London Review of Books

From The Blog

On the March for Science

Stephen Buranyi, 16 April 2018

“... but in the past two decades democratic governments have suppressed and restricted scientists. The Bush administration did its best to silence climate researchers, and Stephen Harper’s government in Canada prevented federal scientists from talking to the media without permission. An anti-science PR strategy developed by ...”

The Enforcer

Stephen Sackur, 20 August 1992

Deterring Democracy
by Noam Chomsky.
Vintage, 453 pp., £7.99, April 1992, 0 09 913501 9Show More

Illusions of Triumph: An Arab View of the Gulf War
by Mohamed Heikal.
HarperCollins, 350 pp., £16.99, April 1992, 0 00 255014 8Show More

The Imperial Temptation
by Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson.
Council on Foreign Relations Press, 240 pp., $22.50, June 1992, 0 87609 118 4Show More

“... hired by the Democratic campaign President Saddam could scarcely have done more to tarnish George Bush’s reputation for foreign policy know-how. Almost every day, it seems, new evidence emerges of Iraq’s continued defiance of Gulf War ceasefire resolutions, whether it is the hampering of humanitarian efforts in the Kurdish north, the hiding of weapons in ...”

Ariel Diary

Stephen Sackur: In Ariel, 27 June 1991

“... American Patriot missiles sent up to intercept the incoming Scud. ‘This picture I sent to George Bush,’ says Mayor Nachman, standing beside the photograph like a television weatherman next to his chart. ‘You know why I wanted him to see it?’ He smiles and looks back at the wall. ‘You see those lights in the distance? That’s Tel Aviv. You see the ...”

No Grand Strategy and No Ultimate Aim

Stephen Holmes: US policy in Iraq, 6 May 2004

Incoherent Empire
by Michael Mann.
Verso, 278 pp., £15, October 2003, 1 85984 582 7Show More

“... 11 September but America’s increasingly bloody occupation of a turbulent Iraq. So why did the Bush administration shift its attention from tracking down Osama bin Laden and a limited number of al-Qaida fugitives to reordering the Iraqi political system in line with American interests and values? This diversion of resources from a clandestine war against a ...”

Construct or Construe

Stephen Sedley: Living Originalism, 30 August 2012

Living Originalism
by Jack Balkin.
Harvard, 474 pp., £25.95, January 2012, 978 0 674 06178 1Show More

“... prerogative powers and keep them from being controlled by Congress and the Supreme Court. The last Bush administration, Dick Cheney especially, thrived on this doctrine, which academics are developing into a meta-doctrine of executive supremacy that marginalises both the legislature and the courts. Balkin confronts this problem in his final section, ‘The ...”

Sonic Foam

Ian Penman: On Kate Bush, 17 April 2014

“... A dream, just before waking. It’s a day or two after Kate Bush’s unexpected announcement of her return to the concert stage for a series of shows later this year. In my dream, Bush takes the form of a child’s tiny hardback book: solid, substantial, not too many pages. On the front cover is a menagerie of cartoon animals, all Smartie-tube colours and toothy smiles ...”

From The Blog

Duet with the Bushes

Kitty Burns Florey, 18 December 2018

“... During the flurry of George H.W. Bush’s death, funeral and canonisation, it was impossible to escape the photograph of George and Barbara Bush at their house in Maine, in their PJs, sitting up in bed surrounded by a mob of grandchildren. First published in 1987 in Life magazine, it’s a candid shot meant to show that, in their homey, comfy setting, the vice-president and his wife were just regular folks: doting grandparents, game for anything, unfazed at being awakened early (reportedly, 6 a ...”

SH @ same time

Andrew Cockburn: Rumsfeld, 31 March 2011

Known and Unknown: A Memoir
by Donald Rumsfeld.
Sentinel, 815 pp., £25, February 2011, 978 1 59523 067 6Show More

“... excursion into business, and finally six tumultuous years heading the Pentagon under George W. Bush. Oddly, Rumsfeld begins his memoir with an out-of-sequence account of his 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein as Reagan’s Middle East envoy, infamous for the evident warmth with which the two greeted each other. Perhaps it is there because he always cherished ...”

What’s in it for Obama?

Stephen Holmes: The Drone Presidency, 18 July 2013

The CIA, a Secret Army and a War at the Ends of the Earth
by Mark Mazzetti.
Penguin, 381 pp., £22.50, April 2013, 978 1 59420 480 7Show More

“... on what look suspiciously like extrajudicial executions, faute de mieux, after shuttering Bush’s black sites and deciding not to send anyone else to Guantánamo, where approximately a third of the hundred detainees on hunger strike are receiving a macabre form of Obamacare through tubes in their noses. Mazzetti adds, as a second unspoken and perhaps ...”

Diary

Stephen Sackur: In Khorramshahr, 23 May 1991

“... man did overcome his fear. ‘I want to give you a message,’ he said. ‘You must tell President Bush to help us ... Saddam Hussein is killing our people. We need your help or we will all die.’ Hundreds of thousands of people had left Basra, he told me. The Army was rounding up all those suspected of collaborating with the Shia fighters who took control of ...”

Salute!

Stephen Holmes: ‘Bomb Power’, 8 April 2010

Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State
by Garry Wills.
Penguin Press, 278 pp., $27.95, January 2010, 978 1 59420 240 7Show More

“... of his own national security bureaucracy. In explaining Obama’s failure to break with such Bush policies as the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without trial, Wills drops all mention of the bomb. Obama, he writes, may have sincerely wanted to undo the excesses of the Bush years, but ‘turning around the ...”

That’s America

Stephen Greenblatt, 29 September 1988

‘Ronald Reagan’, the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology
by Michael Rogin.
California, 366 pp., £19.95, April 1987, 0 520 05937 9Show More

“... television could have been surprised when, at the climax of his speech, the President told George Bush to ‘go out and win one for the Gipper.’ In Knute Rockne, All American, Reagan played the legendary Notre Dame halfback, George Gipp, who died young of viral pneumonia but lived on as an inspiration to his football team and to the country. ‘Someday when ...”

Looking Away

Stephen Holmes: Questions of Intervention, 14 November 2002

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
by Samantha Power.
Basic Books, 640 pp., £21.99, January 2002, 0 465 06150 8Show More

War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals
by David Halberstam.
Bloomsbury, 540 pp., £20, April 2002, 0 7475 5946 5Show More

“... why dissent inside the US has been so tame and equivocal. Why have the keenest protests against Bush’s strategically unnecessary unilateralism come from the internationalist wing of the Republican Party (Brent Scowcroft, James Baker) rather than from the Democrats or the Left? Samantha Power and David Halberstam did not set out to solve this riddle, but ...”

Short Cuts

Norman Dombey: Iraq, Uranium and Forged Intelligence, 17 November 2005

“... that it might well be an intelligence sting.* So it has turned out. After 11 September President Bush and his neo-con advisers saw an opportunity to conclude unfinished business with Iraq. They asked all their allies for any information that could contribute to making a case for war. Silvio Berlusconi decided to ingratiate himself with Washington. Nicolo ...”

Enemies of All Mankind

Stephen Sedley: Pirates, 24 June 2010

The Treatment of Prisoners under International Law
by Nigel Rodley, with Matt Pollard.
Oxford, 697 pp., £85, August 2009, 978 0 19 921507 2Show More

The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations
by Daniel Heller-Roazen.
Zone, 295 pp., £21.95, November 2009, 978 1 890951 94 8Show More

The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates
by Peter Leeson.
Princeton, 271 pp., £16.95, May 2009, 978 0 691 13747 6Show More

“... they are entitled not to be summarily executed or tortured or held indefinitely without trial. The Bush administration after 9/11 set out to change all that. With the designation of unlawful combatant it created a self-sustaining doctrine that there are individuals who, having attacked the US or opposed it by force, have forfeited all rights both as combatants ...”

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