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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says America will be glad if he's the president next time the nation is attacked. "If we are attacked, somebody attacks us, wouldn't you rather have Trump as president if we're attacked?" he said at a rally in Milford, N.H. "We'll beat the shit out of them." He added that America needs to stop "playing games." "We've become the policemen to the entire world," he said. "We take care of the world. They pay us peanuts."

Dr. Victoria Coates: Well I mean, I don’t know who can channel Jeane Kirkpatrick best. It is interesting to me that many Establishment institutions in foreign policy — just as they have in every other branch of policy — have been deeply disturbed by Senator Cruz, and the kinds of approaches that he proposes because he has very little time for quote unquote “conventional wisdom.” And you have a lot of people whose sort of “bread and butter” depends on their position on editorial boards, their positions in think tanks, their appearances on television, and all of that is based on a certain way...

President Obama’s nominee to head U.S. Central Command recently penned a memo to Defense Secretary Ash Carter demanding that the Pentagon stop discussing the operations of elite American troops. Foreign Policy, which obtained an excerpt of the memo, reported that Gen. Joseph Votel, currently the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote the December 8 memo to express concern about the Obama administration’s exposure of special operations forces’ activities. “I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote to Carter....

At the CNN Democratic town hall Monday night in Des Moines, Iowa Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley spent two hours answering voters' questions. One particular attendee who noticed the majority of the questions were aimed at domestic issues pivoted the discussion to foreign policy when Clinton was on the stage. This voter explained that, while he hadn't been fully committed to voting for Clinton next year, he said he was "gung ho" about her after watching all 11 hours of her testimony in front of the Benghazi Select Committee in October. At one point, he quipped that he...

The most socialist administration in decades is waging a war on "Islamophobia" while its relationship with Israel continues to deterioriate. Is "the Jew" the Obama administration's bogeyman in its crusade to wipe out any remnant of British Colonialism?

Three Americans have been kidnapped in Baghdad by "militias," according to Arab news channel Al Arabiya, citing its own sources. The State Department said it is aware of the report and is working with Iraqi authorities to locate the missing Americans. Officials, however, would not confirm that anyone been kidnapped. "We are aware of reports that American citizens are missing in Iraq," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement to The Hill. "The safety and security of American citizens overseas is our highest priority, he continued. "We are working with the full cooperation of the Iraqi authorities to...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Wednesday needled President Obama over Iran's seizure of U.S. Navy boats, comparing the recent events to the Iran hostage crisis during Jimmy Carter's presidency. "This is Jimmy Carter stuff," Trump said at a rally in Pensacola, Fla. "We are now back in the age of Jimmy Carter." More than 60 Americans were held hostage in Iran late in Carter's administration. Hours before President Obama's final State of the Union address Tuesday, Iran seized two U.S. Navy vessels and 10 American soldiers. On Wednesday, Iran freed the U.S. sailors and Secretary of State John Kerry...

Obama's Foreign Policy: "Completely disconnected from reality" Television’s prominent talking heads commenting on President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address last night, spoke of how Obama was “completely disconnected from reality” on foreign policy. “Charles Krauthammer seemed to have been left in disbelief: “He is talking about a world that really doesn’t exist,” he said. “And that’s why I think it completely diminished what he said on foreign policy.” (The Blaze, Jan. 12, 2016) Obama broad-stroked those who worry about ISIS on the rampage as conspiracy theorists, calling their claims that this is heading for World War III as...

The New Year's execution by Saudi Arabia of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation. Its first purpose: Signal the new ruthlessness and resolve of the Saudi monarchy where the power behind the throne is the octogenarian King Salman's son, the 30-year-old Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman. Second, crystallize, widen and deepen a national-religious divide between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, Riyadh and Tehran. Third, rupture the rapprochement between Iran and the United States and abort the Iranian nuclear deal. The provocation succeeded in its near-term goal. An Iranian mob gutted and burned the Saudi...

A super PAC supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is blasting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's attitude toward foreign policy in a new ad appearing on Snapchat.The 10-second spot by Keep the Promise I, one of a network of similarly named outside groups backing Cruz, juxtaposes the fight against ISIS and the need to stand up to Iran with a humorous video spot released by Rubio's campaign before one of last year's debates in which he was discussing his fantasy football picks.“Yeah, I know I have a debate, but I've got to get this fantasy football thing right,” Rubio says...

A recent Organizing for America fundraising letter to supporters contained an ominous threat from President Barack Obama: "I've got 12 months left to squeeze every ounce of change I can while I'm still in office. And that's what I intend to do."Not mentioned in the letter is his plan to squeeze out every ounce of travel he can while he's still in office. In keeping with his reputation as a "permanent campaigner," Obama plans to go on a global tour in 2016 to "seal his foreign policy legacies."Obama will be spewing carbon from Air Force One into the atmosphere of...

When Jim Webb, the former Virginia senator and Navy secretary, left the Democratic primary race in October, he hinted that he might mount an independent run for president. That looks more likely now that Webb has blasted his party's front-runner for her "inept leadership” as secretary of state. "Hillary Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya, and the power vacuums that resulted in the rest of the region,” Webb wrote in a Facebook post Saturday. "While she held that office, the U.S. spent about $2 billion backing the Libyan uprising...

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is seen by many voters as a social conservative. His friends at the Republican Jewish Coalition, which he has addressed many times, know him as a leader on foreign policy issues. His expertise on Iran is as solid as it gets.[Snip] "They know who I am and I know who they are. I have been fighting radical Islam before it was fashionable to fight radical Islam." He observed, "I authored the Syrian Accountability Act." Colin Powell said this act was the primary reason Syria exited Lebanon. He also authored the "Iran Freedom and Support Act."

Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opened a hearing last week with these candid, if not immortal, words: "I think the agreement is off to a really terrible start." The agreement in question is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It is to provide more than $100 billion in unfrozen assets to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. In exchange, Tehran is supposed to halt a nuclear weapons program whose existence it has consistently denied. More on that in a moment but first, this point: A deal so consequential ought...

President Obama's final stretch in office -- filled, as he promised, with "interesting stuff" -- has become an extravaganza of "historic" foreign-policy deals, most of them distinguished for making common cause with despotic regimes that are less than friendly toward the United States: -- The embrace of Cuba. -- The Iran nuclear deal. -- The Paris climate agreement. -- And, enshrined just this past Friday as United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254, a grand plan in which, under the United Nations umbrella, the U.S., Russia, Iran and sundry others will all come together to produce peace and democracy by June,...

People expected to debate the isolationist tendencies of a Republican Senator running for the party’s presidential nomination. Who would have guessed that debate would center on Ted Cruz? During the debate on Tuesday night that focused mainly on foreign policy, Wolf Blitzer asked Cruz about the US efforts on regime change over the last twenty years, decisions criticized by Cruz. In his answer, Cruz characterized his approach by using a phrase historically associated with a much different philosophy than the one he espoused (transcript from CNN, emphasis mine): BLITZER: Senator Cruz, you have said the world would be safer...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) outdid himself last night in his courting of the Trumpkin base. In doing so, he sank further into the far-right brew of isolationism and xenophobia. At one point in the debate, Cruz proclaimed: “Wolf, I believe in an America-first foreign policy, that far too often President Obama and Hillary Clinton — and, unfortunately, more than a few Republicans — have gotten distracted from the central focus of keeping this country safe.” Cruz is an Ivy League-educated man and knows full well the history of the isolationist “America First” policy:

An influential chorus within the Republican establishment is raising questions about whether Ted Cruz can be trusted on foreign policy. Among this crowd, Cruz's use of the term "neocon" was seen as the latest evidence of his willingness to elevate politics over principle on matters of national security. By the end of George W. Bush's second term in office, the term "neoconservative," once widely used to describe the hawkish foreign-policy views held by several of the president's most senior advisers, had become radioactive. As critics began using it to describe a cadre of like-minded Jews who had allegedly hijacked American...

The United States will halt its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and instead keep thousands of troops in the country through the end of President Obama’s term in 2017, Mr. Obama will announce on Thursday, prolonging the American role in a war that has now stretched on for 14 years. The current American force in Afghanistan of 9,800 troops will remain in place through most of 2016 under the Obama administration’s revised plans, before dropping to about 5,500 at the end of next year or in early 2017, senior administration officials said. Some of the troops will continue to train and...

White House press secretary Josh Earnest mocked Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz Friday for his tweets regarding the Obama administration's handling of the Islamic State, critiquing the Texas senator for lacking a specific national security policy. Earnest announced that President Barack Obama will be at the Pentagon Monday to meet with his national security team and then make remarks about the fight against the Islamic State. After reporter questions, Earnest insisted the administration would maintain it's current course in the fight. "Those who are most frequent in voicing those calls, do not themselves have alternative solutions on the table," Earnest...