Free Republic

On September 23, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I attended services at the Park East Synagogue as I have for the last forty years. Since I left the mayoralty seventeen years ago, Rabbi Arthur Schneier has called on me during that morning service to address the congregation observing the start of the Jewish New Year, in this case 5767. I never prepare formal remarks for this occasion, preferring to listen carefully to the Rabbi's sermon and to amplify his themes. When he introduced me he said, "We normally blow the shofar (a ram's horn) on Rosh Hashanah but not...

In a recent commentary, former New York Mayor Ed Koch - a Democrat with at least half a brain (which makes him the leading intellectual light of his party) - asked rhetorically, "Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism?" Because they're liberals? During the Spanish Civil War, as the climactic battle for Madrid approached, Nationalist leader Francisco Franco told a reporter: "I have four columns marching on Madrid and a fifth within the city ready to rise at my call." Franco's comment gave rise to the World War...

Undermining the War on Terrorism Edward I. Koch Sept. 1, 2006 Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism? The leading terrorist group, al-Qaida, is fighting us on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Iran and North Korea are threatening nuclear war. And yet many Americans, including some congressional Democrats, denounce President Bush, and in so doing, weaken our country's ability to resist Islamic fascism. One congressional Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan, announced his intention to impeach the president when Republicans lose control of both houses of...

Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism? The leading terrorist group, Al Qaida, is fighting us on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Iran and North Korea are threatening nuclear war. And yet many Americans, including some Congressional Democrats, denounce President Bush, and in so doing, weaken our country’s ability to resist Islamic fascism. One Congressional Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan, announced his intention to impeach the President when Republicans lose control of both Houses of Congress. There is something terribly wrong with people seeking to...

Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism? The leading terrorist group, al-Qaeda, is fighting us on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Iran and North Korea are threatening nuclear war. And yet many Americans, including some Congressional Democrats, denounce President Bush, and in so doing, weaken our country's ability to resist Islamic fascism. One Congressional Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan, announced his intention to impeach the President when Republicans lose control of both Houses of Congress. There is something terribly wrong with people seeking to demean...

“HOW’M I DOIN’?” was the question the quixotic Ed Koch used to ask New York’s voters during Hizzoner’s eleven turbulent years as the city’s mayor. For a man who governed the globe’s most neurotic metropolis in the style of a rolling public psychiatric consultation, it was a fitting question. But as the world contemplates the nervous breakdown of American policy in the Middle East, it is something President George Bush should surely be asking himself, or at least his fellow Americans. How’m I doin’? Let’s see. You invaded Iraq because you argued you would be able to bring about a...

The war now raging in Lebanon should not surprise anyone. For many years, Hezbollah, which is funded, equipped and ideologically supported by Iran and Syria, has made it crystal clear that its goal is to conquer Israel, expel its Jewish inhabitants, and place the entire land under Islamic rule. Hezbollah engages in terrorism – the deliberate targeting of Jewish civilians and others – to achieve its goals. For the past month, Hezbollah has rained down thousands of rockets on Israel, deliberately maiming and killing innocent Israeli civilians. Hezbollah uses Lebanese civilians as human shields when it places its rockets in...

AUGUST 2, 2006 ED KOCH NEWS & COLUMNS Israel’s response to Hezbollah has demonstrated to the enemies of the Jewish state that Israel will stand up and fight. This is in marked contrast to Spain, France and Germany under Schroeder, who have blinked and withdrawn responding to Islamic terror or threatened terror. Thankfully, our country’s leaders appreciate that we are at war with international terrorism. The West confronts a war of civilizations that is not for the fainthearted. There are those who believe that negotiations without the will to engage in military action will suffice. They are wrong. For 58...

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes with the clarity of Bill Safire, whom he has succeeded as The Times in-house moderate. In a June 8 column, Brooks vividly described the cruelty of the Iraqi insurgents: "The insurgents' first advantage is that not only are they cruel, they are absolutely cruel. The defining feature of their violence is not merely that they murder, but that they torture those they are about to kill. Shiite militias use drills to bore holds into their victims' heads. Sunni insurgents saw off fingers and toes. Jihadists partially behead their victims then stomp on their...

“I vow by the One who raised the seven layers to Heaven (i.e. Allah) and who has beheaded tyrants that the leader of America has been thoroughly humiliated. Our heroes have defended this place. They have entered legend. Killing the infidels is our religion, slaughtering them is our religion, until they convert to Islam or pay us tribute.”

Former Mayor Ed Koch slammed Andrew Cuomo last night, contending the attorney general hopeful misled Manhattan gay activists by denying that his father's 1977 mayoral campaign circulated "Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo" posters. Cuomo made the denial Wednesday night before the Stonewall Democratic Club, according to the club's founder, Lew Todd. Todd and others present said Cuomo tried to deny the slogan was ever used by the campaign, calling it an "urban legend." That left Koch, who has long had icy relations with the Cuomos, seething. "It either means he has amnesia or is deliberately distorting the truth," Koch...

From an Associated Press dispatch last Monday: "The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President George W. Bush ‘the greatest terrorist in the world' yesterday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez." The report noted that "Belafonte led a delegation of Americans, including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West, that met with the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday." At the meeting, Belafonte referred to the U.S. President as the "greatest tyrant in the world." Chavez is viewed in Venezuela as an enemy of...

January 5, 2006 Troubled Times Ahead for the New York Times? By Ed Koch Are troubled times ahead for The New York Times? I believe so. President Bush warned the Times that publishing a story on the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program would do great harm to American security. After holding the story for a year, the Times went ahead and published it anyway. In the past the President has not hesitated to go after those whom he has charged with violating national security laws. When the media demanded the administration find within its own circle those who violated...

Are troubled times ahead for The New York Times? I believe so. President Bush warned the Times that publishing a story on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program would do great harm to American security. After holding the story for a year, the Times went ahead and published it anyway. In the past the president has not hesitated to go after those whom he has charged with violating national security laws. When the media demanded the administration find within its own circle those who violated the law by unmasking the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame, special prosecutor Patrick...

The media and the Democratic congressional leadership, including Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi, joined by some other members of Congress, have denounced President Bush for, as The New York Times noted, secretly authorizing the National Security Agency “to intercept the communications of Americans and terrorist suspects inside the Untied States without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that oversees intelligence matters…” According to The Times, “sometime in 2002, President Bush signed a secret executive order scrapping a painfully reached, 25-year-old national consensus: spying on Americans by their government should generally be prohibited, and when it is allowed,...

The media and the Democratic congressional leadership, including Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi, joined by some other members of Congress, have denounced President Bush for, as The New York Times noted, secretly authorizing the National Security Agency "to intercept the communications of Americans and terrorist suspects inside the Untied States without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that oversees intelligence matters…" According to The Times, "sometime in 2002, President Bush signed a secret executive order scrapping a painfully reached, 25-year-old national consensus: spying on Americans by their government should generally be prohibited, and when it is allowed,...

(1010 WINS) Ed Koch was mayor of New York City during the last transit strike. Koch was pacing the floor in police headquarters in Lower Manhattan when he noticed thousands of New Yorkers walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. The walkers were determined to get to work, despite the transit strike. Former Mayor Koch ran down onto the bridge and screamed at the crowds, "Keep walking New York, don't let the bastards shut us down." Koch went to all bridges to encourage the walkers and bicyclists during the 11 days of the strike. The former mayor modestly claims he, "kept the...

There are at least four positions currently being advanced as to the timing of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. President Bush, supported by Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) and others, sums up Position One by saying "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." In his November 30 speech at the Naval Academy, the President said, "We will continue to shift from providing security and conducting operations against the enemy nationwide to conducting more specialized operations targeted at the most dangerous terrorists. We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from...

The Republicans are headed for a seismic crash in the congressional election of 2006. Their effort last week to embarrass House Democrats by forcing a contrived vote on a non-binding resolution to end the war in Iraq by immediately withdrawing all American troops didn’t succeed and shouldn’t have occurred. Everyone lost, including the Democrats, most of whom supported the Republican resolution. Most important, our country lost. We look foolish and in disarray in the eyes of the world. We can argue every day about whether the war was a wise choice. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone now agrees that...

On October 6th, President Bush delivered a superb speech on international terrorism. It is because our President has been willing to stand up to international terrorism and so many leaders in the Democratic Party have not been willing to do so, that caused me and millions of others to cross party lines and support him in the last presidential election and cheer his victory; notwithstanding that I did not then, nor do I now, agree with him on a single domestic issue, ranging from his proposals to reform Social Security and to changing our tax structure. For me, the single...