As we begin the new year, we are greeted by the news that, after a three-day battle, Al Qaeda-affiliated militants (remember them, the people we have had “on the run” for the past two years?) have captured the western Iraq city of Fallujah, and raised their flag over government buildings that were previously secured by […]

Norman Podhoretz has called it “Obama’s successful foreign failure”, Peggy Noonan has described “a new kind of credibility gap” and “a small President on the world stage”, and Fouad Ajami says that “Obama is lost in the Mideast bazaar” and is operating like “a lawyer lost in a region of thugs”.  The common thread that […]

Since the September issue, the U. S. has backed away from a strike on Syria in favor of the Russian proposal for the disposal of all of its chemical weapons.  This in effect means no penalty of Bashar Asaad for his deliberate murder of civilians and he survives.  Now Russia and Iran collaborate for hegemony […]

The most incredible fiasco in modern foreign policy management and the strangest and most blatant abdication of a U. S. Commander in Chief in American history has now come down to a monumental gamble on the willingness of a fickle Congress to provide the political cover to prevent a President from vacating the role of […]

In the Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution Fellow Josef Joffe asks: why did Vladimir Putin thumb his nose at the U. S. in the Snowden affair?  The answer is pretty easy–because he knew he could get away with it.  And why?  Well, the old KGB veteran looked at the Obama trend line since January 2009:  […]

As the death toll in Syria’s civil war approaches 50,000 and the almost certainty that Bashar Assad will use chemical weapons and Scud missiles if necessary to keep himself and the Alawite sect in power, the conflict has become not only a religious war, but also has taken on some of the characteristics of a […]

We do not get to choose if a freedom revolution should begin or end in the Middle East or elsewhere.  We only get to choose what side we are on.–George W. Bush in The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2012 from a speech to the Bush Institute at SMU. The Bush Doctrine has become a […]

In a January issue,  the lead article of The Economist was “The Rise of State Capitalism”, featuring China as its leading example, of course, with comparisons with the recent problems in the world’s free-market systems suggesting that “the era of free-market triumphalism has come to a juddering halt”.  But in all objectivity, after careful analysis, […]

The media watchdogs are twittering with commentary about President Obama’s new hawkish turn of rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear weapons issue.  Is this for real?  With him, how can we ever know?  You can be assured of one thing–Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is dead serious when he says “I will never let my people live […]

There is an old saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.  Well, what happens the third time?  That’s where we are with North Korea.  In fact, they have now fooled three U. S. administrations, dating back to the Agreed Framework of 1994 negotiated by Jimmy Carter for Bill Clinton.  […]