Free Republic

Russia's foreign minister said Washington has asked Moscow not to target the al-Qaida's branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, but the U.S. insisted Friday that it only wants Russia to carefully select it targets to avoid hitting civilians and legitimate opposition groups. Sergey Lavrov said that Russia has long insisted that the moderate, U.S.-backed opposition groups should leave the areas occupied by Nusra. He said in televised remarks that Russia and the U.S. have engaged in close dialogue on how to secure a cease-fire in Syria, but added that fighting the Islamic State group and Nusra should be a top...

Across the world, the War with ISIS is exploding; in Paris, Brussels, in the Middle East and at the US/Mexican border. ISIS continues to attack, attack, attack, following George Patton’s motto of “l’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace (audacity, audacity, always audacity). While the world seems to be continually shocked by one ISIS atrocity after another, in the White House, one thing is crystal clear, President Obama has chosen to fight rising seas and disappearing glaciers before taking the fight to the marauding maniacal murderers of ISIS. While the President has been pelted for two weeks for having no strategy to fight...

On July 20, a policy letter from the U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) instructed recruiters to avoid contact and/or conversation with armed “law-abiding” civilians who volunteer to guard recruitment centers and to report said volunteers to law enforcement “if the recruiter feels threatened.” Stars and Stripes responded to the letter with a July 22 headline that read, “Army To Recruiters: Treat Armed Citizens As Security Threat.”

Leaders? Where are they? For years the late Col. David H. Hackworth warned about self-serving, porcelain princes in leadership positions not acting as leaders but as political hacks seeking only to enhance their own career. Leadership, at best, is granted lip service but rarely practiced in the rarefied air of the military hierarchy. After all, one public faux pas can be a career ender. If Patton were around today he would have been purged at once from the U.S. Army by its porcelain princes. “Truth is, America’s military has always had plenty of ‘good men.’ What it seems to lack...