Free Republic

I was in a spiritually-oriented meeting a week ago, and there were about fifty people in the room.  Halfway through, a guy in the center of the room chimed in and announced that he was going to open his speaking time by sharing with us his personal, painful example of the worst kind of betrayal.  We all leaned a bit closer to listen as he described, with tongue secretly hidden in cheek, a time when he bit into what he’d thought was a chocolate chip cookie–only to realize with shock and dismay that it was actually a raisin cookie. He was making a wry...

It’s hard to wrap ones head around the idea that giving more power to a terrorist regime would somehow lead to temperance and peace, yet that’s exactly the advice being given by former president Jimmy Carter when it comes to how the world treats Hamas. He had this to say: "…the United States and EU should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force. Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise." Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the...

The proliferation of crises around the globe has, for the most part, been met with a yawn from the political class. Americans, they say, are tired of being the world’s policeman. Most media and political elite believe Americans are happy to let the world can sort out it affairs for now. They are not entirely wrong. “Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington,” an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in April found. “In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of...

The slow erosion of Barack Obama’s popularity and perceived competence continues. In today’s Associated Press/GfK poll, Obama hits his lowest approval rating ever at 40% and his highest disapproval rating ever at 59%. His one bright spot in policy over the last few years has dimmed considerably as well: Foreign policy used to be a bright spot in Americans’ dimming opinion of President Barack Obama. Not anymore. Associated Press-GfK polling found a spring and summer of discontent with the president’s handling of world events.Obama’s consistently low marks across crises such as the fighting in Ukraine and the conflict between...

Foreign policy used to be a bright spot in Americans’ dimming opinion of President Barack Obama. Not anymore. Associated Press-GfK polling found a spring and summer of discontent with the president’s handling of world events. Obama’s consistently low marks across crises such as the fighting in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas could benefit Republicans aiming to win control Congress in the fall. “The problem is saying something and not doing anything—making grandiose threats and never following any of them up,” said Dwight Miller, 71, a retiree and volunteer firefighter in Robertson County, Texas. Miller, who describes himself...

The Tea Party favorite loves to needle Team Obama. But in an interview, Cruz also reveals a new kind of conservative foreign policy: American exceptionalism without the nation building.One way to understand Ted Cruz’s foreign policy, particularly if you are a Democrat, is through the prism of the social media phenomenon known as trolling. The best trolls are provocateurs. Their language is meant to expose a fallacy or weakness in the opponent’s position as opposed to offering a constructive alternative. In a wide-ranging interview with the junior senator from Texas, there was a lot of trolling. Of Obama’s recent attempt...

“We have your back,” President Obama told Israelis when he visited that embattled country recently. Way back, apparently. Mr. Obama’s administration famously claimed to “lead from behind” in overthrowing Libya’s strongman, Khaddafi. Young Sergeant Benjamin Anthony spoke to the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Washington Summit this week. Sgt. Anthony described a different vision of leadership. Ahalai he gave as the Hebrew word for “after me.” Officers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) they should lead from the front. That used to be America’s idea of leadership, too. You cannot say Secretary John Kerry isn’t alert to his opportunities. He...

Leadership: Just three days after President Obama delivered his "get tough" speech on Ukraine aimed squarely at Vladimir Putin, Russia's president has responded — not with words, but deeds. Obama has been lauded for his speech on Monday regarding Russia's role in downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 people. "Russia has extraordinary influence over these (Russian) separatists," the commander-in-chief said sternly. "No one denies that. Russia has urged them on. Russia has trained them. We know that Russia has armed them with military equipment and weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons. Key separatist leaders are Russian citizens." Sounds like he was...

In recent days the Weekly Standard and Washington Free Beacon have brought to light a now-scrubbed recommended reading list for students that had resided on Sen. Rand Paul’s website. Why the focus on a book list, and why was the book list scrubbed? The answer to the second question could lie in the answer to the first: the foreign policy recommendations in the reading list take a variety of controversial stances, suggesting that the U.S. is to blame for the rise of Islamic supremacism in the Middle East, that the “Israeli Lobby” controls U.S. foreign policy to America’s great detriment,...

The strongman of the Soviet, er, Russia is getting kind of wimpy. Caught in the act blowing up a civilian airliner, he’s pointing the finger at someone else, and condemning the world’s political calculations, all the while calculating politically. He must watch a lot of MSNBC because this is the type of thing we’ve come to expect from our own weak-willed presidents. Russia, says Putin, did not shoot down that jetliner. Listen to him very carefully. There is no inappropriate Russian relationship with that missile. It was caused by a bunch of bitter Ukrainians who cling to their guns and...

Since Thursday, many people have asked me what I would do about the Ukraine after the murderous downing of the Malaysian Airliner by Ukrainian rebels (which is another way of saying Russian forces). There is a clear path and it is clearly the time for that plan. President Obama has looked like a weakling to this point. His inaction over the Crimea was inexcusable. His later unwillingness to provide armaments to our ally, Ukraine, to defend itself further enhanced the impression of his being a wimp and whipping boy for Putin. In Obama’s defense (yes, there is some though...

ISLAMABAD: Even though US Secretary of State John Kerry succeeded in brokering a deal to resolve the deadlock over the Afghan presidential election run-off, confusion still persists about the proposal of forming a “government of national unity”. On July 12, Kerry announced the agreement in the presence of both rivals Dr Ashraf Ghani and Dr Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul. “The winner of the election will serve as the president and will immediately form a government of national unity,” said Kerry. However, the top US official failed to explain the composition of the unity government. Kerry’s vague proposal has caused uproar...

Remembering back to any high school US history class, we can all recall hearing about the doctrines of various presidents. A doctrine would be the pattern of actions that came to define a given administration. The history of doctrines tends to remember presidents by their aggressive foreign policy stances, such as the Monroe Doctrine towards European colonization efforts in the Americas or the Reagan Doctrine of pushing back Soviet influence around the world. President Obama, on the other hand, will likely not be remembered for any significant foreign policy achievements. Instead, unfortunately, when Americans think of the Obama Doctrine,...

It was strange. Joe Scarborough had just completed a comprehensive indictment of failed American foreign policy around the globe. But at the very moment when he should have laid those disasters at the feet of the sitting President of the United States, Scarborough came down with a bad case of . . . cold feet. Scarborough laid out to David Gregory a tour d'horizon of failed American foreign policy from the Middle East, to Iran, to Russia/Ukraine, describing it as "one disaster after another." But perhaps fearful of where the ineluctable logic of his comments was taking him, Scarborough suddenly...

WASHINGTON - If anyone needs further evidence the White House is out of touch with reality, it came in an official statement this week that President Obama has made the world a more tranquil place. This was the White House's exaggerated response to a well-documented, front page Wall Street Journal story that concluded "the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn't been seen since the late 1970s." The article also charged that under this administration, "U.S. global power seems increasingly tenuous." This should be obvious to anyone who's been following foreign events -- make that crises -- since Barack Obama,...

We need a leader to speak out and make clear our intentions. With Israel again under attack, the situation in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe unsettled and bloody, it’s time for the grown ups to keep our rendezvous with destiny-- which has always been necessitated by the very best of reasons: America’s best interest. For the last 80 years America has managed to keep the peace world wide—mostly-- and at a historically small cost. But there are some on both the right and the left today who are tired of this American greatness, tired of protecting...

obama-is-a-terrorist-A recent Gulf News report sheds some light on how and why the United States helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies to power, followed by all the subsequent chaos and atrocities in the Mideast region. Large portions of the report follow with my commentary interspersed for added context: Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases. The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events...

ormer Vice President Dick Cheney fired back Sunday after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticized his position on Iraq. In an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Cheney argued Paul, who is widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2016, is an "isolationist" who doesn't understand the "absolutely essential" need for America to be involved in the Middle East. "Now, Rand Paul and — by my standards, as I look at his — his philosophy, is basically an isolationist. That didn't work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won't work in the aftermath of 9/11, when 19 guys armed with...

A few questions for President Barack Obama. At your press conference, you said, "It is in our national security interest not to see an all-out civil war in Iraq." If that is the case, why did you withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011? Were you motivated by something other than U.S. national interests? Did no one advise you that the current disaster was possible when you proclaimed in December 2011: "We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We're building a new partnership between our nations. And...

The percentage of Americans approving of President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy issues has dropped to the lowest level of his presidency as he faces multiple overseas challenges, including in Iraq, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Additionally, the public is evenly split on whether Obama is a competent manager of the federal bureaucracy. And a majority of respondents – 54 percent – believe the term-limited president is no longer able to lead the country. Obama Calls on Iraq’s ‘Neighbors’ to Help Contain TerroristsNIGHTLY NEWS “This is a bad poll for President Obama, and not a...