GEORGE WILL

Opinion: Peace process mirage

JERUSALEM — Immersion in this region’s politics can convince those immersed that history is cyclical rather than linear — that it is not one thing after another but the same thing over and over. This passes for good news because things that do change, such as weapons, often make matters worse.

By George Will , August 26, 2010

Opinion: Israelis have never known peace, don’t need lectures

JERUSALEM — In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America’s eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders can not, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take “risks for peace.”

By George Will , August 19, 2010

Opinion: Israeli leader honors Churchill

JERUSALEM — Two photographs adorn the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike — in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies — than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.

By George Will , August 13, 2010

Opinion: GOP’s best option may be resident of Puerto Rico

WASHINGTON — A Republican governor — a very Republican governor — has an idea for solving one of his party’s conundrums. The party should listen to Luis Fortuno, the Reaganite who resides in Puerto Rico’s executive mansion.
Conservatives need a strategy for addressing the immigration issue without alienating America’s largest and most rapidly growing minority. Conservatives believe the southern border must be secured before there can be “comprehensive” immigration reform that resolves the status of the 11 million illegal immigrants. But this policy risks making Republicans seem hostile to Hispanics.

By George Will , July 22, 2010

Opinion: The high price of our hubris

The story mocks a cliche: As they were leaving the Garden of Eden, Adam said to Eve, “Darling, we live in an age of transition.” The first sentence of Barack Obama’s letter introducing his new strategic review says Americans have often coped with “moments of transition” such as today’s “time of sweeping change.” Such boilerplate makes one weep — and yearn for serious, meaning unsentimental, assessments of America’s foreign policy tradition.

By George Will , July 15, 2010

Opinion: Candidate nobody is not to be underestimated

LAS VEGAS — Sometimes provocative people become that way because they were provoked. Sharron Angle, 60, could be enjoying the 10 grandchildren she loves even more than her .44 magnum. Instead, she is the Republican nominee against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s quest for a fifth term as senator. Her campaign began, in a sense, three decades ago, when a judge annoyed her.

By George Will , July 08, 2010

Opinion: Some better questions for the Kagan hearings

Pursuant to Elena Kagan’s expressed enthusiasm for confirmation hearings that feature intellectual snap, crackle and pop, here are some questions the Senate Judiciary Committee could have elated her by asking:
• Regarding campaign finance “reforms”: If allowing the political class to write laws regulating the quantity, content and timing of speech about the political class is the solution, what is the problem?

By George Will , July 02, 2010

Opinion: Afghanistan policy is consumed by caution

WASHINGTON — Torrents of uninteresting mail inundate members of Congress, but occasionally there are riveting communications, such as a recent e-mail from a noncommissioned officer (NCO) serving in Afghanistan. He explains why the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are “too prohibitive for coalition forces to achieve sustained tactical successes.”

By George Will , June 24, 2010

Opinion: A war in fast forward

WASHINGTON — Evidently Hamid Karzai did not get the memo on terminology. U.S. military commanders have stopped using the word “operation” to describe the drive, now delayed, against the Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. This word connotes danger and stirs dread among the population, whose allegiance is the prize for which counterinsurgency is waged. But Afghanistan’s president, speaking there last Sunday, anticipated a “purification operation,” saying “this operation requires sacrifice.”

By George Will , June 17, 2010

Opinion: Americans being nibbled to death by facts

WASHINGTON — Concerning the job numbers from May, one can almost echo Henry James’ exclamation after examining letters pertaining to Lord Byron’s incest: “Nauseating, perhaps, but how quite inexpressibly significant.” Except that the May numbers’ significance can be expressed: A theory is being nibbled to death by facts.

By George Will , June 10, 2010

Opinion: Socialists always run out of others’ money

WASHINGTON — Today, as it has been for a century, American politics is an argument between two Princetonians — James Madison, class of 1771, and Woodrow Wilson, class of 1879. Madison was the most profound thinker among the Founders. Wilson, avatar of “progressivism,” was the first president critical of the nation’s founding. Barack Obama’s Wilsonian agenda reflects its namesake’s rejection of limited government.

By George Will , June 03, 2010

Opinion: In politics, as good as it gets

WASHINGTON — The candidate who last week won the special election in a Pennsylvania congressional district is right-tolife and pro-gun. He accused his opponent of wanting heavier taxes. He said he would have voted against Barack Obama’s health care plan and promised to vote against cap-and-trade legislation. This candidate, Mark Critz, is a Democrat.

By George Will , May 26, 2010

Opinion: Court deserves ‘spank’

WASHINGTON — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a stimulus package for the Supreme Court, which would rather not have one. The 9th Circuit, often in error but never in doubt, provides the Supreme Court with steady work: Over the last half-century, the 9th has been reversed almost 11 times per Supreme Court term, more than any other circuit court. This week, the Supreme Court should spank it again and ask: Is it too much to ask that you pay some attention to our precedents?

By George Will , May 20, 2010

Opinion: U.S. military undergoing a certain ‘civilianization’

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — When asked whether nationalism is putting down roots in Afghanistan’s tribalized society, Gen. David Petraeus is judicious: “I don’t know that I could say that.” He adds, however, that “we do polling” on that subject. When his questioner expresses skepticism about the feasibility of psephology — measuring opinion — concerning an abstraction such as nationalism in a chaotic, secretive and suspicious semi-nation, Petraeus, his pride aroused, protests: “I took research methodology” at Princeton. There he acquired a Ph.D. in just two years: His voracious appetite for knowing things is the leitmotif of his career.

By George Will , May 12, 2010

Opinion: U.S. is being held hostage to timetable

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The ticking clock does not disturb the preternatural serenity that Gen. David Petraeus maintains regarding Afghanistan. Officially, the U.S. Central Command is located here; actually, it is wherever he is, which is never in one place for very long. He is away about 300 days a year, flying to and around his vast area of responsibility, which extends from Egypt to where his towering reputation is hostage to a timetable — Afghanistan.

By George Will , May 06, 2010