Free Republic

Defining 'New Labour,' defending the Iraq war, getting to know George W. Bush. It is now painfully obvious that Tony Blair—the man who led Britain for a decade, who transformed the country's dully orthodox Labour Party into dashing, moderate "New Labour," who faced down parliamentary opponents with brio and eloquently defended the invasion of Iraq—is no longer much of a hero in his own country. Indeed, he is intensely disliked, not least for his loyalty to the "freedom agenda"—the idea that, after 9/11, Western democracies had a duty to face down tyrants like Saddam Hussein and end the threat they...

Democratic Socialists of America, is despite its deceptive name is the U.S.'s largest and probably most influential Marxist based organization. Many of its several thousand members operate through the Democratic Party, New York's influential Working Families Party and the organization also counts thousands of of labor unionists, religious activists, journalists and college professors in its ranks. D.S.A. helped establish and continues to support the more than 80 strong Congressional Progressive Caucus and is particularly close to "single payer" healthcare champions Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and Caucus founder Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. [caption id="attachment_653" align="aligncenter" width="439" caption="Quentin Young, Barack...

For many wartime veterans, the navy's 100th anniversary this year comes with mixed emotions. They recall the pride and fondness Canadians once held for the navy in the decades after the Second World War, but are deeply saddened by the state of the navy today -- not only its declining capability and its neglect by Ottawa, but its irrelevance for so many Canadians at a time when the army, and its mission in Afghanistan, dominate the headlines. "I don't think half of Canada knows anything about the navy's history," says veteran Ted Paxton, "and while the modern navy hasn't been...

I’m told there won’t be any daylight between the US and Israel in the aftermath of the incident on the flotilla yesterday, which resulted in the deaths of 10 activists. Regardless of the details of the flotilla incident, sources say President Obama is focused on what he sees as the longer term issue here: a successful Mideast peace process. “The president has always said that it will be much easier for Israel to make peace if it feels secure,” a senior administration official tells ABC News. The suggestion is that US condemnation of Israel would further isolate that country, and...

We are at war with radical Islam, and that war will go on for many years. For me, the question is this: will the secular Western civilization shared by America and Europe, which allows us to enjoy life and its creature comforts, still be standing at the end of that war? Or will radical Islam, with an aggressive culture that treasures martyrdom and death over life, prevail? The vast majority of Muslims, of course, are peace-loving. The fanaticism found among the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia is not found in many of the countries where a billion, 400 million Muslims live....

Arab rips 0bama a new one in scathing editorial New York-The strategy of the twin tracks adopted by the US Administration to deal with the various issues, from Iran to Afghanistan and even with the Taliban, may be a clear policy in the mind of President Barack Obama and in the minds of the leaders of his administration, especially the academics among them. Yet this does not negate a noteworthy state of affairs, which is what this strategy has produced in terms of reducing trust in the United States, increasing the confusion regarding what this administration has in mind, and...

A British Army sharp shooter has told how he killed five Taliban soldiers in 28 seconds - in a desperate bid to protect a British patrol that the insurgents were preparing to ambush. The enemy targets were more than a mile away when the sniper, a corporal serving with 4 Rifles, got the all clear to take them out. The corporal - who has 37 confirmed kills in just four months in the war zone - said that he and his spotter were set up in an old fort in Haji Alem, in the Nad-e Ali district of Helmand province....

Since his early days in office, Barak Obama has sought to influence public thought by manipulating language. As matters of policy, acts of “terrorism” became known as “man-caused disasters,” and terrorists captured in the field were no longer considered “unlawful enemy combatants.” Now, he has purged the terms “Jihad” and “Islamic extremism” from a national security strategy document to show that the U.S. “does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror.” Thus, Obama seeks to define out of existence the essential nature of today’s terrorist threat in order to placate those who justify or condone terrorism. He also...

All during the 2008 Presidential campaign, we told the liberal-Democrat Koch mentality what Obama was all about. They refused to listen. Now, they’re waking up to the nightmare they’ve helped to create…

Brilliant, Pres. Obama. Simply brilliant. Way to go to fortify relations with our reliable allies in the region, particularly with a key lynchpin like JAPAN.The upshot in the original Japanese was that Japan was snubbed in D.C. for an individual "summit meeting" with Obama, while Obama on the other hand kowtowed and gave the Red Chinese the red carpet (literally) treatment.Note, no "kowtow" to Prime Minister Hatoyama (Japan) that there was to Red Chinese President Hu Jin Tao. This I assure you was not lost on Tokyo (nor Beijing, Seoul, Pyongyang, Taipei, Moscow, Teheran, Damascus, Tel Aviv etc for that...

President Obama is holding one of the biggest global summits ever on U.S. soil starting Monday, but for all the hoopla, the event will be missing America’s strongest allies. As remarkable as it is, the fact that neither British Prime Minister Gordon Brown nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are attending President Obama’s nuclear security summit in Washington Monday and Tuesday is not altogether surprising. Relations with both countries — Israel in particular — have grown strained under Obama. Combined with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent defiance of the administration, questions are growing about the president’s ability to maintain important...

Our allies hate him. Our enemies are laughing at him. Nearly two years after Obama’s World Tour in which he did his best to convince voters that he understood global challenges with a high profile tour of a lot of foreign countries (a approach that if it worked should convincingly make every internationally famous rock star a foreign policy expert), his biggest global accomplishment is still his ability to travel around the world to high profile destinations on the taxpayer’s shrinking dime. His attempts at diplomacy consisted of delivering vicious slaps across the faces of longtime allies, from England...

WARSAW, Poland — Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who died Saturday in a plane crash in Russia, was a one-time anti-communist activist who teamed up with his twin brother to take his country in a nationalist, conservative direction. His opponents, however, viewed him as narrow-minded, provincial and overzealous in his drive to cleanse the country of the influence of former communists. And he drew criticism from human rights groups for trying to stop a gay-rights parade through Poland's capital. Kaczynski was a firm friend of Poland's Jewish community, which has enjoyed a revival in recent years after it was nearly wiped...

<p>Indian diplomats close to Singh say the lackluster results show how far the relationship has fallen since Bill Clinton and the two Bushes transformed a strained Cold War rivalry into a close strategic partnership between the world's largest democracies. Obama's predecessors built a relationship around trade negotiations, joint military exercises, and ad hoc coalitions for humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of the Indonesia tsunami. Despite his reputation for uniquely pushy diplomacy, it was George W. Bush who concluded the landmark deal that recognized India as a legitimate nuclear power and opened the door to the sale of civilian nuclear technology to India. No single American move has done more to demonstrate Washington's respect for New Delhi as a rising and equal power. Now Obama, who came to office promising to respect U.S. allies, is backpedaling on that deal, to the growing chagrin of the Indians.</p>

(IsraelNN.com) The Obama administration has cancelled airport security restrictions on 14 terror-related countries, including American Muslim allies such as Saudi Arabia. Instead, the United States is relying on "real-time” intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks in the air. American security officials several months ago clamped down on travelers from Cuba and 13 Muslim countries after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab passed through security systems and tried to blow up a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit. Shortly afterwards, new regulations required travelers with passports from those 14 countries to undergo a thorough body search before boarding.

WASHINGTON -- What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America? If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One. Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

New report shows England's growing disillusionment with its once greatest ally. British parliamentarians have finally realized that the "special relationship" between London and Washington no longer exists--if it ever did. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has published an unexpectedly lively report urging British diplomats and ministers to be "less deferential" to the U.S. No more groveling, then. Not that it will stop Prime Minister Gordon Brown from being starry-eyed in the presence of President Obama when he visits the U.S. in a few days' time. The committee, whose members are about to disband before the general election campaign,...

Passover is an unfortunate time to be asking what has gone wrong between America and Israel. Is today's strenuous disagreement over Israel's West Bank housing policy the real problem, or is this controversy merely a symptom of deeper, more profound differences?Partly because of the extraordinary secrecy surrounding Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent White House meeting with President Obama, much remains hidden from public view. Nonetheless, after 14 months in office, Obama has made clear he sees the U.S.-Israeli relationship very differently than any of his predecessors.Consider, for example, Obama's September 2009 U.N. General Assembly speech, profoundly anti-Israeli, and to a...

Barack Obama’s decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia — to a democracy with the world’s largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century — is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: attack America’s friends and kowtow to our enemies. Examples run from Britain to Israel. Early in his administration, Obama returned a bust of Churchill that the British government had loaned the White House after 9/11. Then Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of DVDs that don’t work on British...

The UK government needs to be "less deferential" towards the US and more willing to say no to Washington, a group of MPs have said. The Commons Foreign Affairs committee also said it was wrong to speak of "the special relationship" with the US, as it was fostering other alliances. However, the MPs did agree that the link between the countries was "profound and valuable". The Foreign Office said the two nations share a "unique" bond. The committee said the phrase "the special relationship" did not reflect the "modern" Anglo-American relationship. It was originally coined more than 60 years ago...