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May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: 'Noodles,' Asian style is a carb sub, sure. But they are also amazingly delicious and colorful

April 19, 2013

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: When violence seems the only answer

Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy

Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Harvard Health Letters: Can you die of a broken heart?

Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds

Nora Schultz: Oxytocin helps beat booze cravings

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: Middle Eastern cuisine meets Italian delicious with this lentil and eggplant pastitsio

April 17, 2013

Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom

Geoffrey Mohan: Can computers decode dreams? Researchers take a first step

Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 heart-healthy eating tips help cut saturated fat but not taste

Michael Craig Miller, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Told your child has sensory processing disorder? Seek a second opinion

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Corn and Curry Add Zing to Chilled Soup

April 15, 2013

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Death of Education?

Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral

Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators

Kristin Ohlson : The loneliest fight

The Kosher Gourmet by Dana Velden: A tasty, rich dish that hints at spring's arrival while still anchored in a favorite winter staple


Jewish World Review August 28, 2007 / 14 Elul, 5767

The trouble with George: He just doesn't get it

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | What's wrong with George W. Bush? Doesn't he know America has already been defeated in Iraq? Doesn't he realize that as a lame-duck president he's just conducting a holding operation? Doesn't the man keep up with the opinion polls? Hasn't he noticed the growing tide — the tidal wave, really — of anti-war sentiment? Shouldn't it have dawned on him even in his snug presidential cocoon that, at this low point in his presidency, there's no hope he'll regain the country's confidence? Doesn't he read The New York Times? Doesn't he listen to NPR?


As the gory pictures and sobering casualty counts continue to arrive from Iraq — and Afghanistan, too — this president has sunk almost as low in the polls as Harry Truman did during the last, grinding months of the Korean War.


Then, too, nobody who was anybody in the American establishment, or who hoped to be, could muster much hope for the American cause. How can George W. Bush ignore what is equally obvious today? Doesn't he know the war is lost — and has been lost for some time?


Apparently not. Because instead of throwing in the towel, the president showed up Wednesday in Kansas City to defend his views before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. You wouldn't call it a fighting speech like the ones an always-scrappy Harry Truman could be counted on to deliver — no matter what the crisis at hand. It was more like one of those Fireside Chats favored by FDR when the news was not the best, and the country hungered for hope.


This president, too, sounded resolute but thoughtful. He was taking the long view, maybe because the short one is so dismal. Which means he had recourse to history. That meant historical analogies, which, even when they are debatable, lend a certain perspective to an otherwise overwhelming present.


Our cause is hopeless, we're told, for the peoples of the Middle East are congenitally incapable of what we in the West think of as freedom. Liberty, it's explained, is a culturally determined quality, and it's futile to think it can ever take solid roots in those inhospitable climes. Does the argument sound familiar? It will to any student of modern American history. As critics of American foreign policy once warned us, democracy would never work in a country like Japan — or in South Korea, either.


To quote Mr. Bush: "Many times in the decades that followed World War II, American policy in Asia was dismissed as hopeless and naive. And when we listen to criticism of the difficult work our generation is undertaking in the Middle East today, we can hear the echoes of the same arguments made about the Far East years ago. In the aftermath of Japan's surrender, many thought it naive to help the Japanese transform themselves into a democracy. Then as now, the critics argued that some people were simply not fit for freedom."


Those critics included the usual phalanx of learned experts — the kind that still populate the diplomatic corps and academic halls, the Brent Scrowcrofts of their day. To quote Joseph C. Grew, the former American ambassador to Japan who was Harry Truman's under-secretary of state, "democracy in Japan would never work."


Well, we now know how expert the experts proved: Japan is not only a thriving democracy today, but one of our strongest allies. The jeremiads of the "realists" proved unrealistic.


Analogies are dangerous; they can be stretched too far. Japan is not in the Middle East. (You'll find my geography impeccable.) Nor is it Middle Eastern in culture or history or in much of any other way.


But this much the advance of freedom in the Land of the Rising Sun has in common with much of recent American history: The experts said it couldn't be done, whether it was winning the Cold War, ending the nuclear arms race, or freeing the captive nations in thrall to an Evil Empire.


Sure enough, the day after Mr. Bush's address to the veterans in Kansas City, The New York Times rolled out the usual bevy of experts to prove the president's historical analogies hopelessly flawed.


Anyway, what about Vietnam, that graveyard of American hopes? Wasn't our defeat there inevitable? Here, too, Mr. Bush challenged conventional assumptions. For history is made by men and the choices men make.


Those who believe we can simply pack up and leave Iraq, perhaps declaring peace with honor as Richard Nixon did in Vietnam, may reap much the same result that president did: defeat with dishonor. This president warned that the carnage and suffering that followed America's defeat in Vietnam might be duplicated on an even larger and more disastrous scale if the United States gave up in Iraq.


Even if this country could withdraw its forces from Iraq at once (a logistical impossibility) the threat from al-Qaida and its various allies would not cease. Indeed, it would be intensified, for Osama bin Laden and far-flung company could again use a failed state as a base of operations, as they once did Afghanistan. The result: Terrorism would be even more of a clear and present danger to our security.


Al-Qaida, and its associates and sympathizers throughout the Islamic world and beyond, understand very well what is at stake in Iraq and Afghanistan — and what a glorious opportunity an American defeat there would give them. Do we?


As the president noted Wednesday in Kansas City, we aren't engaged today in what one expert called a clash of civilizations; it's a struggle for civilization.

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JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.

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