Illustration by Phyllis Ma In late April 2004, the news that American soldiers had abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison arrived to the public in a string of shocking photos. The images that exposed the torture of prisoners were brutal and strange—and they were memorable, resistant to amnesia. On May 24, President Bush made a somber address about the news. He called the abuse “disgraceful conduct by a few American troops, who dishonored our co...
...one of the numerous aspects of political consultants’ strategy: namely, negative advertising. These “Made in the USA” manufacturers also operate far from home, and their track record is no ode to democratic “American” values. American political consultants have learned what corporate America learned thirty years ago: there are lucrative opportunities for growth offshore. During the off years in American elections, consultants disperse to almost e...
...nd to remain so for future generations. Despite the indelible images of that day, the greatest impact that 9/11 will have in the public memory may be its description in the pages of history textbooks. However, several recent American history textbooks fail to give a thorough explanation of the attacks. In two of the most widely used textbooks in America, Daniel Boorstin’s A History of the United States and Andrew Cayton’s Pathways to...
...ican and Democratic White House administrations and is destroying the United States from within through “civilization jihad.” Subsequently, with no credible evidence to back her claim, Bachmann’s accusations went unnoticed in American political circles. One month later, however, anti-Clinton demonstrators were accusing the Secretary of establishing a covert American-Brotherhood partnership and orchestrating a Brotherhood takeover of the White Hou...
These attacks prompted discussions of war between the two nations for the first time in almost fifty years, a war that would inevitably involve the 28,000 US soldiers stationed in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression. American policy experts have moved beyond the discussion of how many more soldiers or airplanes to give our Korean ally. Instead, there has been a serious conversation over whether our military presence in South Korea should...
Illustration by Esha Maharishi From the unannounced raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound that surprised and humiliated Pakistani officials, to a badly botched NATO operation that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, 2011 was not a great year for US-Pakistani relations. Many American policymakers are dismayed that neither friendship nor financial assistance has induced Pakistan to cooperate with American objectives in South Asia. Moreover, the strategic...
...o bolster its own number of international students. The untrammeled embrace of globalization is born of twin optimistic impulses (both explicitly present in Columbia’s report). On the presumptuous and self-congratulatory end, American universities ostensibly believe in their ability to change the world by enlightening the benighted children of dictatorial and underdeveloped nations. On the domestic sales call, universities would have Americans be...
In 2008, President Barack Obama had a clear idea for Latin American foreign policy. The Bush administration, distracted by events in the Middle East, had pursued a harmful hemispheric policy of blustering unilateralism and neglect; Obama, conversely, would pursue a “new partnership” with the Americas, one marked by cooperation and mutual interests. His subsequent election was heralded throughout Latin America as an opportunity to repair the dam...
...y as a black man has been questioned publicly by a number of people. The New York Daily News’ Stanley Crouch was vocal about doubting Obama’s black identity. “Obama did not—does not—share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves,” he said. And Debra Dickerson, writing for Salon.com, echoed Crouch, “Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, [Obama] steps into the benefits of black p...
...rence to Hegel. For Bush, the “visible direction” is, indeed, very visible: “We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe and liberated death camps and helped raise up democracies and faced down an evil empire,” he told the American people in his 2006 State of the Union Address. “Once again, we accept the call of history.” For all that the President invoked a glorious American past, however, he also spoke of a profound rupture in history. “On S...
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