Free Republic

President Obama is playing out a drama on the world stage, addressing Islam as a virtual supplicant, and conceding serious issues, while getting nothing in return. Why? Richard Baehr writes: The President demanded a complete freeze on Israeli settlement building, including in sections of Jerusalem, supposedly in return for some conciliatory gestures by the Palestinians and Arab states toward Israel. The demands on Israel hardened Palestinian attitudes, and the PA made a total settlement freeze a precondition for resuming peace talks. No gestures towards Israel were forthcoming from any Arab party. Instead, the Palestinians and Arab states launched a full...

"4th Inf. Div. Reaches Out to Local Islamic Community Members During Mosque Visit" (May 2009) Sgt. Philip Klein 4th Inf. Div. PAO KILLEEN, Texas – Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commanding general of the 4th InfantryDivision, helped open the lines of communication when he visited a mosque at the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen community center, which is located in Killeen, May 7. The visit marks the Ironhorse Division’s inaugural effort to reach out to the sizeable Muslim community that resides in the greater central Texas region – Killeen, Temple and Austin– to foster dialogue, interaction and understanding between the...

As USS New York pre pares to join the fleet, she will enter a world of crises. As we obsess over worthless Afghan real estate, truly vital problems loom abroad. Violent challenges to our security and strategic position are slighted or ignored, while a combination of politics, pride and inertia bind us to a distant land of marginal relevance. The crises highlighted below are not in order of priority. Any of them could take a painful bite out of Washington's complacency: Iraq: Given its strategic location, iconic importance in the Arab world and vast oil reserves, Iraq matters to us....

Obama: “wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran” Obama Administration on Anniversary of Embassy and Hostage Seizure in Iran: We're trying to be Friends! By Barry Rubin thelastcrusade.com Will Rogers, the great American comedian of the 1920s and 1930s, famously said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” The problem with the Obama Administration, at least so far, is that it has never met an enemy that it could identify as such.Of course, the story isn’t over yet. Indeed, one does see signs of change. But we are still...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

President Obama's lack of leadership is beginning to effect morale in the United States. Its been three months since General McCrystal sent his report on next steps for the War In Afghanistan. Since the President has been sitting on his military assets, confidence in the War on Terror has plummeted, and now the confidence is falling for both Iraq and Afghanistan. A Rasmussen study that reports that only 34% of voters say the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror. That’s down nine points from a month ago and 14 points since McCrystal first filed his...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

The Obama administration is considering an almost complete surrender in Afghanistan, if the report this weekend by the BBC's Katty Kay is accurate.Speaking as a panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, a weekend public affairs broadcast, Kay reported on the internal debate at the White House, "There are real questions being asked, I think, about whether even with a big injection of troops this is a real country, a real war that you can win."And there's a new phrase which is floating around the White House which is 'minimum security'. That we're not actually aiming for a country which is...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

At today's White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Barack Obama has spent "close to 20 direct hours" in meetings on Afghanistan since Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands of reinforcements was submitted over two months ago with a warning the war would be lost in twelve months without more troops.Gibbs says Obama also spends "quite a bit of time" thinking about the war in Afghanistan.Gibbs was asked about a statement by the mother of one of the fallen soldiers, Sgt. Dale Griffin, killed in Afghanistan this week whom Obama met with at Dover early Thursday morning....

The Washington Post reports tonight that Barack Obama and top administration officials have concluded the Taliban cannot be beaten and that they are looking for ways to cede parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban without those regions becoming safe havens for al Qaeda.The article also reports that Obama may wait until after he returns from a 10 day visit to Asia that begins November 11 to decide his policy for Afghanistan.The Post article is largely about Obama's request made this week, two months after he received Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands more troops to fulfill Obama's counter-insuregency...

The video title identifies this as a speech at the '64 Republican convention. That is incorrect. RR made the speech in LA on October 27, 1964 for the Goldwater campaign. Everyone who watched the telecast knew he could go places in politics if he wanted to. It was definitely a boost to us Goldwater kids after hearing "you are going to lose" for months. WATCH IT AND REMEMBER WHAT IS LIKE TO HAVE A REAL LEADER!

START 'cheating' Republicans in the Senate are gearing up to battle the Obama administration over the high-priority plan to finish a new arms-control treaty with Russia before the end of the year.

When Charlton Heston held up a replica Revolutionary War musket, and said "From my cold, dead hands," at the NRA Convention in 2000, he was not the first to use those words in that context, but his use is certainly the most famous. It was a powerful speech that Heston gave, delivered with both the solemnity and the fire one would expect from one of the few actors capable of pulling off the role of Moses. Much has changed since that speech, including the now much more politically correct NRA. Can anyone imagine the top of the NRA hierarchy now...

Call for a Lipstick Revolution By Norma Zager Watching a series about World War II, I remain haunted by one story. A soldier was relating an attack and the death of a friend in combat. He described the horrifying scene as life poured out of his buddy as he screamed for his mother. My heart wept for every mother who lost a son or daughter in battle or in life, for a young innocent boy caught up in the web of evil. It is long past the time for women to speak up and demand an end to this painful...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has formulated a new policy for Sudan that proposes working with that country’s government, rather than isolating it as President Obama had pledged to do during his campaign. In an interview on Friday, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, retired, said the policy, to be announced Monday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would make use of a mix of “incentives and pressure” to seek an end to the human rights abuses that have left millions of people dead or displaced while burning Darfur into the American conscience.

--snip--The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

HILLARY CLINTON’S words of support for Georgia during her visit this week to Moscow did little to calm fears in Tbilisi about Russia’s intentions in the turbulent Caucasus mountains. Two of Russia’s most powerful men sent shivers through Tbilisi during the US secretary of state’s stay in Moscow, with statements that fuelled worries the Kremlin’s fight with rebels in its own restive Caucasus republics could spill into neighbouring Georgia. The struggle between Moscow’s security forces and militants, once confined to Chechnya, is equally intense in two other Russian regions, Dagestan and Ingushetia, where police and soldiers come under daily attack...

Russia in a new review of its policy on use of nuclear weapons will reserve the right to undertake a pre-emptive strike if it feels its security is endangered, a senior Kremlin official told a Russian newspaper. Russian and U.S. negotiators are in talks to find agreement on a new bilateral pact cutting stocks of strategic nuclear weapons. Both sides are working to a December deadline for a new treaty to replace the landmark Cold War-era START pact. While Moscow and Washington have made progress in strategic nuclear arms talks, Russia's security may come under threat from regional conflicts and...

Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads. The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted....

Washington will tone down its criticism of Russia's human rights record in order to win Kremlin backing for possible sanctions against Iran, it has been claimed. It is the latest in a number of concessions the US has made to Moscow in order to improve relations and encourage co-operation on international issues. The plan emerged as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited Russia to discuss a range of issues including Iran's rogue nuclear programme. Mrs Clinton's trip was part of what Washington is calling a "reset" with Moscow, a new more constructive relationship with the Kremlin that President...

Yes, I wish that this was a satire piece, but unfortunately it appears that this is real. President Obama's Administration is going to allow Russia to inspect our nuclear facilities-- within the United States. This is an unprecedented move that damages US national security. Not only does it lift the veil of secrecy, but if Russia decided to sell the secret information to terrorists or rogue states, attacks could follow. This is a disgrace.

In short, it is reprehensible appeasement favoring one brand of Islamists who are threatened by another brand of Islamists.During the previous Bush Administration, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and other Islamist governments were touted as important "allies" in the war on terror. A very disengenous designation.How are they allies?Technically, the Saudis have the same ultimate global objective as that of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda:The submission and Islamization of the non-Muslim world. The non-Muslim world regarded by Islamists as the "House of War".To that end, the Saudi government has spent $ billions to build mosques and spread Wahhabi ideology around the world. In America 80%...

Pittsburgh was treated to an impressive show the week of the recent G20 conference. A nice assortment of military choppers of various types and missions, along with odder aircraft difficult both to identify and explain. Both police and the National Guard were out in force, with downtown nearly sealed off. None of this hardware was used against the "3,000 - 4,000" (more like a few hundred) anarchist demonstrators when they turned their righteous wrath on a dozen Starbucks and a Whole Foods store. No serious confrontation was expected and none occurred. Because all of it - the Guard troops, the...

United States feels that Taliban poses a lesser threat to American security than al-Qaeda, the White House said here today, as media reported that the Obama administration has concluded that Taliban cannot be eliminated in Afghanistan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sought to make a clear differentiation between Taliban and al-Qaeda as he said al-Qaeda was an "entity that, through a global jihadist network would seek to strike the US homeland". "I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things," Gibbs said. "Their capability is somewhat different, though, on that continuum of transnational threats," he...

Unbelievable, just unbelievable. The nominations were due to the committee on Feb. 1, and the president took office on Jan. 20. Did our president do enough for world peace in 264 hours to deserve even nomination let alone the win the award? I guess he can check this one off the bucket list. From Breitbart…

They help erase what happened in Copenhagen didn't they ? "I would like to thank the Noble Committee"...

<p>When France chides you for appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom. Just how low we've sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration's satisfaction when Russia's president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the UN, that "sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable."</p>

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is offering Iran "a serious, meaningful dialogue" over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.

DID it surprise a single Post reader that Iran's been hiding a big nu clear weapons development fa cility? It stunned our president when he learned about it months ago. Then he kept it secret from you. Obama didn't want you to know how much progress Iran had made. It's an embarrassment. And it raises the pressure on the White House to act -- something this president's squirming to avoid. But the Iranians have now realized we know, so they tipped it themselves. Obama had no choice but to come clean.

These two clips from Levin’s 1st hour yesterday speak for themselves. The first clip starts with Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement to the U.N., after which Mark declares—and I quite agree—that it is Netanyahu, not Obama, who is now the true leader of the free world. It is Netanyahu who sounded like Reagan and Thatcher, and Obama who sounded like Neville Chamberlain. It was Netanyahu, not Obama, who stood up to the personifications of evil that now disgrace the halls of the U.N. Mark said it quite well: Obama should have been the one to give the speech that...

<p>Just announced by Jennifer Griffith in a live interview, WH has asked Pentagon for a formal assessment of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, that the Afghan Wart is no longer in our nations interest, blamed the Afghan elections.</p>

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Here is video of a new web ad by "Citizens United" which features GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter talking about the appeasement strategy of the Obama Administration that amounts to "a firesale of American Security." He calls the Obama team an "adolescent administration." . . . (VIDEO)

Barack Obama got to play peacemaker during his staged meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. In a throwback to Bill Clinton's famous photo op on the White House Lawn with Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, Obama stood between the men, holding their arms as the two shook hands.

President Obama will chair a special nuclear-disarmament meeting by the United Nations Security Council. The White House bills this as a historic first, but it is typical of Mr. Obama's emphasis on style over substance. He will appear before the body with the weakest foreign-policy record of any new U.S. president in recent memory... In the Middle East, Mr. Obama's unprecedented obsequiousness in dealing with the Muslim world has generated no tangible returns... In Afghanistan, the president has hit turbulence within his own party, and as the going gets tough, he seems ready to repudiate his "stronger and smarter" strategy...

STILL determined to "push the reset button with Rus sia," President Obama hit the delete key on our allies in Eastern Europe. Obama's decision to abandon missile defense as we know it, cutting the throats of Poland and the Czech Republic, handed Moscow's hard-liners their biggest win since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin insisted all along that we'd never be permitted to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in the former Soviet empire. He was right. And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia. No restrictions...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama abruptly canceled a long-planned missile shield for Eastern Europe on Thursday, replacing a Bush-era project that was bitterly opposed by Russia with a plan he contended would better defend against a growing threat of Iranian missiles. The United States will no longer seek to erect a missile base and radar site in Poland and the Czech Republic, poised at Russia's hemline. That change is bound to please the Russians, who had never accepted U.S. arguments, made by both the Bush and Obama administrations, that the shield was intended strictly as a defense against Iran and...

Strategic Defense: With Iran on the verge of a deliverable nuke, the administration tells our allies in the dead of night that we will scuttle missile defense plans in Eastern Europe to please the Russians.Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after...

Alliances: The U.S. has expressed a willingness to barter away missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now the Polish foreign minister says he hopes his country doesn't regret trusting the United States.The Brussels Forum is a privately organized high-level meeting of the most influential North American and European political, corporate and intellectual leaders to address pressing challenges currently facing both sides of the Atlantic. One of the pressing issues discussed at this year's conference was whether the U.S. is serious about bartering away plans for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for...

Shortly after the pullback on the shield programme was announced, Russia's government said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet several U.S. executives on Friday from firms including General Electric, Morgan Stanley as well as TPG, one of the world's largest private equity firms

Pelosi Congratulates the Administration on BMD Surrender McCormack is down on the Hill at her presser and sends in these quotes: "I think this is brilliant." "bilateral relationship with Russia is very, very important." "I congratulate the administration." I have 2010 campaign ads dancing in my head... Posted by Michael Goldfarb on September 17, 2009 11:09 AM

The announcement that President Obama has caved in to Soviet demands to scrap the missile defense plans in Europe serves not just to appease the Russians but also clears the way for the Iranians to have a clear shot at European cities once they have their own nukes. This is the convenience of seeing everything having to do with defense as an expense and waste of money that could be better suited to other purposes such as spending money on programs that actually can buy and bribe the voters.....

While the American public has turned their attention inward towards economic challenges and health care debates, the Obama administration has engaged in a re-writing of US foreign policy based upon Wilsonian idealism that is resulting in concessional disarmament and an abandoning of long-standing commitments to US allies. Throughout the 2008 election, I repeatedly warned that the direction of President Obama's foreign policy would lead us down a path in which our nation would repeat the idealistic foreign policy failures of the Wilson administration that led to the Treaty of Versailles, abandoned support of our allies and led us into a...

I blogged a couple of weeks ago that the Obama administration was about to abandon its plans for Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. I wrote then that “if enacted, this would represent a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defence system, and a massive betrayal of two key US allies in eastern and central Europe. Such a move would significantly weaken America’s ability to combat the growing threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and would hand a major propaganda victory to the Russians.” It now looks as though the...

Add another Obama insult to injury on 9-11. First, he desecrated the memory of 9-11 with his planned proclamation of his mandatory civilian service on 9-11, which he has designated a "National Day of Service." And now 9-11 has yet another title: State Department personnel are supposed to pray with Muslims on the newly declared "Interfaith Day of Service," whatever that means on 9-11. September 11, which should be a somber day of mourning and reflection (on how the hell we got here), will be a day when Obama -- in a celebratory mode -- makes his big announcement. The...

Revealed today was another kick in the teeth for the friends and families of the Lockerbie Bombing. A newspaper in Great Britain is reporting that the doctors who judged Lockerbie terrorist al-Megrahi had only three months to live where paid by Libya. In contrast other doctors suggested the terrorists had 10 or more months to live, not much better, but to get the compassionate release you had to be judged within three months of death. The release itself was disgusting, but what has happened since is like rubbing salt on the still raw wounds of those whose lives were shattered...

Trips to Israel have given me the impression that that Golda Meir is a bigger hero in the United States than in Israel. The reason is probably that in the 59 years since the War of Independence, the Yom Kippur War was the closest the Jewish State ever came to being destroyed. One version of history suggests that Meir had pretty strong intelligence that it was about to be attacked, but instead of launching a preemptive attack like in 1967, she heeded US Secretary of State Henry Kissenger's warning not to attack first. Many Israelis, including my friend Avi who...

It happens every September, the opening of a new UN Session, leaders and despots from all around the world come to NY many of them to stand in front of the General Assembly, situated in the biggest city in the US, and spend hours telling the world the United States is lousy. This year will be no different. This year will be President Barack Obama's first trip to the UN to address the General Assembly. Judging by the POTUS' first months in office he will probably follow the tradition of other nations and spend hours telling the world the United...