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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review Nov. 17, 2004 / 4 Kislev, 5765

One Way — finally

By Lawrence F. Kaplan


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | With the departure of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, the Bush administration's great foreign policy rift has finally ended. The rift, which pitted Foggy Bottom against the Pentagon and the White House, made the Kissinger-Rogers and Brzezinski-Vance duels that preceded it seem trivial by comparison. The damage it wrought, too, was of much greater consequence than those earlier fights. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Israel, China — in virtually every corner of the globe, the Bush team had not one policy but two, whose contradictions intensified precisely when America's involvement did. During Bush's second term, however, the president's foreign policy counselors will all be reading from the same page. After all, one side forfeited the argument.


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Personnel, as they say in Washington, is policy, and nowhere has this been truer than among members of the Bush foreign policy team, where the disagreements were always less expressions of personal distaste than of competing philosophical convictions — Kissingerian realism, on the one side, and Reaganite neoconservativism on the other. But with Powell's departure, what members of the Bush team knew as soon as the first shot was fired in the Iraq war became apparent to the nation at large: The argument has been settled in the latter's favor. Not because of the Pentagon's bureaucratic weight (Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives around him will be departing soon enough — replaced, in all likelihood, by a Senator, perhaps even Joe Lieberman). And not because Dick Cheney isn't going anywhere. Rather, President Bush, as evidenced by his remarks last week on democratizing the Middle East and pacifying Iraq, genuinely believes — and, indeed, clings religiously to the belief — that only the vigorous assertion of American power and ideals will make the world a better place. Chalk it up to his evangelical faith, his brainwashing at the hands of a sinister cabal, or his Manichean conception of the international scene: When it comes to the broad foreign policy questions of the day, Bush no longer needs advisers to tell him what to think. He needs them to translate his thinking into policy.


For that to happen, Powell had to go. Here, after all, was a Secretary of State who viewed himself as Foggy Bottom's ambassador to the White House rather than the other way around. His insistence on hearing out, and too often bending to, the objections of the State Department bureaucracy encouraged a tendency in the diplomatic corps that needed no encouragement. "If the president decides against them," then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger complained of the Nixon-era foreign policy bureaucracy, "they are convinced some evil influence worked on the president: If only he knew all the facts, he would have decided their way." If anything, that conviction only grew stronger in recent years, as members of the Foreign Service leaked, complained, delayed, hindered, and obstructed their way through the first term of a president who viewed the world through a lens barely comprehensible to them.



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The wonder of it all is that Powell, for all of the battles he fought in the name of his "troops" at Foggy Bottom, accomplished next to nothing on their behalf. Iraq, Kyoto, ABM, direct negotiations with North Korea — nearly every time Powell waded into an inter-agency conflict, he lost.


Even when he won, he lost. When, for example, Powell persuaded the president to dispatch a special envoy into the Israeli-Palestinian thicket, the result was an explosion of violence on both sides and the prompt collapse of the U.S. effort. When Powell convinced the president to return to the United Nations one last time before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the effort backfired, doing nothing to budge the Europeans and much to discredit the cause of the Americans. His signature accomplishments as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — delaying U.S. action in Bosnia, preventing gays from serving openly in the military, placing restrictions on the scope of American action during the first Gulf War — may have been controversial. But at least they left their mark.


With Condoleezza Rice at the helm — and, in all likelihood, with Undersecretary of State John Bolton as her deputy — the State Department will now be run by a team known for its rigid loyalty to the president. They, more than any other administration officials, represent authentic expressions of Bush's foreign policy — more realistic than the Bush team's neoconservatives but far more aggressive than its self-described "realists." Rice, to be sure, is neither a great thinker nor a great manager. But she is a great lieutenant — that is, someone who can be relied on to convey and translate the president's inclinations into official policy. For his part, Bolton is all of these things, plus a fierce conservative. Between the two of them, they could well transform Foggy Bottom into something that looks more like the Pentagon — only competently run. Even if the State Department doesn't become the center of foreign policy deliberations, it certainly won't stymie them.


As for the National Security Council, the very fact that Rice's former deputy will be running day to day operations at the NSC ensures that cooperation between Foggy Bottom and the White House will improve. If Stephen Hadley, like Rice, is essentially a technocrat, he is a loyal technocrat, known for his lawyerly-like implementation of orders from above. Moreover, with staunch realist and Powell ally Robert Blackwill out of the way as Hadley's competitor — and co-deputy national security adviser — philosophical objections to the direction of U.S. policy that often made their way from Foggy Bottom to the White House should effectively be silenced.


Nor will the expected departure of Rumsfeld and his lieutenants at the Defense Department dilute the president's robust foreign policy preferences. Were a Joe Lieberman or, by an outside chance, Paul Wolfowitz catapulted to the top Pentagon post, the new defense secretary may end up promoting an even more aggressive foreign policy stance than the president himself. But, even at the cabinet level, ideology's no longer the point. If a John Warner or a Dan Coats winds up in the E-ring, it won't really matter. In contrast to the president's first term, personnel won't be policy in his second. Bush knows what he believes now. And there's no one left to stand in his way.

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Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior editor at The New Republic.. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

© 2004, The New Republic