David Aikman
Musings and commentary on the world scene from Senior Fellow David Aikman
Fighting Wars During Peace-Time
Mon 02 Apr 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Britain’s magazine The Economist once made an interesting point about democracies and fighting wars. “Democracies,” the magazine said—and I offer a paraphrase rather than quote precisely—“find it difficult to fight wars during peace-time.” The point is a subtle one. Essentially, it is that democratic societies are seldom prepared to engage in sustained war-fighting if they do not believe that their county is really at war.
The Fifth Year of War
Fri 23 Mar 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
David Aikman muses on the US war in Iraq.
A major landmark in American foreign policy was passed this week: the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. As the US enters its fifth year of fighting in Iraq, many observers have noted that America has been at war there longer than it fought in World War I, World War II, or Korea. Americans, it is fair to say, do not like fighting wars, and especially in peace-time. On this topic, more below.
The original reasons given by the administration for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 were to locate and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. Much has been made of the fact that, after US forces had conquered Baghdad and subdued most of the remainder of the country, no weapons of mass destruction were found. This fact has been used to support assertions that President Bush lied to the American people by using the WMD argument to initiate hostilities against Iraq.
Faith in the Creator God in Ancient China?
Wed 07 Mar 2007 • Responses: 6 • by David Aikman
Faith of Our Fathers: God in Ancient China, by Chan Kei Thong with Charlene L. Fu, Beijing: Dong Fang Publishing House/China Publishing Group, 327 pp., ISBN 7801865065, $23.10 (This book may be purchased through the authors’ website)
Two and a half centuries ago a stormy dispute surged through the Christian world about the nature of China’s culture. In Rome, the Catholic Church was deeply divided over the nature of Chinese culture. Did the ancient Chinese, long before they encountered Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, have an understanding of God in a monotheistic sense as creator and sustainer of the universe? The Jesuits, who had an intellectually brilliant and profound impact on China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thought they did. So, two centuries later, did Rev. James Legge, translator of the Chinese classics into English and a deep admirer of Confucius. But in the eighteenth century, Dominican and Franciscan opponents of the Jesuits, who distrusted the confident Jesuit influence within the Chinese imperial court, disagreed noisily. Ancient Chinese beliefs, they said, were so many pagan superstitions, and needed to be discarded by prospective Chinese converts to Catholicism. Legge’s opponents took the same position, and were only partially deflected in their opposition to his views because the Scottish clergyman was so brilliant that he became Oxford University’s first professor of Chinese.
The Problem with the News
Wed 21 Feb 2007 • Responses: 5 • by David Aikman
“A picture of humanity that is relentlessly colored by its most gruesome crimes is as unrealistic as one that ignores such crimes altogether.”
As a journalist for many years (full-time for more than two decades), I’ve acquired a compulsive addiction to TV and radio news bulletins. If I’m driving a car and the time approaches the “top of the hour,” I’m quite unable to resist tuning the radio to the local full-time news network. If I’m watching TV (a fairly rare event), no matter what the program is that I might have intended to view, within a few minutes I find myself switching to CNN, or FOX, or MSNBC.
It was thus with utter dismay that I watched, on one of the news channels (for propriety’s sake I won’t say which), on a single middle-of-the-evening news bulletin quite recently, the following items: (1) a woman who thought she was a vampire had tied a man up, slashed him with a knife, and drunk his blood (presumably, he thought she had other things in mind when he submitted to being tied up); (2) a mother in a private home was barely prevented from drowning all of her children; (3) an 84-year-old woman was jailed for three years for having sex with an 11-year-old in her foster care.
The Presidential Race and Religion
Tue 06 Feb 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Candidate affiliations and the role of ‘the religious factor’
Senior Fellow David Aikman looks a little deeper at the religious affiliation of current U.S. presidential candidates—including Clinton, McCain, Obama, Romney, Brownback, and Giuliani—and how that may affect the nomination races. With nearly half of American voters either evangelical or Catholic, faith should not be overlooked.
The Folly of New Year Resolutions
Thu 04 Jan 2007 • Responses: 11 • by David Aikman
“Why do we repeat this folly, when empirical evidence shows that statements of a desire to change, in and of themselves, almost never cause people to change their behavior in actuality?”
The turkey has been digested, the gifts put away (or put on, if they are clothes), and the wrapping paper thrown out. After the Christmas gustatory extravaganza, it’s time for a few days of slow movement, of writing thank-you letters, and self-congratulatory exhalation. Christmas has been survived once more and life can continue its uneventful way forward.
But no. Within a week of Christmas many people find themselves practicing yet another ancient cultural ritual, the challenge of New Year Resolutions. The end of one year and the beginning of another always offers two opportunities: to look back at the previous twelve months and ponder the ups and downs of that period; and to look ahead to the next and wonder what can be done differently then. By the office water cooler, over coffee in a friend’s office, on the phone late at night with a close friend, conversations year after year turn to the subject of New Year Resolutions.
Civilization’s Crisis and Europe’s Choices
Tue 05 Dec 2006 by David Aikman
Ideology, Intolerance, and Identity
Senior Fellow David Aikman discusses the European crisis highlighted by militant Islam and considers its sources, current factors, and—given historical precedents—the prospects for a revitalized Continent.
