The title of this essay is borrowed from the headline of a review of a book by Mark Palmer, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil, the main point of which is that, beyond terrorism as the primary threat to the world, it is dictatorship itself that must be recognized as a crime against humanity. It […]

For a brief, but compelling, chronological account of how we got where we are in the war on terror in general and Iraq in particular, I recommend the Special Editorial from the October 20, 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty cannot dispute the obvious strategic conclusions from the […]

A quick overview of my take on where we are in Iraq: (1) We are winning the war and we must and will pursue it to a final completion, provided we have the political will to do so, with or without UN support. (2) In fits and starts, trial and error, we are successfully building […]

In November 2001 I wrote: “The ultimate outcome [of the war on terror] will be transformational, for I believe there is no way to avoid the massive restructuring of the Muslim world that will follow (and parallel) this conflict. The ruling elites in these societies, friend and foe alike, must choose which future they want, […]

As we move deeper into the “funny season” of Presidential election politics, it becomes increasingly more important to stay tightly focused on the principles of moral clarity that have defined Bush foreign policy since 9-11. The strategy of those who oppose the Bush Doctrine, particularly the policy of pre-emption, is to attack the so-called “soft […]

A couple of months ago, Newt Gingrich was highly visible speaking and making the rounds of the various talk shows with his call for major reorganization of the U. S. Department of State, criticizing its institutionalized duplicity and incompetence in the process. The furor settled down, but my immediate thoughts were that it is about […]

Of all the interlocking components of the massive project before us in Iraq, I believe that an early indicator of long-term success will be the way we handle the country’s oil properties. This wealth has been characterized as a “curse” and, in fact, it has been exactly that for all the oil-rich Arab states in […]

Count me as one who is highly skeptical about the chances for success of the “road map” to peace in the Holy Land as currently conceived. In fact, I have always been troubled by any characterization resembling a “peace process” for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which, almost by definition, is an invention of the internationalists in […]

My friend Stuart Schube related to me some conversations he has had recently with friends preparing for the upcoming Jewish Day of Remembrance observing the Holocaust. To one of them he commented (and I paraphrase), “If George W. Bush had been President in 1933 and available to respond to the Nazi threat in 1933-39, there […]

“However long it takes. It isn’t a matter of timetable, it’s a matter of victory.”—George W. Bush It is very difficult to focus on much of anything lately except the war in Iraq, so here are some thoughts on it I have been kicking around: * There once was a responsible anti-war left in this […]