Free Republic

"The American Enterprise Institute hosts a panel of scholars to discuss the recent military conflict between Russia and Georgia." Here is the URL for the video. It is a long video (1hr 40min) but an interesting panel discussion to watch. I have not found a transcript of it yet.

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

Iran May Miscalculate in Taunting US, Panelists Say at AEI Josiah Ryan/ Staff Writer Washington. (CNSNews.com) - There is a danger that Iran may miscalculate the likelihood of a U.S. response as it taunts U.S forces in the Persian Gulf, experts on the Middle East said Monday at a conference held by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. Noting that Iran threatened the U.S. Navy in international waters earlier this year, and that it continues to provide weapons and fighters to U.S. enemies in Iraq, Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service compared the U.S. to a great...

AEI scholar Michael Rubin's very sober analysis of Iran April 16, 2008 HH: Joined now by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country’s leading authorities on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Michael Rubin, last week, Vice President Cheney was on the program, and I talked to him about 12th Imamism, and about Ahmadinejad. And the left has gone crazy, and they’ve been throwing bricks at him, because he said we should take very seriously what Ahmadinejad says, and we should be concerned about sort of a millennialist outlook. And I’ve been waiting to talk to you...

The Basra Business   By Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan The Weekly Standard | Thursday, April 03, 2008 MUCH OF THE DISCUSSION about recent Iraqi operations against illegal Shia militias has focused on issues about which we do not yet know enough to make sound judgments, overlooking important conclusions that are already clear. Coming days and weeks will provide greater insight into whether Maliki or Sadr gained or lost from this undertaking; how well or badly the Iraqi Security Forces performed; and what kind of deal (if any) the Iraqi Government accepted in return for Sadr's order to...

JOHN Howard says he has left Australia with a stronger, less ambiguous sense of national pride than before the Coalition won government in 1996. "I think we were having a pointless debate about our identity in the early 1990s," the former prime minister said after a speech to Harvard University students yesterday. "I think we've shed that. We have now got a very positive view of Australian history and Australian achievement. I think our sense of national pride is stronger now than it was in the 1990s and less ambiguous. And that's tremendously important." Mr Howard, who in Washington last...

The Patton of Counterinsurgency With a sequence of brilliant offensives, Raymond Odierno adapted the Petraeus doctrine into a successful operational art. by Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan 03/10/2008, Volume 013, Issue 25 Great commanders often come in pairs: Eisenhower and Patton, Grant and Sherman, Napoleon and Davout, Marlborough and Eugene, Caesar and Labienus. Generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno can now be added to the list. It's natural to assume that successful pairs of commanders complement each other's personalities (the diplomatic Eisenhower and the hard-charging Patton, for example) or that the junior partner is merely executing the vision...

A study by two conservative researchers attempting to determine why conservatives are underrepresented on college and university faculties. The conclusion is while some portion of this imbalance can be traced to "bias" and "discrimination", a large part results from a decision by students with conservative values not to pursue a career with limited economic potential that also requires sacrifice of family commitments to achieve academic advancement. "Since conservatives place an especially high priority on financial security and raising a family, the academy needs to make efforts to adopt more family-friendly policies... "As graduate school is not financially lucrative and pre-tenure...

I find few religious scenes more inspiring than a synagogue on a morning when we read one of the more grisly bits of scripture. Samuel 15:3, for example: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." I glance down--and there are the rabbinical footnotes in the text, explaining that the passage does not mean what it seems to mean. The reason Israel is to kill all the Amalekites, even the animals (which the Israelites might easily have...

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is ending 2007 with a whine rather than a whimper. It is tough to keep track of what's collapsing faster, home prices or the dollar, and the financial market crisis caused by it has many seers talking recession as we enter 2008. As always, that delicious negativity receives the lion's share of media attention. But, in many ways, this past year was a pretty good one, and no, I am not just a talking about Boston's sports fans. Thus, to ring in the New Year, I present the Top 10 pieces of happy economic...

President Bush intends to name a well-known conservative commentator and journalist to lead the State Department's struggling efforts to improve the U.S.'s image abroad, replacing long-time confidante Karen Hughes, who is leaving government by the end of the year, The Associated Press has learned. Bush plans to tap James K. Glassman, now chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the Voice of America, to be the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, administration officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not yet been made. The officials said the...

“MR. PRESIDENT, I rise today to address the record number of filibusters in the Senate,...” So might begin the transcript in the Congressional Record if a senator were to discuss what may well be the most pivotal issue in American public policy these days — the filibuster and its only antidote: a cloture vote that ends debate. --snip-- “This is a sharp increase in the use of a filibuster as a routine mechanism,” said Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan research group. “The Senate is set up culturally not to act on anything quickly. That’s a...

Start: Monday, November 26, 2007 8:30 AM End: Monday, November 26, 2007 2:00 PM Location: Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 Directions to AEI The United States is likely to make some important decisions on climate change policy in the near future. At this conference, distinguished experts offer new approaches for thinking through the climate change problem. 8:30 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast 8:45 Welcome: Robert Hahn, Joint Center 9:00 Panel I: Defining Appropriate Policies Presenters: Joseph Aldy, Resources for the Future Scott Barrett, Johns Hopkins University Discussants: Al McGartland, Environmental Protection Agency...

LONG: These are excerpts By Gary J. Schmitt, Reuel Marc Gerecht Posted: Thursday, November 1, 2007 EUROPEAN OUTLOOK,AEI Online, November 1, 2007 (snip) Two waves of terrorist attacks, the first in the mid-1980s and the second in the mid-1990s, have made France acutely aware of both state-supported Middle Eastern terrorism and freelance but organized Islamic extremists. The attacks in 1985 and 1986 were probably Iranian-inspired, carried out as payback for France's military and financial support of Saddam Hussein. The attacks in the 1990s, however, in part an outgrowth of the Algerian civil war, clearly revealed to French security officials that...

Diplomacy is doing nothing to stop the Iranian nuclear threat; a show of force is the only answer. WE MUST bomb Iran. It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere. First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned. Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions. For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel — except for humanitarian...

Start: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 10:00 AM End: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 12:00 PM Location: Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 Directions to AEI In The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West, Lee Harris delivers a daring argument about the inherent conflict between Western civilization and Islamic fanaticism. Radical Islam, he argues, is not a social pathology or “failure to modernize,” but rather a robust, internally consistent social order. It is resistant to conventional Western methods of conflict resolution such as negotiation, economic sanctions, and conventional armed confrontation. Indeed, the...

Senators Levin and Reid have introduced an amendment that would order the immediate withdrawal of American forces in Iraq--a stampede, in fact, that would require the military to pull 169,000 soldiers and their equipment out of active combat within nine months. There is no way that such a withdrawal would look like anything other than a rout and a humiliation for American arms. Such a proposal can only be supported on the premise that our efforts in Iraq to date have failed utterly and that there is no hope of protecting vital American interests in Iraq through the current strategy....

The Iranian Time Bomb - The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction By Michael A. Ledeen The first salvo was the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran in the fall of 1979, leading to the seizure of American hostages, a crisis that lasted 444 days. The war continued with the assassination of American diplomats and military personnel in Europe and North Africa. The latest fronts in that war are in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran arms, funds, trains, and directs a variety of terror groups, numbering tens of thousands of terrorists, regardless of their religious or ethnic makeup. It...

Coming to America By Ayaan Hirsi Ali Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2007 SPEECHES AEI World Forum (Beaver Creek, Colorado) Publication Date: July 23, 2007 Resident Fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali The movie Coming to America tells the story of Prince Akim from a beautiful, peaceful, exotic monarchy called Zamunda in Africa. The king of Zamunda holds a fabulous ceremony for his crown prince Akim (wonderfully played by Eddie Murphy) attended by all the king's men and all the king's horses. After a display of rigid protocol, preceded by a generous sprinkling of petals followed by a wild but well-choreographed dance, Akim...

When it comes to the troop surge in Iraq, a bunch of arm chair generals in Washington are influencing the Bush Administration as much as the Joint Chiefs or theater commanders. A group of military experts at the American Enterprise Institute, concerned that the U.S. was on the verge of a calamitous failure in Iraq, almost single handedly convinced the White House to change its strategy. They banded together at AEI headquarters in downtown Washington early last December and hammered out the surge plan during a weekend session. It called for two major initiatives to defeat the insurgency: reinforcing the...

I frequently meet people who claim to have no idea of the difference between traditional conservatism and so-called "neo" conservatism. The other day I came upon an amusing song parody by a right- wing Vietnam vet named George Gould that goes a long way toward explaining the difference. It's titled "The Neocon National Anthem" and it is set to the tune of the Vietnam War-era hit "The Ballad of the Green Berets." ''Laptop warriors from the sky, "Fearless men who send others to die ''Men whose every word's a lie ''The brave men of the AEI." The AEI is the...

A demographic spectre is haunting authoritative and influential circles in both the United States and the international community. This spectre is the supposed imperative to "stabilise human population." The quest to "stabilise human population" (or to "stabilise world population," or sometimes just "stabilise population") was formally launched on the global stage in 1994 by the United Nations at its Cairo Conference on Population and Development, whose "Programme of Action" intoned that "intensified efforts" to this end were "crucial" given the "contribution that early stabilisation of the world population would make towards the achievement of sustainable development." That objective is today...

Another Education Myth Collapses by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 07, 2007 Along with supposedly beneficial small class sizes, another constant refrain of American education officials is that there is a teacher shortage in the United States. “The data give a little support to this but there is no shortage of social studies teachers,” Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania said recently at the American Enterprise Institute. Moreover, “Half the schools don’t have shortages,” Dr. Ingersoll claims. He is a professor of education and sociology at Penn. The “shortages” are frequently cited as the reason why only a third of...

It is time for some strong medicine for American conservatives and it does not get any stronger than this: if Republicans are going to have any chance of victory in 2008, they need to learn a thing or two from the French. That's right. The French. For Republicans in Washington, the election of Nicolas Sarkozy is significant not because he is a conservative but because he was a part of a deeply unpopular incumbent government. For those who are willing to learn, Mr. Sarkozy's win shows that it is possible to produce a decisive national decision in favour of more...

The race for the Republican presidential nomination has just begun, yet the so-called "top tier" candidates have all been shown to have deep flaws. John McCain is a nice guy, but he's clearly off his rocker. Mitt Romney needs to change all of his positions 180 degrees. Oh, wait. He's already done that. And Rudy Giuliani, he's already bored the public to tears with his self-appointed Sept. 11 sainthood. The next time he mentions "911," it had better be because he's getting mugged. This creates an opportunity for a good, old-fashioned conservative to enter the race. And right on cue,...

LONDON (AFP) - A right-wing American think tank is offering 10,000 dollars (7,700 euros) to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report set to be released by the UN's top scientific panel, media reported. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant ExxonMobil according to the Guardian, sent letters to scientists in the United States, Britain and elsewhere offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN's report. AEI also reportedly offered additional payments, and to reimburse travel expenses. The report, due to be released Friday in Paris by the UN's...

Some propaganda is repeated so often by teachers unions and their lobbies that certain talking points - like low teacher salaries - become accepted as fact. This article sheds refreshing light on what is really factual rather than the widespread fictions spread by the education special interest groups.

This is the first in a new series of analytical essays devoted to key issues in the Middle East. Michael Rubin, resident scholar at AEI, will be the primary author of the series, which will be available in Arabic. Disputes over Iran’s nuclear program have become a primary focus of not only White House attention, but of international concern as well. While the Bush administration initially let Berlin, London, and Paris--the so-called European Union Three--take the lead in negotiations with Tehran on May 31, 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered more direct U.S. involvement and a package of...

Conservative intellectuals and commentators who once lauded Bush for what they saw as a willingness to aggressively confront threats and advance U.S. interests said in interviews that they perceive timidity and confusion about long-standing problems including Iran and North Korea, as well as urgent new ones such as the latest crisis between Israel and Hezbollah. "It is Topic A of every single conversation," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has had strong influence in staffing the administration and shaping its ideas. "I don't have a friend...

When rioting suddenly broke out in Kabul in May, sparked by a fatal traffic accident involving the U.S. military, most in the city were taken by surprise. Less shocking, alas, was the response of the Afghan National Police, or ANP, to the unrest. Rather than dispersing the mobs and restoring order, Kabul's cops were reported fleeing their posts and, in some cases, joining the looters. "The reaction of our police was really shameful," acknowledged Jawed Ludin, chief of staff to President Hamid Karzai. Unfortunately, the sorry performance of the ANP was not an isolated event, but a reflection of a...

Where the Boys Aren't By Christina Hoff Sommers Posted: Monday, July 3, 2006 Education Sector, a new Washington think tank established this year by the Bill & Melinda Gates and other leading foundations, describes itself as an "honest broker of evidence in key education debates." But its first big study, "The Evidence Suggests Otherwise: Truth About Boys and Girls," is deficient in this virtue. Resident Scholar Christina Hoff Sommers The report, written by policy analyst Sara Mead, denies that American boys are in trouble academically. "The real story," says Ms. Mead, "is not bad news about boys doing worse; it's...

It may rarely come up in Political Science courses but the military threat to the United States from Communist China is real and growing. “This is a serious military build-up.” Daniel Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute remarked. “I think we are slow to come to terms with what we’re facing.” Blumenthal, who also serves on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, argued that “People have changed their tune,” when it comes to the current Chinese military. The Department of Defense recently released its report on the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, of China. The findings were astonishing. The...

snip…Neo-conservative commentators at the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week what amounted to an obituary of the Bush freedom doctrine. "Bush killed his own doctrine," they said, describing the final blow as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya. This betrayal of Libyan democracy activists, they said, came after the US watched Egypt abrogate elections, ignored the collapse of the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, abandoned imprisoned Chinese dissidents and started considering a peace treaty with Stalinist North Korea. The neo-conservatives offered no explanation for desertion of the doctrine, other than a desire to make quick but transitory short-term gains. "The...

President Bush appointed a longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday to be his top domestic policy adviser, a post that has been vacant since February, when Claude A. Allen stepped down after being charged with stealing more than $5,000 in a phony refund scheme. Karl Zinsmeister, who has worked the past 12 years as editor in chief of the American Enterprise magazine, is slated to assume his White House post June 12. At the institute, he focused on examining cultural issues, as well as social and economic trends. His columns for the magazine included pieces praising Wal-Mart's efficiency...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - President Bush has chosen a new advisor on domestic policy with a history of pro-family interests, reported Focus on the Family's CitizenLink yesterday.Karl Zinsmeister is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and has been editor of American Enterprise magazine for the past 12 years.  The 47-year old husband and father has pro-family groups optimistic about his approach to life and family issues."Karl is a very bright man, an intellectual, a conservative in the very broad sense of that word," Gary Bauer, one-time domestic-policy adviser to President Reagan, told...

There is overwhelming evidence that urban sprawl has been beneficial for many people. Year after year, the vast majority of Americans respond to batteries of polls by saying that they are quite happy with where they live, whether it is a city, suburb, or elsewhere. Most objective indicators about American urban life are positive. We are more affluent than ever; home ownership is up; life spans are up; pollution is down; crime in most cities has declined. Even where sprawl has created negative consequences, it has not precipitated any crisis. So what explains the power of today's anti-sprawl crusade? How...

AMSTERDAM — Liberal party MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is leaving the Dutch parliament in September and moving to the United States. Insiders confirmed a report on the website of Dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant' on Monday about the move. Hirsi Ali has been on a speaking tour in the US and is due to make an official announcement on Tuesday. She is going to work for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative Washington think tank. The institute was founded in 1943 and is seen as one of the most important advisors to the government of George Bush. Somali-born Hirsi Ali...

DEBUNKING AMTRAK MYTHSThe fight over Amtrak funding has intensified, as the full House of Representatives voted to restore the $626 million cut proposed by the House Appropriations Committee, thereby bringing the Amtrak allotment back up to $1.2 billion. The budget reduction would have eliminated all money-losing long-distance routes.As the debate continues, Joseph Vranich, author of End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains  (AEI Press, November 2004) offers these facts to debunk Amtrak’s most popular myths.MYTH: America needs long distance trains. FACT: Amtrak ridership is insignificant. Amtrak ridership in 2002 totaled...

The immigration rallies across America showed that restrictionists aren't the only ones with strong views. But beyond podium pounding, compelling arguments are also necessary. As the Senate goes back this week to the task of crafting an immigration bill, it is crucial to focus on the right reasons for creating a guest-worker program and legalizing 12 million illegal immigrants. The case for immigration doesn't have to do as much with the Latino vote or civil rights. It should center instead on America's growth, competitiveness and dynamism. This month's rallies of thousands of people in many major cities raised the importance...

Just wanted to share this experience with you Freepers. I arrived at 12:15pm, registered, promised to myself I would enjoy this moment and so I sat on the first row, about 10 feet from the podium... about 150 people, Many looked very smart. 12:25pm, I can see Newt just outside the door, greeting and having small talk with a bunch of people. He is introduced and starts taking about IMMIGRATION. I was so excited to see this guy whom I admired so much from the days of the contract with America... Here he was, talking about something so hot... now,...

Friday's lead story in America's largest newspaper must have made for sober reading at AEI and the Council on Foreign Relations, the twin dorms that house the Wilsonian wings of our national parties. Americans, it appears, have had a bellyful of interventionism and globaloney. Reporters Susan Page and David Jackson merit quoting at length: "In a USA Today/Gallup Poll, nearly half of those surveyed said the United States 'should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can on their own.' ... "The leave-us-alone mood is apparent not only in the proportion of Americans,...

How liberals are using international law to promote their agenda and create a boomerang effect in the United States:  By creating novel new international laws, the New Class hopes to outflank American legislatures and courts by having liberal views adopted abroad (by foreign governments and organizations such as the United Nations) and then imposed on the United States.This approach is working. These new laws boomerang back to the United States; courts now cite the decisions of foreign courts in “interpreting” our Constitution.  Radical decisions on social issues, values, religion, and speech that are made by foreign legislatures and courts...

Hecklers Disrupt Scalia at D.C. Appearance Tuesday February 21, 2006 11:46 PM By ELIZABETH WHITE Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia grew tired of a persistent heckler Tuesday and asked organizers of a legal seminar to do something about the outbursts - gently. ``Don't use force,'' Scalia told American Enterprise Institute workers as they grabbed the young man's arm and nudged him toward the door. The workers then let go and the man walked out. It was unclear what Aaron Yule, 23, of Boston, was asking when Scalia turned to organizers and said, ``Can you,...

Dealing with cultural panic attacksEarlier this week, the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, held a remarkably interesting conference titled "Panic Attack: The New Precautionary Culture, the Politics of Fear, and the Risks to Innovation." It was interesting not only because I was a participant, but because it looked at how many Western countries are losing their cultural nerve, as evidenced by the increasing cultural acceptance of the so-called precautionary principle. The strongest versions of the precautionary principle demand that innovators prove that their inventions will never cause harm before they are allowed to deploy or sell them. In other...

In a country of religious zealots, the extremism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has even his own countrymen sounding alarms. Dissidents within Iran say their country's president is such a crazed fanatic that he will try to usher in the end of the world as we know it. On Dec. 16, gunmen opened fire on the motorcade of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he toured the southeastern province of Sistan, along Iran's border with Pakistan. According to news reports, Ahmadinejad's personal bodyguard and driver were killed in the ambush, although the president was unhurt. The government-controlled media in Tehran attributed...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2006 – The American people must remind themselves every day that the United States is at war, a top Army general said today. Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute here, said that 21st century warfare is more about "will and perception, than taking territory or enemies killed." The will of the American people and people around the world to confront the terrorists and defeat them is the center of gravity in what Pentagon officials are calling "the long war," Odierno, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. The...

Good Riddance to Traditional Pensions Print Mail By James K. Glassman IBM announced last week that it would freeze the old-style pension plans it provides to more than 100,000 employees and instead offer an improved version of its 401(k) plan. This is no run-of-the-mill accounting change or cut-costing measure. It is a major philosophical and economic shift for a bellwether corporation. IIt means, in short, that International Business Machines is moving away from paternalism and giving workers more control over their own retirements. The U.S. government should do the same in reforming Social Security. The IBM decision is good news...

<p>American conservatism is overdue for a reformation. And we may just have the equivalent of our 95 theses to nail to the church door, or in this case the think-tank door.</p> <p>Our would-be Martin Luther is Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, who would be a long overdue candidate for People magazine’s “Smartest Man Alive” cover if they did that sort of thing.</p>

How John Olin and William Simon helped create the conservative counterintelligentsia. Recent reports of gloominess besetting conservatives may be exaggerated, but there is one real reason for them to shed a tear: Last month, the trustees of the John M. Olin Foundation met to approve its final grants. After a half-century of operation, the foundation is closing up shop, following the wishes of its founder, who deliberately limited the organization's lifespan to prevent its one day falling into the hands of directors who were foes of his ideas. (Mr. Olin took comfort in the wisdom of this policy after Henry...

Tuesday, December 20, 2005 Assassinating the truth about the Iraq war By Michael RubinCommentary by   "The story of the Iraq war is a story of ideas about the role of the United States in the world, and of the individuals who conceived and acted on them." This is the view of George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, in the preface to his much publicized recent book "The Assassins' Gate," an account of the planning and personalities involved in the Iraq war. Packer seeks to explore U.S. involvement in Iraq through encounters with its participants, American...