Free Republic

Kosovo's recent unilateral declaration of independence brought back memories. I publicly opposed NATO's attack on Serbia - carried out in the name of protecting the Kosovars from Serb atrocities - in March 1999. At that time, I was a member of the Opposition Front Bench - or Shadow Government - in Britain's House of Lords. The then Conservative leader, William Hague, immediately expelled me to the "back benches." Thus ended my (minor) political career. Ever since, I have wondered whether I was right or wrong. I opposed military intervention for two reasons. First, I argued that while it might do...

The Iranian regime is gloating at having faced down the international community's deadline for halting uranium enrichment. Recently a Kuwaiti paper reported yet another ominous development. Iran is constructing a secret nuclear reactor in the Zargan region in order to avoid international oversight. A nuclear plant would threaten the existence of Israel and hold the rest of the world to ransom. Yet from all the signals coming out of Washington and Jerusalem it seems that the Bush administration has decided not to confront Iran but to appease it. Recent signs of this include its decision to station diplomats in Iran...

If the United States had planned to draw Al Qaeda and its adherents out of Pakistan and into Iraq for a battle in the heart of the Islamic region, it is very unlikely that any official would acknowledge that in public; neither verbally nor in writing. In setting the stage for battling Al Qaeda and invading Iraq, to separate the region and the people from supporting either out of any sense of ethnic or religious loyalty, the United States had spoken deliberately. In both cases, insisting that the United States was not interested in making war on Islam, Arabs or...

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official. Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times. “Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by...

Whatever happened to leadership and honesty as presidential traits? I happen to believe that the only leader in the West to have these two admirable qualities in droves is the leader of the free world: George W Bush.

YOU KNOW THE BUSH administration’s North Korea policy is fatally flawed when even Barack Obama, last heard pledging to meet with the world’s dictators “without preconditions,” judges it naïve. And yet, the presumptive Democratic nominee sounded all too sensible yesterday when he suggested that the Bush administration’s baffling decision to strike Pyongyang from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring states and to lift trade sanctions against the tyrannical regime

British writer Oliver Kamm has a piece up at comment is free proclaiming that George Bush has made the world a safer place. Kamm writes: The grand strategy pursued by the U.S. under Bush has overestimated the plasticity of the international order, but it has got one big thing right. There is an integral connection between the terrorism that targets western societies and the autocratic states in which Islamist fanaticism is incubated. Remember that connection? Or has it been supplanted in the public consciousness with the all-important connection between the Iraq War and world opinion?

'Bush Believes History Is On His Side' Tim Marshall Foreign Affairs editor Updated:02:04, Monday June 16, 2008 George Bush believes that where the British Empire stumbled, what he calls 'Freedom's March' will succeed. The American President was asked by Sky News about the British and Soviet experiences in Afghanistan. He gave an emotional response which went to the heart of his foreign policy thinking: "This isn't the American Empire, the British Empire or coalition empire; this is freedom's march. And freedom has had a way of taking hold in some of the places where people have never given freedom a...

Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of "reform" in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an "original" war aim, and that...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says George W. Bush will end his presidency with a 'grief of failure' to wage war on Tehran. In a Tuesday press conference at the headquarters of a UN summit on the global food crisis, Ahmadinejad said the Bush administration has leveled false accusations against Tehran in order to justify a military strike on Iran. The White House alleges that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program and insists that military option remains on the table to counter what it calls 'the Iranian threat'. Tehran, however, rejects the allegations, stressing that its nuclear program is purely...

W vs. Terror By John Hinderaker IT'S an article of faith on the left that the Bush administration has done nothing that has enhanced our security - rather, its alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us. Empirically, however, something clearly has made us safer since 2001. Successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have not increased, as had been widely predicted, but instead dwindled to virtually nothing. A steady stream of terrorist attacks on America and US interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward. A partial history: 1988:...

The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran's push for a nuclear weapon "through peaceful diplomatic means." Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who visited Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of...

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:      Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date.  In accordance with this provision, I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication.  This notice states that the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, as modified in scope and relied upon for additional steps taken in...

Norman Podhoretz, as you will recall, was a staunch supporter of GW Bush, and is staying the course, and was in support of Sharon's Disengagement. He now replies to his critics of both these positions, in his Commentary article, Israel and the Palestinians:Has Bush Reneged?. Anyone interested in the peace process from its beginning in Madrid should read this very informative article. He begins, On June 24, 2002, George W. Bush, having already become the first American President to come out openly and officially for the establishment of a Palestinian state, attached two stern conditions to that new policy. The...

The Winning Side of the Iraq Campaign by Walid Phares In his latest assessment of the state of the campaign in Iraq President Bush drew strategic assertions regarding the measurement of success and the risks of failure on that battlefield, in what we can coin as the next stage in the confrontation against the forces of terror in the region. The successful surge Practically the military surge has denied al-Qaeda and the Mahdi militia the realization of their current objectives. So far al-Qaeda wasn’t able to create an "Emirate" in the Sunni triangle, nor even to reconstitute a Fallujah-like enclave:...

Americans have regularly changed their minds in the midst of their ongoing wars—and not just once, but often. War is a volatile enterprise. Tactics, strategies, and commanders must be sorted out amid death and destruction before the proper combination is found to defeat the enemy. In the meantime, the reasons for going to war, the manner in which the war is fought, and the objectives for which it is waged are constantly being weighed at home against the costs of conducting it. As a result, impatient democracies—and Americans are nothing if not impatient—are liable to suffer alternating fits of unrestrained...

The failure of the Bush presidency is the dominant fact of American politics today. It has driven every facet of Democratic political strategy since early 2006, when Democrats settled on the campaign themes that brought them their takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006. Nothing--not even the success of the American troop surge in Iraq--has altered or will alter the centrality of George W. Bush and his failed presidency to Democratic planning in the remainder of 2008. Until very recently, it was in the Republicans' interest to find ways of sidestepping or finessing this central political fact. Congressional...

Blair accused of 'stabbing Hillary Clinton in the back' after supporting RepublicansLast updated at 00:56am on 20th January 2008  Former allies: Bill Clinton and Tony Blair   Tony Blair was accused of betrayal last night as he waded into the American Presidential campaign to support George Bush's Republican world view. As the former PM recommended Mr Bush's policies to 400 millionaire bankers in Las Vegas, former ally Bill Clinton was campaigning in Nevada for his wife Hillary, who hopes to be the Democratic candidate for the White House and is an arch Bush critic. In a move liable to...

January 19, 2008World War IV: A Military Perspective By Christopher D. Geisel World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, by Norman Podhoretz, New York: Doubleday, 2007. 240 pp. Not once during my six months serving in Iraq did I ever hear anyone refer to our conflict there as “World War IV.” In fact, to an airman like me on the ground in Baghdad and Camp Taji—with the day-to-day work of equipping the Iraqi Security Forces and training Iraqi soldiers to manage their own logistics system—the idea that anything I was doing was part of a global conflict was an...

On an earlier post, I made the comment that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination should remind voters that we still live in a very dangerous world, and we need a grown-up as president with the wisdom and the strength of character to utilize our military to protect our interests and our citizens. I went on to say that this rules out all Democrat candidates. Since some either do not understand what this means (or PRETEND not to understand), lets explore this further. All through the 1990’s, a Democrat administration dealt with Islamic terrorism as if it were a problem for the civilian...

Will the real George W. please stand up? After seven years of fearlessly confronting evil, both rhetorically and militarily, the Bush Administration in Washington seems to have faded away, replaced instead by a meek shadow of its former self. Firm resolve has given way to disappointing frailty, as the shape and direction of US foreign policy increasingly resembles something taken straight out of Bill Clinton's playbook. Across the board, on nearly every major issue of the day, from Iran to Syria to North Korea, the Bush administration is in retreat, abandoning the principled stands of yesteryear and replacing them with...

At Annapolis this week, President George W. Bush buried his doctrine. The Bush Doctrine was based upon a simple statement the president made in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 jihadist attacks on America. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime,” Bush announced to the roaring applause of both houses of Congress. The message emanating from Annapolis was exactly the...

In the Palestinian territories, the U.S. knows that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will never be a serious partner for peace and that he is politically impotent. Yet, the Bush Administration continues to fund Fatah knowing the organization has absolutely no intention whatsoever of ceasing its terrorist activities, controlling the anti-Semitic hatred in its media, promoting anything resembling democratic change in its political infrastructure or becoming more moderate towards Israel. It knows that the organization is vying with Hamas to see who can field the most suicide bombers and that it continues to plot the vanquishment of "the Zionist occupiers." Yet,...

The war against radical Islamic aggression will be conducted in one of two ways. Either the policies of former President Bill Clinton, as carried forth by the Democratic leadership in Congress and by the Democratic Presidential candidates, or the policies of President George W. Bush will prevail. Rarely in politics has the difference been two approaches on an issue been so clearly drawn and rarely are the consequences of the choice made more dire. By their lack of action in the face of growing terrorist assaults, the Clinton administration exhibited a policy of appeasement. The underlying idea exhibited by Clinton,...

With that arrogance and boorishness that is characteristic of diplomatic overtures from the Putin administration, the Russian military chief of staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, chose the 39th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to advise Prague this week to "think again" about allowing radar installations for the U.S. missile defence shield to be installed on Czech soil. "We say it will be a big mistake by the Czech government to put this radar site on Czech territory," he said, according to the Reuters report. This is the kind of language that seems to appeal to Vladimir Putin himself -- the...

find a strong parallel between the mentality of these creatine-loving individuals and the mentality of our current Administration on foreign policy. Mr. Bush loves to use the brute force of the American military to scare potential enemies into submission, while also giving the proverbial dead lift to any country to whom he chooses to "bring" democracy. Like our friends in the raised Silverado Z71, the Bush Doctrine is chock-full of brute strength, but lacks true power, flexibility, focus, and endurance. It lacks power because it has severely overestimated our military's ability to lift a country to peaceful democracy. It lacks...

The United States plans to sell Gulf countries at least $20 billion worth of military hardware in the coming years, and will sign 10-year military aid packages with Egypt and Israel, valued together at $43 billion. According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Washington is "working with these states to give a chance to the forces of moderation and reform."Oddly, on Friday the New York Times published a story roundly criticizing the Saudis for their "counterproductive" attitude in Iraq. Senior U.S. officials were quoted as saying that the kingdom had tried to discredit Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by handing...

As its new counterinsurgency strategy takes hold, the Bush Administration regards the war in Iraq with guarded optimism, pointing to encouraging signs that the "surge" is working or at least beginning to work. Baghdad appears to have pulled back from the edge of civil war. In Al Anbar province, local tribesmen have turned away from al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadists, and staked their future, at least temporarily, on cooperation with the Americans and the elected Iraqi government. The new Iraqi military and police forces are more numerous and better trained than ever, and suffer no shortage of recruits despite their...

Ever heard of the Wise Men of Chelm? They are the well-intentioned but foolish residents of an imaginary Jewish village, and the object of humor that stretches back 500 years. Here's one story. One of the "wise men" is sent to a neighboring village to bring back a horse. On the way home the horse wanders off and is lost. "Schlemiel!" remonstrate the townspeople with him. "Don't you know you have to lead the horse back on a rope?" A week later the same man is sent off to bring back a slab of butter. Learning from his mistake...

December 20, 2006, 6:28 a.m. Realism, Iraq, and the Bush DoctrineSome clarification is desperately needed. By Mackubin Thomas Owens The release of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) report has caused the chattering classes to swoon over the “return of the realists.� Now the spectacle of people who loathe Henry Kissinger and the memory of Richard Nixon celebrating the virtues of foreign-policy “realism� is truly amusing and indicates a lack of seriousness on the part of critics of the Bush administration in their to approach the Iraq War. Of course, the critics’ embrace of realism is cynical — just another...

Charles Krauthammer writes an internationally syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group. He is also a monthly essayist for Time magazine, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, and a weekly panelist on Inside Washington. He was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, and Financial Times recently named him America’s most influential commentator. This enote is based on his keynote address at FPRI’s November 14, 2006, annual dinner, at which Dr. Krauthammer was the second recipient of FPRI’s Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service. We are now in a period of confusion...

US foreign policy in the Arab Middle East is now shifting from actively promoting democratic change to the previous policy of "realism" - a policy based on the appeasement of dictators and despots that was discredited in the post 9/11 world because it had failed to secure American interests and security even in its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. The policy of "realism" was based on cold, calculated political and material considerations rather than on moral, ethical or idealistic concerns. It was this approach to American foreign policy that sent hundreds of thousands of people across the Third...

'Free to lose' isn't good philosophy for the right wing November 19, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist If Milton Friedman had to die, then a week after the defeat of a Republican Congress that had apparently forgotten every lesson Friedman taught in Free To Choose is eerily apt timing. As it happens, had ill health not intervened, Professor Friedman would have been disembarking round about now from a National Review post-election cruise with yours truly and various other pundits and commentators. Instead, we were obliged to sail without him, and in the days that followed I found myself wondering...

WESTERN countries are fighting World War III and it would last a generation, former head of Israel's Mossad spy network, Efraim Halevy, said in Melbourne yesterday. Mr Halevy, who ran Israel's intelligence agency between 1998 and 2002, said a major terror attack was possible in Australia. But he said the public didn't appear to realise the seriousness of the threat. "The threats today are aimed at destroying the whole way of life in democratic societies . . . of turning back the wheel more than 1000 years," Mr Halevy said. The security adviser to former prime minister Ariel Sharon and...

Between Sept. 11, 2001, and his State of the Union Address in 2002, George W. Bush had America in the palm of his hand. But in that speech, Bush blew it. Singling out Iran, Iraq and North Korea as state sponsors of terror seeking weapons of mass destruction, Bush yoked them together in an "axis of evil" and issued this ultimatum: "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says Palestinians deserve to live better than they do and be "free of the humiliation of occupation" in a state of their own. "I promise you my personal commitment to that goal," Rice said at a dinner marking the third anniversary of the American Task Force on Palestine. "There could be no greater legacy for America," Rice told the group, which describes itself as nonpartisan and supportive of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. "The Palestinian people deserve a better life ... free of the humiliation of occupation," she said

GEORGE W. Bush just delivered what may be the most important speech of his presidency since he went before the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, and declared his intention to seek regime change in Iraq. The time has come, the president all but said yesterday, to take the gloves off with Iran. "The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said flatly. He prefaced those words by saying that efforts were being made to find a diplomatic solution to the problem. Nonetheless, Bush has now said in the strongest sentence he has yet...

...So far as the implementation of this new strategy goes, it is still early days—roughly comparable to 1952 in the history of the Truman Doctrine. As with the Truman Doctrine then, the Bush Doctrine has thus far acted only in the first few scenes of the first act of a five-act play. Like the Truman Doctrine, too, its performance has received very bad reviews. Yet we now know that the Truman Doctrine, despite being attacked by its Republican opponents as the “College of Cowardly Containment,” was adopted by them when they took power behind Dwight D. Eisenhower. We also know...

Are Bush's critics right?By Tony Blankley Wednesday, August 23, 2006 We are all aware of the dangerous Middle East conditions the United States faces today after five and half years of President Bush's leadership. So let's consider what the world might well look like if, in his remaining two and a half years, he were to follow the recommendations of his critics. First: America out of Iraq by the end of 2007. We warn the Iraqis to get off their duffs and prepare to be in charge by Dec. 31, 2007. We depart (leaving a couple of divisions in a...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2006 – The advance of freedom will help protect the U.S. homeland, defeat terrorism and bring hope to people around the world, President Bush said yesterday. “Freedom has brought hope to millions, and it's helped foster the development of young democracies from Baghdad to Beirut,” Bush said in his weekly radio address to the nation. The recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding in the Middle East, he said. The president said it was not a coincidence that the two nations that are building...

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Security and Coalition Forces continue working together in support of Operation Together Forward in Baghdad and are already witnessing the positive results of their efforts to quell the threat of terrorist death squads, improvised-explosive devices, kidnappings and murders. Since the operation began July 9, combined forces have killed 97 and detained 501 terrorists associated with death squads and seized more than 59 weapons and munitions caches in the process. A combined force of more than 30,000 security personnel have completed more than 49,564 combat patrols in response to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s directive to immediately secure the...

How do you garner public opinion when you fail to properly define the terms of debate? The Bush Administration for years has been peddling the concept of a Global War on Terror (commonly referred to with the acronym GWOT). This concept is a logical fallacy, for how can you possibly define an enemy by its tactic? There are environmental terrorists engaging in harmful activity all across this nation, yet surely they are not included under the umbrella of the GWOT. Speaking to the National Press Club on July 20, Sen. Rick Santorum properly defined the conflict that we currently find...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2006 – America will remain on the offensive against al Qaeda and nations that support terror groups, President Bush said here today. Bush met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace and other members of his national security team at the Pentagon and the State Department. The group discussed progress in the global war on terror and national security transformation during the series of meetings. During a news conference at the State Department following the meetings, Bush said...

In recent months, we have been bombarded with reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine. Of course, there have been many such reports since the doctrine was first promulgated at the start of what I persist in calling World War IV (the cold war being World War III). Almost all of them were written by the realists and liberal internationalists within the old foreign-policy establishment, and they all turned out to resemble the reports of Mark Twain’s death—which, he famously said, had been “greatly exaggerated.” Nothing daunted by this, the critics and enemies of Bush are now at it...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2006 – In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Bush reiterated American resolve against extremist terrorists and declared that the free world will prevail against enemies of freedom. “America, Great Britain, and our allies are determined to defend ourselves and advance the cause of liberty,” Bush said. “With patience, courage, and untiring resolve, we will defend our freedom, and we will win the war on terror.” The president acknowledged the enormity of the challenge that still lies ahead. “America is fighting a tough war against an enemy whose ruthlessness is clear for all to see,” he said....

The struggle against terror isn’t going to produce white flags of surrender, sinking enemy battleships or columns of defeated soldiers. Last week’s roundups of suspected would-be jetliner bombers – and the attendant airport delays – are pretty much what a stunning victory looks like in this war. Defeat ... well, America has already seen what that looks like, too. So has Britain, Spain and Indonesia. The arrest of dozens of possible conspirators before they succeed in murdering thousands of innocent civilians is as good as it gets. Just as we can learn from defeat, we can learn from victory. One...

Summer of Our Discontent [Michael Rubin] Condoleezza Rice may still be a media star, but her track record places somewhere around Warren Christopher in the annals of recent State Department history: Rice reversed course on Iran, and even offered this terror-sponsor nuclear reactors. Rather than moderate Tehran, her move signaled weakness and further emboldened the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khamene‘i responded to the offer by asking, four days later, “Why don’t you just admit you are weak and your razor is blunt?” Remember Iran’s centrifuges? They’re still spinning. North Korea defied international consensus to launch missiles, one of which was aimed...

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y.--If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Iraq was lost--according, at least, to the conspiracy-minded--on the pages of Commentary magazine and the other house organs of the neoconservative movement. Better yet, blame America's post-9/11 foreign policy on Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, regularly disinterred as the neocon godfathers. Yet however much one loathes lending credence to talk of a neocon conspiracy--call it Cabal Theory--it does possess a certain element of truth. That is, the Iraq intervention found its genesis not only in the immediate crises of the prewar period, but also in...

The American Dog Didn't Bark Bush critics need to acknowledge unparalleled support for Israel As Israel's counteroffensive against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon heads into its fourth week, it's time to explicitly acknowledge one huge difference between this latest chapter of Israel's 58-year-old war of self-defense and those that have preceded it. Like the Sherlock Holmes story in which the key factor is the dog that did not bark, it is the almost complete absence of United States pressure for the Israelis to halt military operations that has made this battle different from all others. Even in the face of massive...

Contrary to popular lore, it's John Howard, not George Bush, who has led the way in the alliance, says foreign editor Greg Sheridan IT is time we completely reconsidered our thoughts about ANZUS, the US-Australian alliance, especially as it has functioned during the past 10 years. The accepted view is that the Howard Government has been a loyal and passive follower in the alliance. At best, John Howard's critics may allow that he has played the politics of it shrewdly, gaining electoral advantage from quite small military deployments. In a new book, The Partnership: The Inside Story of the US-Australian...