown. The Republicans are much more, shall we say, ideologically inspired—with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in constant, furious competition to prove who’s more devoted to the Tea Party’s extremist position that the federal government must never, under any circumstances, increase federal revenue by so much as a penny, no matter how catastrophic the consequences. But perhaps the biggest difference is that Bob Dole isn’t in the room.

Joshua Keating: A Wilsonian Move by the White House in Libya

Joshua Keating blogs for Foreign Policy.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that the United States is will recognize Libya's Transitional National Council as the country's "legitimate governing authority". This comes as something of a surprise, as the normal U.S. policy is to recognize whichever government is in de facto power of a country. Despite recent rebel gains, that's probably still Muammar al-Qaddafi, entrenched behind his forces in Tripoli. This stance goes back as far as the French Revolution, when the U.S. recognized the country's new Republican government while Europe's monarchies still regarded it as illegitimate....

Clark Judge: The Debt Battle Is Good for the GOP

Mr. Judge is managing director of the White House Writers Group and chairman of Pacific Research Institute. He was a speechwriter and special assistant to the president during the Reagan administration.Watching the debt-ceiling battle on Capitol Hill—and even more the battle between the tea party young guns and older House Republicans—feels like déjà vu, or, rather, 1995, all over again....Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich takes criticism to this day for surrendering too quickly in his face-off with President Bill Clinton. Exhibit One has been the incredulous jubilation of Clinton staffers when Mr. Gingrich accepted an offer they regarded as the start of serious bargaining, not the end. But the speaker was dealing with what I saw in that car ride up the Hill—a majority that could not hold. Too many members were melting under White House and, even more, media heat. Raising the white flag reflected no more than a bow to reality. The GOP retreat could be orderly or chaotic. Mr. Gingrich prevented panic.

Joshua E. Keating: A Wilsonian Move by the White House in Libya

Joshua E. Keating is associate editor at Foreign Policy. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced today that the United States is will recognize Libya's Transitional National Council as the country's "legitimate governing authority". This comes as something of a surprise, as the normal U.S. policy is to recognize whichever government is in de facto power of a country. Despite recent rebel gains, that's probably still Muammar al-Qaddafi, entrenched behind his forces in Tripoli.

Paul Krugman and Robin Wells: The Busts Keep Getting Bigger: Why?

Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times and Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton. He was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. Robin Wells is the coauthor, along with Krugman, of Economics and has taught economics at Princeton, Stanford Business School, and MIT.
Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present by Jeff Madrick Knopf, 464 pp., $30.00

John McWhorter: A Semi-Defense of the Infamous Slavery Passage in the ‘Marriage Vow’ Pledge

John McWhorter is a contributing editor for The New Republic.Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum may have a number of things to be embarrassed about. However, supporting an observation that there were more two-parent black families during slavery than there are today is not one of them.

Yevgeny Bazhanov: China Coming Full Circle as a Superpower

Yevgeny Bazhanov is vice chancellor of research and international relations at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. In the fifth century B.C., Chinese philosopher Shan Yan developed a new form of propaganda based on the following notion: When a powerful nation goes to war, it unifies the people and makes the state even stronger. When a strong country is at peace, the people become relaxed, and it loses its edge. More than 2,000 years later, U.S. political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote in his 2004 book, “Who We Are: The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” that as long as Americans believe their country is at risk, national identity is strong. But once this sense of danger dulls, so does the identity. Modern politicians are often tempted to strengthen the state and personal power by exploiting and manipulating the existence of external threats. This applies to democracies as well as autocracies. In the United States, for example, some Republicans have accused U.S.

Harry Harding: Beijing through Rose-Colored Glasses ... Why Democracy Cannot Tame China

Harry Harding is an American political scientist specializing in Chinese politics and foreign affairs. He is the founding the dean of the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, and had previously served as dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs. There is an increasing drumbeat for pushing a democratic project in China to fend off its inevitable aggressive authoritarian ambitions. There is little doubt that China will wish to become a preeminent power in its own hemisphere. But the argument that creating a pluralistic, democratic system in China will sideline a coming clash between Washington and Beijing is overly optimistic. Certainly it is true that China and the United States will be competitors, even rivals, not only because one is an established power and the other a rising power, but also because their political systems embody very different ideologies.

Justin Elliott: Rick Perry's Confederate past

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.comRick Perry made national headlines in 2009 when, during a speech to a Tea Party group, he floated the possibility that Texas could secede from the union. But the governor's substantive ties to the neo-Confederate movement may be deeper than previously known.A 1998 voting guide published by a leading neo-Confederate group and obtained by Salon not only endorses Perry for lieutenant governor but also describes him as "a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans." Perry's office did not respond to a request for comment about the governor's possible membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Lee Smith: Obama's Middle East Policy a Legacy of the Collapse of European Colonial Empires

Lee Smith, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, is the author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations.Last week President Barack Obama’s administration announced that it was going to engage Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. As the White House explained, American officials from previous administrations have already met with members of the prominent Islamist party—a party that, it’s worth noting, has been resolutely anti-Western and viciously anti-Zionist since its founding in 1928. Obama administration officials said that they wish to expand contacts with the Brotherhood because they perceive, correctly, that the movement is likely to become an even bigger factor in regional politics.The Arab Spring surely has something to do with Obama’s new approach, but it is hardly the sole or even the main cause of a shift that has turned U.S. Middle East policy on its head. So, what is?...

Gordon Brown: History will charge Europe's leaders with West's decline

Gordon Brown is the former prime minister of Great Britain.When the history of the 21st century is written, people will rightly ask why it was that Europe was found wanting during its most intractable economic crisis.They will ask why Europe slept as an undercapitalized banking system floundered, unemployment remained unacceptably high, and the continent’s growth and competitiveness plummeted.Worse still, if a reconstruction plan does not come soon, Europe’s leaders will be charged with “the decline of the West” and then face accusations for being, in the words of Winston Churchill about the 1930s, “resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity and all-powerful for impotence.”

Ian Buruma: The Majority is Not Always Right; Europe Must Accept Turkey

Ian Buruma is a professor of democracy and human rights at Bard College, and the author of Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org). Most European citizens (for example, more than 60 percent in France and Germany) believe that Turkey should not become part of the European Union.

Alexei Bayer: A Tale of 2 Industrial Declines

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.  At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, some political scientists predicted that the Soviet Union and the United States would eventually come to resemble each other. The role of the state in capitalism was expanding, while communism seemed to be mellowing and liberalizing. Strangely, Russia and the United States did become more similar, but only after the end of the Cold War — and in ways those pundits would have probably found disturbing. Take, for example, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, once home of one of the world’s largest steel mills. In its heyday, Bethlehem Steel employed more than 300,000 people. It helped the United States win World War II, producing armor for some 400 Navy ships. It was what made the United States a leading global economic power and marvel of civil engineering. It made steel beams for the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. But the company went bankrupt in the 1990s and closed in 2003.

Leonard Cassuto: Faculty Immobility in the New Economy

Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University....Unlike baseball players, professors did not gain the right to become free agents at a specific moment. The change occurred over time, and resulted above all from the 20th-century growth of the American academic enterprise. In 1900 only about 2 percent of Americans attended college, and only 1 percent held a college degree. But education at all levels expanded rapidly in the United States in the early 20th century. About one-fifth of all people born in 1940 would go on to finish four years of college, a twentyfold increase.

Dennis Prager: South Korea is the Most Ungrateful Country in the World

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com....For decades, there have been anti–U.S. demonstrations in South Korea. And each time I wonder the same thing: Do these people have any idea what that living hell known as North Korea is like? Do these people understand that the United States is the reason they are so free and prosperous, completely unlike their fellow Koreans who had the horrible luck not to be liberated by America? Do these people know how many Americans died to enable them to be free?Whenever I confront someone who claims that America’s wars abroad were fought for economic gain or to extend its alleged imperialist empire, I ask the person about the Korean War: What imperialist or economic reasons were there to fight in that country?

Rebekah Sanderlin: Longer Wars, Fewer Medals of Honor

Rebekah Sanderlin is an Army wife, a mother of two and a freelance writer and editor who lives near Fort Bragg, N.C. She is on the National Advisory Board for Blue Star Families and blogs about military family life at rebekahsanderlin.com.Today, President Obama will award the Medal of Honor, the United States’ highest military decoration, to Sgt. First Class Leroy A. Petry, who lost his right hand in 2008 while tossing away an insurgent grenade that could have killed two of his fellow Army Rangers in Afghanistan. It will be only the second time that the medal has been given to a living soldier in the nearly 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, and only the ninth time the medal has been awarded to an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran.

Joe Nocera: Chernobyl’s Lingering Scars

Joe Nocera is a columnist for the NYT.Oddly enough, the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in history has been marked by journalism about animals. Two magazines, Wired and Harper’s, have published lengthy articles about the rebirth of animal life in the so-called exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.All well and good, but given the recent Japanese nuclear accident, wouldn’t you rather know what has happened to the, er, people who were affected by Chernobyl?I know such a person. Her name is Maria Gawronska. Thirty years old, smart and attractive, Maria is a native of Poland who moved to New York in 2004. I met her through my fiancée maybe four years ago. She always wore a turtleneck, even on the hottest of days.