IN THE April 20, 2009, ISSUE
The New Afghan War
Kabul – Gov. Mohammed Halim Fi-dai is agitated. He’s holding forth in his office in Wardak province a half-hour or so outside of Kabul, before an audience of U.S. military ...
Also In This Issue
Articles
A Good Plan in Africa
Nairobi, Kenya –
Democracy promotion is and probably always will be America’s default foreign policy, embarked upon when no other controlling interests prevail. This is so for two reasons: one philosophical, ...
Tip Jar Nation
Here’s what just happened.
I’m in a hip coffee shop on Valencia Street in San Francisco. It’s early afternoon, and I order a double espresso. I hand over the money and ...
How We Fight
The Republican party is now consolidated in its opposition to President Obama. Most of its members have decided that his central political project is to bring social democracy to these ...
Robbing Bismarck to Pay Boston
On June 6, 2008, the U.S. Senate rejected a motion to end debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would have established a “cap and trade” (CAT) system to ...
Green Bubbles Bursting
With the selling of President Obama’s economic agenda now in full gear, this is a good time to take stock of his energy plans against the background of energy trends ...
Features
City Desk: Open City
The city is full of windows. More buildings, more stories, more rooms equal more panes of glass. The windowless room is a horror, which the laws aimed to banish from ...
The New Afghan War
Kabul – Gov. Mohammed Halim Fi-dai is agitated. He’s holding forth in his office in Wardak province a half-hour or so outside of Kabul, before an audience of U.S. military ...
The Least-Bad Option
Peter Wallison speaks with the confidence of a man who has a track record of making accurate predictions. Ten years ago, when Fannie Mae decided to loosen its underwriting standards ...
Beyond Terrorism
‘Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” This is ...
Books, Arts & Manners
By the Waters…
Richard John Neuhaus, recently departed and greatly missed, enjoyed four overlapping careers in the American public square. Taken on its own, each would have been sufficient to guarantee the fame ...
Paleo Khan
In The Dangerous Book for Boys, the name Genghis Khan appears precisely once. It’s a passing reference, toward the end, in a section on the Great Wall of China. Yet ...
On Our Side
William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a successful series of espionage thrillers about Blackford Oakes, a CIA agent. Now National Review editor Rich Lowry (together with his friend Keith Korman) has ...
Shelf Life
David Bentley Hart is one of the most valuable theologians of recent years; his 2003 book The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth is a masterpiece. The ...
Sections
Letters
Keeping the Peace
In the April 6 issue’s “The Week,” you ran a paragraph about the recent attacks on soldiers and policemen in Northern Ireland. The piece unfairly and incorrectly stated ...
The Week
‐ Carter-era Fiat: Fix It Again, Tony. Obama-era Fiat: Fix It Again, Taxpayers.
‐ “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors,” Charles Wilson, the company’s president in the ...
The Bent Pin
Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure
As the Obama administration enters its third month I keep thinking of an old rhyming joke. It’s about an absent-minded girl who, being incapable of ...
The Long View
A Twitter-istory of the World . . .
Spent all a.m. trying to walk upright. Any1 in the Twitterverse had success at that yet? Also: what’s the 411 in re: hunting, ...
Poetry
The scarlet torches of crape myrtle
Crowd my window, kindled by the sun.
Their thick foliage blocks my view
Of all but the treetops and the sky.
I enjoy the flower-clusters, and butterflies
That visit ...
Happy Warrior
Closing Up Shop
As National Review’s in-house demography bore — oh, hang on, the self-deprecating “demography bore” shtick is getting even more boring than just boring on about demography . . ...