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Will 2023 be a year when extremely destructive conflicts erupt all over the world? We are certainly already living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and tensions are approaching the boiling point in a number of key global flashpoints right now. If several more major conflicts were to suddenly begin next year, we could potentially witness an extended period of geopolitical instability that would be unlike anything that we have ever witnessed. It is easy to start wars, but it is much harder to end them. If you doubt this, just look at what is going on...

Glenn Beck, who last week traveled through Europe and the Middle East, said on his eponymous radio show Monday morning that he believes Europe, “as we know it,” is “gone.” “You have to understand, Europe is gone,” the host said. “They are headed for catastrophe and headed for terrorist strike after terrorist strike after terrorist strike. Riots in the streets.” According to Beck, Europe is in serious trouble because “they refused to listen to the warnings.” And he believes that the U.S. is heading down the same path “if we don’t get control of our immigration and our refugee problem...

Officials at Kent state University have now resorted to lying to protect a radical Islamic professor who has engaged in treason against the United Stated government. In addition to demanding the criminal prosecution of Professor Julio Pino, citizens of Ohio should immediately withdraw all support from Kent State. The following email was released to Kent State alumni on August 5th by university officials: Officials at Kent state University have now resorted to lying to protect a radical Islamic professor who has engaged in treason against the United Stated government. In addition to demanding the criminal prosecution of Professor Julio Pino,...

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WASHINGTON - The world - especially the Greater Middle East - has become less peaceful than it was five years ago, according to the 2013 edition of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) released here Tuesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Consistent with that trend, the index also found that global peacefulness declined over the past year, chiefly due to the intensifying civil war in Syria; the rising number of homicides, especially in Mexico, Central America, and several sub-Saharan African countries; and increased military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in many nations. Led by...

It's a cliché that nations and men repeat the same errors, stumbling into various crisises. The locations may change, but the patterns of history remain. The world is teetering on a new Great Depression. Democracies are at risk. In the 1930s there were an estimated two billion people worldwide. Today there are seven billion people in the world; the pressures to feed them and meet their other needs have increased exponentially. It strains relations between nations and within them. In the U.S. the Great Depression began in 1929 and lasted until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that...

Excuse me it it's already been resolved, but now that Obama has unilaterally declared GLOBAL WAR against Islamic extremism, does he have to return his Peace Prize? Followup question: Now that Obama has moved the country to an all out war footing, do the captured enemy combatants still get taxpayer funded lawyers, comfy cells with cable TV and complimentary high speed Internet access, and full constitutional rights? Should they be eligible to vote?

It's official. The U.S. is no longer engaged in a "war on terrorism." Neither is it fighting "jihadists" or in a "global war." President Obama's top homeland security and counterterrorism official took all three terms off the table of acceptable words inside the White House during a speech Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "The President does not describe this as a 'war on terrorism,'" said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a "new way of seeing" the fight against terrorism. The only terminology that Mr. Brennan...

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran. That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are...

Watching the war in Lebanon and listening to the debate about it, is just like watching the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its attendant debate. Israelis are demanding the resignation of Olmert, just as Americans are demanding the head of Bush. Israeli military experts, real and self-proclaimed, are explaining how the Lebanon war could have been won, if only the ground campaign had started earlier, or had been more ambitious. American strategists of varying competence are explaining how the Iraq war could have been won, if only there were more boots on the ground, or if only a different...

President Bush's announcement Tuesday that he would support the effort of a United Arab Emirates-owned company, Dubai Ports World, in its bid to take over a lease for part of the Port of New York and other major U.S. seaports — even to the point of vetoing legislation that would block the deal — is as regrettable as it is untenable. President Bush has dug in his heels on a fight he surely cannot win. The only political figure of note who has fully supported his position publicly seems to be former President Jimmy Carter — a salutary reminder of...

When our British counterparts did broach the subject in private conversations, you'd hear things such as "Well, that's your problem" or — with the memories of terrorist attacks by the Irish Republican Army in the 1970s and '80s still fresh in their minds — "Well, now you understand." You could even get into an argument over whether Tony Blair and the British government had been right to send British troops to fight in the U.S.-led war to root out terrorists in Afghanistan. The message was clear — that the Americans had somehow brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon themselves by...

It isn't clear who was behind the brutal attack in Spain that killed 200 and wounded more than 1,400 people, but National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said today that in the global war on terrorism, this is just more evidence of the lengths to which terrorists will go to try to intimidate free people. In an appearance today on NBC's "Meet the Press" with commentator Tim Russert, Rice said Spanish authorities still suspect the Basque terrorist group ETA in the bombings, but acknowledge it might have been foreign terrorists such as al Qaeda. "We have offered to do everything that...

Spc. Michael Speed is about to become one of the new sheriffs in town. So are Spcs. David Dillivan and Billy McCormick. So are nearly 200 more Army National Guard artillery soldiers from Tennessee who, this month, will join active Army military police forces a long way from their homes. Those citizen-soldiers from Tennessee's 2nd Battalion, 115th Field Artillery, have been reclassified as military police officers after four weeks of nonstop training here because, for the time being, the Army needs a lot more MPs than it needs artillery troops to help wage the global war against terrorism. That's why...

Military members serving at home and abroad in the war on terrorism will now be recognized for that service. Defense officials announced today the final approval of two new medals and their criteria. Individuals who have deployed to operations Enduring Freedom or Iraqi Freedom will be awarded the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. The Global War on Terrorism Service Medal will be awarded to those who served in airport security operations in the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or who supported operations Enduring Freedom, Noble Eagle or Iraqi Freedom. "These medals recognize the significant contributions members...

The top American uniformed officer delivered the American military's thanks to one of its most steadfast allies here today. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thanked his counterpart, Army Gen. Peter Cosgrove, chief of the Australian Defense Force, for his nation's help in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the global war on terrorism. Myers is finishing a trip through the Asia-Pacific region with a stop in Australia. He met here with Cosgrove and Defense Minister Robert Hill, and earlier in the day with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in Sydney. Myers met with...

In a speech that often evoked the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney emphasized Jan. 14 that the global war against terrorism is a long-term struggle. Cheney spoke to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. "Remembering what we saw on 9/11, and knowing the nature of these enemies, we have as clear a responsibility as could ever fall to government," Cheney said. "We must do everything in our power to keep terrorists from gaining weapons of mass destruction." He said the issue is an urgent responsibility that has shifted the country's national security strategy. "There are certain...

LONDON, Ont. -- The terrorist bombings during the past two weeks in Jakarta, Baghdad and Jerusalem, and the increasingly visible activity of al-Qaida and Taliban fanatics in Afghanistan, are indicators of one undeniable fact: we are being engaged in a global war of an entirely new type for which the past offers little guidance. We might say that five summers ago this month, when terrorists engaged in bombing American embassies in east Africa, we should have awakened to this fact. Or, we might say, the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York five years earlier, in 1993,...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Despite the focus on Iraq and Afghanistan, other volatile regions such as Central and South America deserve attention in the fight against terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday. ''It's a truly global struggle,'' Rumsfeld told about 100 U.S. troops inside a cinder-block aircraft hangar at the remote Soto Cano Air Base in a lush valley ringed by thickly forested mountain peaks. In this part of the world, Rumsfeld said, terrorists mingle with drug traffickers and other criminals. ''In this region we know there are terrorists, there are hostage-takers, there are drug traffickers,'' he said. ``Sometimes, it's...

We are engaged in a global war By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun LONDON, Ont. -- The terrorist bombings during the past two weeks in Jakarta, Baghdad and Jerusalem, and the increasingly visible activity of al-Qaida and Taliban fanatics in Afghanistan, are indicators of one undeniable fact: we are being engaged in a global war of an entirely new type for which the past offers little guidance. We might say that five summers ago this month, when terrorists engaged in bombing American embassies in east Africa, we should have awakened to this fact. Or, we might say, the...