General War

The Pentagon’s pre-emptive strike came with the leak of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s confidential review of the Afghan war to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. McChrystal’s painting of the military picture was grim. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent ...

Bitter Fruits

Impending today are two of the most critical decisions Barack Obama will ever make, which may determine the fate of his presidency, as well as the future of the United States in the Near and Middle East. The first is whether to approve Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for thousands more ...

Iran, the Bomb, and Us

That Iran is building a secret underground facility near the holy city of Qom, under custody of the Revolutionary Guard—too small to be a production center for nuclear fuel, but just right for the enrichment of uranium to weapons grade—is grounds for concern, but not panic. ...

To Lose a War

While America was consumed this summer with quarrels over town-hall radicals, “death panels,” the “public option” and racism’s role in the plunging polls of Barack, what happens to health care is not going to change the history of the world. What happens in ...

What Price NATO?

In August, the Georgian navy seized a Turkish tanker carrying fuel to Abkhazia, Georgia’s former province whose declaration of independence a year ago is recognized by Russia but not the West. The Turkish captain was sentenced to 24 years. When Ankara protested, he was released. Abkhazia has ...

Race Card

God save me from my friends—I can take care of my enemies. So President Obama must be muttering today. Ten days ago, the president played his ace of trumps. He went before a joint session of Congress to lay out his health care plans, confront the “demagoguery” of critics who ...

The Return of Protectionism

Down at the Chinese outlet store in Albany known as Wal-Mart, Chinese tires have so successfully undercut U.S.-made tires that the Cooper Tire factory in that south Georgia town had to shut down. Twenty-one hundred Georgians lost their jobs. The tale of Cooper Tire and what it portends is told ...

Losing Our Minds

Flying home from London, where the subject of formal debate on the 70th anniversary of World War II had been whether Winston Churchill was a liability or asset to the Free World, one arrives in the middle of a far more acrimonious national debate right here in the United States. At issue: Should ...

Obama at the Rubicon

If the aphorism holds—the guerrilla wins if he does not lose—the Taliban are winning and America is losing the war in Afghanistan. Well into the eighth year of war, the Taliban are more numerous than ever, inflicting more casualties than ever, operating in more provinces than ever and ...

“€œDeath Panels”€ and Distortions

We should have “an honest debate” on health care, said Barack Obama in his Aug. 22 radio address, “not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions.” Among the “phony claims” made against the House bill, says the president, are that it ...