Administration's War Research Articles

Drug testing in Philippine schools: Historical overview and implications for drug policy.

With the stated aims of promoting "drug-free" campuses and "instilling in the minds of students" that drugs are harmful, drug testing in schools has been a feature of the Philippines' punitive drug regime for two decades, gaining prominence during the Duterte administration's war on drugs (2016-2022). Drawing on key informant interviews and a desk review of news articles and official documents, this paper presents a historical overview of this policy as well as its impacts on students, educational institutions, and Philippine society. The paper finds that the group most affected by drug testing in schools are the students themselves, who are placed at risk of discrimination and alienation. Schools are also affected by the policy, as it requires expending their human and financial resources. More broadly, the policy perpetuates longstanding popular notions on drugs, children, and the overall idea that individuals carry the "burden of proof" to demonstrate their worthiness for societal inclusion. Drug testing in Philippine schools is ineffective and misguided in its objectives, but it has received widespread support because of its social and political efficacies.

A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery A. Fry

Reviewed by: A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery A. Fry Barbara A. Gannon A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac. By Zachery A. Fry. Civil War America. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xvi, 319. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-5445-4.) Rarely does one find a study that intersects with so many critical Civil War scholarly debates. A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac by Zachery A. Fry, an assistant professor of military history at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, does so. In this study, Fry examines the famed and sometimes defamed Army of the Potomac—the military organization that operated around the United States' and the Confederacy's capitals. This study focuses less on its military campaigns against the Confederate army and more on its internal political battles. Much of this conflict centered on the Army of the Potomac's controversial commander—George B. McClellan—a Democrat who rejected Republican Abraham Lincoln's war aims, particularly emancipation. However, this study is not about one man but instead examines the officers and enlisted men who agreed with McClellan's dissent and those who loyally supported Lincoln's actions. Despite the dominance of Democrats in this organization, all ranks in the main eastern army included Republicans. Fry focuses on the junior officers in the Army of the Potomac and "the struggle between Democratic and Republican ideologues in shoulder straps to persuade and educate the army's ranks" (pp. 1–2). Fry argues that "Republicans decisively won the struggle for the army's allegiance" (p. 2). He cites as evidence of this victory the resolutions in support of the Lincoln administration in 1863 and, more convincingly, Lincoln's victory over McClellan in the 1864 presidential election. Fry's book is extraordinarily well researched and well written. One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of documenting the political culture of a military organization. Fry makes an enormous contribution to several intensely debated issues related to the Civil War, including soldier motivation through his examination of the decision to reenlist or not and the embrace of Lincoln and his policies as demonstrated by soldiers' votes in the 1864 election. Despite these critical contributions, Fry does not convince this reader that officers' political activism changed soldiers' minds. Fry analyzes unit resolutions supporting the administration's war efforts, including emancipation. He explains that officers wrote these resolutions and read them aloud to their units on dress parades. As someone who once stood in the ranks when officers spoke, [End Page 395] I guarantee that silence in a military formation does not equal assent. In addition, enlisted soldiers formulated their own, perhaps less articulate, political views. Irish Democrats held strong opinions on war aims and emancipation, despite their limited education. While I agree that junior officers played a role in their subordinates' political education, Fry documents diverse factors that shaped their political activism, including their anger at "Copperheads"—antiwar Democrats at home. Despite this shortcoming, A Republic in the Ranks is an astonishing book. Fry's most convincing and important argument is not who prompted this mobilization but its effect on the army. Republican activism gave "the downtrodden rank and file of the Army of the Potomac a previously elusive sense of purpose," particularly in their darkest hour—the 1864 Overland campaign (p. 4). Fry also contributes to a recent scholarly debate over the 1864 election and demonstrates that soldiers willingly voted for Lincoln and rejected the candidacy of their former commander—George B. McClellan. In my own research, I found that as veterans, these men remembered how their views evolved from the beginning of the war to its end, specifically, how they ultimately embraced Lincoln's policies and rejected the restoration of the Union without emancipation. Restoring these men's political agency represents an essential corrective to studies of Civil War soldiers. Barbara A. Gannon University of Central Florida Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

A critical review of drug testing policy in the Philippines

The drug policy in the Philippines is written as the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 or Republic Act 9165. Unlike drug policies in other countries, the law includes policies on drug testing. Aside from mandatory drug testing for specific situations, the law states further that two testing methods should be employed—a screening test, and a confirmatory test to be performed if the former yields a presumptive positive result. Over 1000 drugs of abuse screening laboratories are scattered all over the Philippines, but only seven can perform confirmatory testing using either gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technologies. In the last 30 years, more sophisticated analytical technologies like liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and high-resolution mass spectrometry such as liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF/MS) have been developed not only to confirm what has been detected on screening tests, but also to determine the presence of new psychoactive substances that are not usually detected in drug screening. New matrices are also being utilized for the detection of drugs. The drug testing policy in the Philippines will have to keep up with the changing drug trends and drug testing innovations in the world to truly address the current administration's war on drugs. With the adoption of new drug testing methods using modern analytical platforms, the cut-offs used for drug testing interpretation should be updated.

Confronting Public Health Imperialism: A Transnational Feminist Analysis of Critical Nurse Responses to the National Smallpox Vaccination Program of 2002

Confronting Public Health ImperialismA Transnational Feminist Analysis of Critical Nurse Responses to the National Smallpox Vaccination Program of 2002 Gwen D'Arcangelis (bio) small acts of resistance: gender and imperialism The juggernaut of US empire known as the "War on Terror" is by now a familiar, ubiquitous part of the twenty-first century. Less familiar to most is one of its early missteps, namely, the National Smallpox Vaccination Program (NSVP), a biodefense program that the Bush Administration devised to protect the US from a bioterror attack. From late 2002 to mid-2003, the federal government, arguing that a potential attack might occur from the likes of Al Qaeda or Iraq, attempted to recruit the health care field into a preemptive vaccination program against smallpox. Nurses were among the prominent occupational categories targeted, and more important, among the leading groups who challenged the program on the grounds of its health risks and role in the Iraq war. In this article I chronicle the multilayered intervention that US nurses made in the NSVP, specifically their reworking of hegemonic scientific and national security discourses. Nurse intervention into the NSVP is significant for two reasons. First, nurses reclaimed their centrality as decision makers in the NSVP, a prominent public health campaign that, as I show, exploited their labor and marginalized their medical expertise. Feminist scholars have analyzed nursing as a feminized labor domain long beset with the historical character of "women's work"—for example, low wages and devalued expertise.1 I demonstrate that nurses' defiance of the NSVP contributes significantly to a legacy of resistance to these conditions. Second, nurses challenged the NSVP based on its connection to the US program of aggression in Iraq and the War on Terror during a period of extreme "patriotism," when it was difficult to wage criticism of the US national security apparatus. Remarkably, US nurses linked their struggles for better safety and protections to a broader critique of US imperialism. In doing so, I argue, they enacted a model of transnational feminist praxis [End Page 95] wherein women in global north and imperial nations hold their governments accountable for perpetrating oppressive practices of imperialism and other forms of structural violence against less powerful nations in the global south. Transnational feminist theory builds on the intersectional analysis forwarded by feminist theorists such as Kimberle Crenshaw2 and Patricia Hill Collins,3 who analyze women's struggles through a gendered lens that considers how race, class, nation, and other socio-structural positions determine gender relations and social power. Transnational feminist theorists focus on the intersection between gender and nation, noting that women across the globe are not only connected by their commonalities but also severely divided, particularly along the axis of colonialism and imperialism. They have noted that many feminist movements in imperial countries have been insufficiently critical of their government's expansionist foreign policy and imperialist practices globally, at times even joining forces to further them. Transnational feminist scholars have criticized the US-based Feminist Majority Foundation, for instance, for aligning itself with the US government's war on Afghanistan and its paternalistic rescue mission to save Afghani women, in the process marginalizing Afghani feminists' work and leadership.4 Transnational feminist theorists espouse that women in imperial nations should attend to their complicity in the actions of their governments. In the context of the most recent bouts of US imperialism targeting Afghanistan and Iraq, transnational feminist scholars such as Chandra Mohanty have challenged global north feminists to be self-reflexive about their political praxis (politically informed theory and action): What role have US feminists who supported the Bush administration's war in the name of "rescuing" Afghan and Iraqi women played in [the] narrative of empire and imperialism? This is one of the questions we need to pose to address the politics of complicity and dissent within contemporary feminist projects.5 In addition to calling for feminists in imperial and global north nations to reexamine their role in US imperial violence, she also highlights US imperialism as a key site for transnational feminist engagement: The militarized US State and its imperial projects are thus a crucial site of feminist struggle both in terms of the violence...

Recreating Boone's Wilderness at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

Recreating Boone's Wilderness at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park Angela Sirna (bio) Cumberland Gap National Historical Park (NHP) is a 24,000-acre national park unit situated at the intersection of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Congress authorized the park in 1941 to commemorate the Gap's important association with the Wilderness Road, Daniel Boone, and westward settlement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. In a region where good roads were hard to come by, the Wilderness Road proved to be an important transportation corridor well into the twentieth century. In 1909, the Bureau of Public Roads built an "Object Lesson Road" through the Gap as a federal demonstration project, opening the area to commercial traffic. In the 1920s, the Wilderness Road became Highways US 25E and 58 and was part of both the Dixie Highway and the Federal Highways System. When the National Park Service (NPS) took possession of the area, US 25E was a paved road heavily used for local and interstate traffic.1 Successive generations of park planners and administrators reckoned [End Page 377] with the dilemma of how the NPS should interpret the Gap's pioneer past with a modern road running through it. New Deal park planners did not see roads and wilderness as incompatible. Thinking that the most appropriate way for visitors to experience the Wilderness Road was through the convenience of their automobile, they proposed building a parkway drive along US 25E. However, the disruption of World War II, and a slow land acquisition program which drug out well into the 1950s, waylaid plans for the parkway. It would not be until 1996 that motorists were able to drive their vehicles through the mountain under the Gap in an impressive tunnel. But the old question still remains. How does this manifestly modern tunnel that bypasses the very Gap itself by diverting traffic under it fit within park planners' vision to recreate an eighteenth century wilderness? In the 1960s, there was a marked change in discourse at Cumberland Gap NHP due to three pieces of legislation that impacted park management: the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Wilderness preservationists achieved success with the Wilderness Act of 1964, which required landowning federal agencies to evaluate all roadless areas over 5,000 acres for inclusion in a new federal wilderness system. Although Cumberland Gap was a National Historical Park, not a park specifically dedicated to the preservation of natural resources, the legislation mandated that it, too, had to evaluate its holdings and hold public hearings. These hearings revealed tensions between local elites and outside activists as well as between environmentalists and the NPS that echoed the larger societal clashes of the 1960s. Specifically, these hearings provide a moment to examine the intersections of environmental policies and social and economic reform, since eastern Kentucky was a primary focus for the Johnson administration's War on Poverty efforts. This article takes a deeper look at these hearings and their outcomes: pursuing a tunnel project in 1973, electing to manage certain areas of the park as wilderness, and opting to selectively preserve and interpret a twentieth-century mountain community called Hensley Settlement. Through these efforts, the NPS attempted to balance [End Page 378] wilderness preservation, economic development, and historic preservation at Cumberland Gap NHP. Federal administrators across programs intended heritage tourism to be the bridge that would bring both groups together. Instead, that tourist discourse replicated tropes about Appalachian people, reinforcing longstanding regional stereotypes that residents of the area were primitive and isolated from the mainstream of American life. Creating a National Park Middlesboro, Kentucky, boosters began clamoring for a national park in the tri-state area as early as 1922. They were interested in bringing tourist dollars into the region but lacked a clear vision for the park. Kentucky Republican Congressman John M. Robsion, from nearby Barbourville, submitted a number of bills but faced stiff competition from dozens of other Appalachian communities pressing for a national park. In 1922, Congress selected Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky as...

The Imposing Preacher: Samuel Dewitt Proctor and Black Public Faith. By Adam L. Bond. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2013. xi + 245 pp. $29.00 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Imposing Preacher: Samuel Dewitt Proctor and Black Public Faith . By Adam L. Bond . Minneapolis, Minn. : Fortress Press , 2013. xi + 245 pp. $29.00 paper.Book Reviews and NotesThe contribution of the black pastorate to America's social conscience is surely incalculable. Apart from the countless Sunday sermons preached from the pulpits of African-American congregations since even before the founding of the first African-American church in Philadelphia in 1787, the history of the black clergy has extended beyond the pulpit to include a public presence and social activism that emphasized black personhood from within the community and challenged the larger culture to reflect on, reassess, and ultimately reject its own prejudices, biases and, indeed, its racism. The civil rights era of the 1950s to 1960s represents perhaps the most visible era for the leadership of black pastors with names like King, Lowery and Abernathy proclaiming the gospel of social justice and driving the public dialog. And yet other voices unquestionably did contribute to the dialog and our understanding of the importance of the black civil rights movement in America is enriched that much more when such narratives emerge. Adam Bond's The Imposing Preacher: Samuel Dewitt Proctor and Black Public Faith presents the reader with just such a narrative, engaging the life and work of one of the more influential but less well-known figures in the modern post-civil rights era. Proctor's name emerges in only the most thorough analyses of the civil rights movement in America. And yet, he was close to Martin Luther King, Jr., served in the administration of the Peace Corps during the Kennedy administration, and was an advisor to Lyndon Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity during his administration's War on Poverty. Proctor's was indeed a public faith and Bond contributes significantly to the scholarship providing a comprehensive study of the theological and ideological foundations to his thought and life.Bond introduces the reader to Proctor in fairly straightforward fashion. Key to his analysis is that Proctor represents a departure from the more frequently chronicled expressions of black theology. As such he positions him along a spectrum of more well-known figures and systems of thought. The writings of James Cone, for instance, represent the left on Bond's conceptual spectrum. Cone's is a black public theology steeped in the language of power and emancipation, advocating a strong emphasis on black consciousness and the right for blacks to free themselves from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary (12). The other end of the spectrum is represented the black evangelical and biblical literalist E.V. Hill who opposed the sometimes confrontational methods and aims of Cone, describing his work as blackism and deeming it essentially idolatrous (21). Proctor viewed himself as something of a bridge figure or pragmatic harmonizer (10) who aimed to uplift the condition of the black community in America, a condition he saw to be largely the byproduct of white privilege. Yet at the same time he saw that within the great documents and best spirit of the American system there existed the best possible means for bringing about this much-needed change.Chapters 2 and 3 are largely biographical in nature, chronicling the cultural and intellectual soil from which Proctor's ideas about the public nature of faith first took root. …

A Preponderance of Politics: The Auténtico Governments and US–Cuban Economic Relations, 1945–1951

AbstractThis article analyses the bilateral economic negotiations between Washington and Havana during the era of the Cuban PRCA (Auténtico) governments led by Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1944–52). This work shows that, initially, the PRCA governments took advantage of the economic bargaining capacity that Cuba had developed with Washington during the Good Neighbor era, but after 1947 this declined as the Truman administration's Cold War foreign policy agenda assigned only a marginal position to Latin America and Cuba. Havana's inability to obtain further economic support from the United States had a powerful destabilising effect, complicating Cuba's economic governance and delegitimising the PRCA politically. The study of this episode enhances our comprehension of a period largely overlooked by the historiography on Cuba and our understanding of the demise of the Auténtico project, the last attempt to transform Cuba's social structures in a progressive and democratic manner.

Rescuing America from Iraq: the gothic remorse of Iraq War documentaries

Taking a rhetorical approach to documentary, this article examines the narrative and aesthetic constructs of policy documentaries about the Iraq War. Focusing on two high-profile films, No End in Sight and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, the article outlines how these documentaries work to extenuate American transgressions during the occupation by invoking a superficial gothic rhetoric. Within this rhetoric, the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration are cast as shadowy and conspiratorial forces who have corrupted American values. Alternatively, policy-makers and military personnel are cast as virtuous representatives of American democracy and emerge as innocent victims of a seemingly monstrous administration. By relying on this simplistic good and evil construct, which ironically mirrors the rhetoric of Bush administration's War on Terror, and by ignoring outright the question of the war's legitimacy, these films ultimately reaffirm the virtues of the very institutions which oversee American war and occupation. The Iraq War is then memorialised as a catastrophe created by corrupt neo-conservatives and one which does not merit deeper reflection on the use of war as a tool of US foreign policy.

Book Review: Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles, by James C. Goodale

Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the and Other Battles. James C. Goodale. New York: CUNY Journalism Press, 2013. 260 pp. $20 pbk.Reviewed by: Roy S. Gutterman, Syracuse University, NY, USA DOI: 10.1177/1077699013506342The day before James C. Goodale began his book tour with a luncheon at the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York City, news broke that the Department of Justice had secretly subpoenaed telephone records of the Associated Press. This news was the first in a summer of breaking news of secret government surveillance programs and gov- ernmental efforts targeting leakers and directly and indirectly the media.The onslaught of government prosecutions of leakers, the continued controversy of Wikileaks, and the explosion of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance scandal and the Edward Snowden saga propelled Goodale's memoir, Fighting for the Press, to not only instantly relevant but also prescient.While the bulk of the book examines Goodale's role as an in-house lawyer at The New York Times during the Pentagon Papers litigation, he devotes two complete chapters to the Obama administration's hardline approach to dealing with leaks and leakers of the nation's security secrets. He also criticized the administration's War Against the Press.Goodale recites how as a candidate Obama was critical of Bush's dealings with the press and he advocated for the federal shield law. However, as president, Goodale believes Obama is worse than Bush in using criminal laws to plug leaks and asking reporters to disclose confidential sources. He concludes that the Obama administration may be even more malevolent toward press rights than the Nixon administration.Thus, the book comes full circle from Goodale's early days as a young general counsel at The New York Times to the birth of what is commonly known as the Amendment bar. In legal circles, Goodale is widely considered the dean of the First Amendment bar and one of its primary founders.Overall, Fighting for the Press is Goodale's contribution to the library of books on the Papers, and the historic fight over censorship, national security, and the First Amendment. There is no shortage of books and memoirs on the topic-David Rudenstine's The Day the Presses Stopped, Floyd Abrams's Speaking Freely, and, of course, the author and leaker Daniel Ellsberg's two books on the topic, Secrets and on the War.Goodale adds to the library by telling the story behind The New York Times' decision to take on the Nixon administration, standing firmly behind the First Amendment. The case, the United States v. New York Times, marked its fortieth anniversary in 2011, and is an important element of practically any First Amendment law course.How it got there is Goodale's story. Supported by his own encyclopedic legal knowledge and law that he helped develop, Goodale paints a picture using case law, transcripts of hearings, memos, and decades of files that only an insider could employ. …

Power in the changing global order: the US, Russia and China

Acknowledgements Introduction: Power in the Changing Global Order 1: Understanding Power 2: Power Resources 3: Hegemony, Unipolarity and the United States 4: The Multipolar Moment? The US and the World in the 1990s 5: A New Era? The George W Bush administration's War on Terror 6: Return to Multilateralism? 7: Russia as a Continuing or Reviving Great Power 8: The Russian Multipolarity Debates 9: China: Rising Power or Constrained State? 10: China, Anti Hegemonism and Harmony Conclusions Notes Index

Beyond the Ends of the Earth: Donald Rumsfeld, the Mantra of Progress, and an Outer-Space View of America's War on Terror

This essay examines the way that US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to apply one of the central lessons of the Vietnam War to the George W. Bush administration's War on Terror after 9/11. Following the disastrous withdrawal from Vietnam, Rumsfeld had argued that one of the major lessons to be taken forward was that, in future conflicts, the US needed to ensure that the war was portrayed to the public in a way that would ensure ongoing success. The way to do this, Rumsfeld subsequently averred, was to convey a message of perpetual, unstoppable, but not too rapid, progress; victory was at hand, but it would take some time to achieve. As part of this process, Rumsfeld developed an elaborate narrative based around a keyhole satellite picture of the Korean peninsula at night – one half, that of South Korea, bathed in the light of progress; the other, North Korea, nearly completely dark. This photo, Rumsfeld suggested, told you all you needed to know about the fact that the US would ultimately succeed in the War on Terror. In taking this approach, however, Rumsfeld unwittingly revealed an inherent contradiction that has continued to blight the administration of Barack Obama: that there is a very fine line between progress toward an inevitable endpoint of victory and progress toward a position whereby the US is able to withdraw. For Rumsfeld, progress was toward an endpoint of victory and it was only the change in political context after 2006 that derailed his attempts to set out this message; for Obama, on the other hand, progress has become a prerequisite for getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush's Mythic America: A Critique of the Rhetoric of War

This article offers a mythological critique of the Bush Administration's war rhetoric from 2003 through April 2006. I argue that during this period the administration adapted America's war myth into one shaped largely through opposition to the dissonant narrative known as “the Vietnam Syndrome.” This critique demonstrates how the Vietnam Syndrome functioned as the oppositional narrative premise for a revisionist war mythology composed of three central mythemes: righteous war, democratic salvation, and shock and awe. This critique further explicates rhetorical myth's form and function by revealing how the iconic agents, acts, and sacred scenes of this war myth served to transform the material complexities of the Iraq war into a negation of the cultural dissonance of the Vietnam Syndrome.

The silencing of radical democracy in American community development: the struggle of identities, discourses and practices

This paper attempts to understand how 1968 as a transformative historical moment has influenced the discourses and identity constructions of community development in the United States. Using a post-structuralist discursive analytical framework, the paper examines the nature and structure of community development discourses as reproduced in the language and social practices of the militant wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, the early Black Power movement, Alinskyism and the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty. Rather than community development being constituted by radical democracy, this paper argues that community development is dominated by hierarchical and unequal ideas and practices which invest the professional subject with agency and construct local people as passive objects. The paper explores how the radical democratic practices have been silenced from 1968 onwards and as a result how contemporary community development discourses may be reproducing highly problematic ideas and practices which undermine rather than support community development's goal of achieving equality and social justice for marginalized groups.

Relationship Analysis among Media, Public Opinion and the Presidential Statements during George Bush's War on Drugs

This study tested a path model of agenda building examining the relationship among the media, the public and the presidential statements on the issue of drug abuse during the Bush administration's War on Drugs. The results showed that a dynamic and interactive relationship among aforementioned actors. First, the real-world conditions strongly increased both media coverage and presidential statements. Second, the news media and president influenced each other. Third, public concern, however, did not function as a significant factor in agenda-building process in this study. The result of this study indicates that Bush was not utterly a reactive or proactive president in terms of his relationship with the media. That is, news media and the president interacted regarding the drug issues; the relationship between President Bush and the media for drug issues was reciprocal.

Constructing Threats and Opportunities After 9/11

President Bush war on terror emphasized domestic surveillance, enhanced police powers, and military adventures abroad, and virtually all political debates focused on the administration’s initiatives. This was not inevitable. An alternative response to the threat of terrorism could include, for example, expanded funding for language instruction and comparative religion in American schools, improved training for first responders in medical emergencies, and an overhaul of the health care system to provide rapid responses to crises. Critics of the Administration's war on terror, however, were reluctant or unable to frame 9/11 to support alternative preferred policies. In contrast, during the Cold War, advocates used fear of Communism and the Soviet Union to build support for alternative domestic policies, including civil rights and social investment. By rejecting completely the premises of the war on terror, critics may have missed an opportunity to advance broader political agendas.

The Torture Memos and the Demands of Legality

This review essay considers five recent books concerning the role of governmetn lawyers in the Bush Administration's war on terror: Harold Bruff, Bad Advice (2009); Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency (2007); Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (2008); Philippe Sands, Torture Team (2008); John Yoo, War by Other Means (2006). One theme running through all of these books is whether there is a difference between legal and policy (or moral) advice, and whether lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel can be criticized in terms of norms of legal ethics for the advice they provided. What divides critics and defenders of the OLC lawyers, I claim, is difference on whether the rule of law has normative significance apart from the substantive content of policies furthered by the law. For example, John Yoo's defenses appeal directly to moral and policy considerations, while Jack Goldsmith's critiques appeal to values associated with the rule of law. In my view, the role of lawyers should be understood in connection with the value of legality -- i.e. the distinction between government genuinely constrained by the law and government that aims at doing the right thing all-things-considered, and which regards the law as only a pragmatic constraint.

Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century Robert Francis Saxe Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century. By Jenel Virden. Houndmills, Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN 978-0-333-72661-7. Maps. Annotated bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 203. £21.99. In this slim volume, Jenel Virden attempts to discuss American participation in the major wars of the twentieth century through the lens of just war theory. In particular, the author provides an overview of the American government's rhetoric during wartime and action on the battlefield, but also expands her focus to investigate the home front in order "to test whether the application of theory to the way governments treat their own citizens during war can provide previously unarticulated insights into the broader issue of just war" (p. 7). This is an admirable approach, as too many histories seek to segment the battlefront from the home front in their discussions of America's wars. And it is as a general primer on America's twentieth century wars that this study succeeds. Chapters on World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War are all laid out identically, each containing sections labeled "The Pre-War Period," "Beginnings," "How the War Was Fought," "US Home Front," and "The Consequences." Virden does an excellent job of synthesizing the voluminous information on the fighting, diplomacy, economics, leadership, rhetoric, and home front issues of all four conflicts. After providing her case studies, she ties all the information together in a chapter simply titled "Conclusions." It is in this chapter where she compares and contrasts the wars, using the idea of just war to critique the wars' origins, how they were fought, their conclusions, and notions of justice on the home front. In these conclusions, Virden makes some controversial assessments, such as her statement that "the targeting or indiscriminate killing of non-combatants… [makes] it difficult if not impossible to suggest the United States fought these [End Page 664] wars justly"(p. 159). Further, after cataloguing numerous injustices on the American home front, she finds that "civil liberties and civil rights, and the American people, became the victims of wartime injustice"(p. 168). In a powerful epilogue, Virden critiques the Bush administration's War on Terror and shows how the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as the civil liberties questions raised by the Patriot Act, seem to suggest that America has learned very little from its past conduct in wartime. Much of the information in Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century is quite useful and provocative, and this would be a fine selection for a survey course for undergraduates or someone with a general interest in the topic. In terms of construction, however, I had some reservations. Though the just war theme is the guiding force of the book, just war theory is dealt with substantially only in the introduction and conclusion. Increased discussion throughout the chapters would have linked the sections together concretely and made the author's conclusions even more powerful. For instance, the just nature of America's entry into the wars is dealt with in a complex way, but the comparative discussion of their beginnings is so brief in the "Conclusions" chapter that the implications of the similarities and differences of the wars' origins are never fully realized. With greater attention to just war theory throughout, more time might have been spent on expanding the author's analysis. But this is a criticism that comes from the fact that the questions being raised by the book are numerous and important. If the purpose of Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century is to start a conversation, then it has succeeded. Robert Francis Saxe Rhodes College Memphis, Tennessee Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

Chester Crocker and the South African Border War, 1981–1989: A Reappraisal of Linkage**

Between 1981 and 1989, United States Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker pursued a highly controversial ‘linkage’ strategy that aimed to secure an end to the universally condemned South African occupation of Namibia by offering as a prerequisite a US demand for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. This policy was heavily influenced by the Reagan administration's Cold War objectives, and was derided by critics as granting an ineffectual and unwarranted concession to Pretoria that delayed Namibian independence. Although the peace agreement ultimately signed in 1989 largely followed Crocker's plan, most of the relatively few analyses to subsequently revisit linkage have continued to deny the importance of Crocker's diplomacy in bringing about a regional settlement, while others have supported his policies without devoting sufficient attention to the role of external factors in determining the eventual outcome. Both supporters and detractors of Crocker's policy have maintained an excessive focus on his approach towards South Africa, to the virtual exclusion of the important role that his policies towards Angola played in influencing his regional peace initiative. Using published sources, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviews, this article challenges the assumptions that have previously guided academic analysis of Crocker's regional policies.

Government and Science: The Unitary Executive versus Freedom of Scientific Inquiry

President Barack Obama pledged in his inaugural address restore science its rightful place and promised that federal policy would be informed by most complete, accurate, and honest scientific information. (1) The president joined a chorus of condemnation against the Bush administration's war on science, ranging from former surgeon generals, senior agency scientists, and the Union of Concerned Scientists the General Accountability Office and Congress. Showing respect for science is not only crucial affirming democratic ideals of openness and freedom of inquiry. It is also essential the long-term well-being of society, which benefits from scientific research and innovation. During the Bush administration, once-strong, independent agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institutes of Health came under political influence perhaps more than at any other time in history, threatening the effectiveness and credibility of the executive Consider three examples: In 2006, the GAO revealed that the Bush administration had spent over $1.6 billion in a two-year span on public relations, including payments columnists, media firms, and networks editorialize in favor of the administration's policies. (2) The Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the FDA distributed prepackaged news clips promote Medicare reform and antidrug messages and warn consumers not buy prescription drugs from Canada. Other reports placed the government in a favorable light on issues ranging from childhood obesity and drunk driving preservation of the environment. The GAO found that federal agencies violated a congressional ban on covert propaganda. (3) Also in 2006, a DHHS appropriations act required that scientific information shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay. (4) But in his statement, President Bush affirmed his power to withhold information that could impair the workings of the executive branch. The American Bar Association called this--and the other 750-plus presidential signing statements declaring an intent not enforce legislation (including a torture ban, protection of whistleblowers, and the independence of an Institute of Education Sciences)--contrary the rule of law and our constitutional system. (5) In 2004 and 2005, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reported that the Bush administration systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, and biomedical research. (6) Illustrations included the FDA delaying approval of emergency contraceptives against the advice of staff scientists and two independent advisory panels, the DHHS obscuring scientific evaluation of abstinence-only education and pressuring scientists promote abstinence, the CDC altering its Web site raise doubts about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission, and the EPA undermining climate change science by suppressing reports and publicly misrepresenting scientific consensus. Health officials even concealed scientific evidence that social and racial disparities affect health care. In some instances, one might give a nod the government's benign intentions (antidrug messages on television, for example), but does beneficence justify deceit? In other instances, the government's suppression or disregard of science seemed coldly calculated buttress its political ideology or favor special interests. Above all, transparency and honesty are essential in setting and enforcing health policy. The public expects the state listen carefully, be objective, and promote the common good. Constitutional Freedoms of Scientists President Bush justified political control over science on a theory of a unitary executive, according which the president holds a tight grip on federal policy. …

Afghanistan Meets the Amazon: Reading The Kite Runner in America

This essay considers the American reception of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner in the context of the Bush administration's global war on terrorism by examining the customer reviews of the novel posted on Amazon. As many of the responses indicate, identification serves as a paradoxical means of negotiating with fictional representations of foreignness. The intense and painful empathy inspired by The Kite Runner serves a valorizing function for American readers, strengthening their sense of their own humanity—an effect that resists strict political categorization. Hosseini's ambivalent conception of what it means to be human, I argue, supports a diversity of competing attitudes toward the United States' military intervention in the Middle East and central Asia, while simultaneously catering to fantasies of escape from ideological and cultural divisions altogether.