“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong – no Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”With those pointed words, Muhammad Ali explained his opposition to the US war in Vietnam and justified his refusal to submit himself to the draft. He declared...

For a columnist or pundit, there’s no greater temptation than to get something written – Quick! Now! – about the latest, greatest, deadliest catastrophe. After all, if it bleeds it leads.I felt that urge the night of the Paris terror attacks. For...

In The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam quotes US president Lyndon Baines Johnson on his desired qualities in an assistant: “I want loyalty! I want him to kiss my a– in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses.”Nearly...

On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, a tiny Persian Gulf emirate. Three days later, US president George HW Bush fielded questions from reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. The key line from, and substance of, those remarks: “This will not...

Paul Waldman nay-says comparisons of the Lausanne nuclear talks to UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler with respect to Czechoslovakia ("No, the Iran nuclear negotiations aren't Munich in 1938," Washington Post, April 1).I get where...

When I tuned in to US president Barack Obama’s televised speech on his plans for war against the so-called “Islamic State,” I expected exactly what we got — a bland sundae of pseudo-patriotic drivel topped off with some whipped cream of big...

I’m shocked – shocked! – that Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who ruled in February that Bradley Manning could be tried on various charges even after being held prior to arraignment for more than five times the absolute longest time specified in the US Armed...