Free Republic

Donald Trump made a lot of hay on the campaign trail by decrying the foreign adventurism of previous administrations. Trump positioned himself as the righteous outsider ready to rein in the executive overreach of his predecessors. None of that began with Barack Obama or George W. Bush, but Americans with short historical memories readily identified illegal and ill-advised wars as a major problem in America, particularly since some of those wars were often carried on without any congressional input. See Obama in Libya for example. But what if the problem of executive overreach in foreign policy began long before either...

President Barack Obama reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in October that directly interfering with the U.S. election could result in an "armed conflict." According to NBC News, Obama opted to use the red phone to contact Moscow directly, a communication system that dates back to the Cold War. It's not an actual telephone, but instead sends a secure email message between the two countries. "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace," part of the Oct. 31 message read, according to NBC. "We will hold Russia to those standards."

Russia and Turkey confirm the decision to politically resolve the conflict with Syria. The conditions for stopping the fratricidal war have already been set up in the country. Vladimir Putin said that after meeting with Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting took place in Ankara for 3 hours, behind closed doors. Afterwards, the leaders made short statements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WeP4F6Zkak

A top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold, said she “is not even sympathetic” for the victims of the shooting at a country music festival at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Sunday night. “If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” wrote Geftman-Gold on Facebook, perhaps referring to Sandy Hook on Facebook. “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”

The propaganda machine is in full force with this latest push toward war with one of our oldest enemies as portrayed by the military industrial complex and those seeking to destroy the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Clinton allies in Hollywood have teamed up with the neoconservative establishment in Washington to do their best to “inform” the public about Russia’s meddling in our election and why it was clearly an act of war. A video recently released by The Committee to Investigate Russia, a group founded by movie director Rob Reiner and necon editor of The Atlantic David Frum, attempts...

Luxurious Seoul tower prepares for inter-Korean war By Ko Dong-hwan With North Korea's military provocations increasing the possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula, a luxurious residential-commercial complex in Seoul recently held an emergency session for residents on what to do if war actually breaks out. The managing office of Tower Palace in Dogok-dong, Gangnam-gu, held the session on Sep. 18, where participants were given practical tips on what to do when the complex, one of Seoul's wealthiest communities, issues various warning alarms. Residents learned what to do when they hear an air raid alarm, a poisonous gas alarm or...

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro called on his nation's military leaders Tuesday to prepare for war against the U.S. days after the Trump administration banned Venezuelan officials from entering the nation. "We have been shamelessly threatened by the most criminal empire that ever existed and we have the obligation to prepare ourselves to guarantee peace," said Maduro, who wore a green uniform and a military hat as he spoke with his army top brass during a military exercise involving tanks and missiles. "We need to have rifles, missiles and well-oiled tanks at the ready....to defend every inch of the territory if...

PROGRESS WATCH   Two decades after a landmark treaty, and despite an overall increase due largely to Syria’s civil war, the majority of affected countries recorded fewer deaths linked to land mines and cluster munitions. In January 1997, Diana, princess of Wales, famously walked through an active minefield in Angola to raise awareness of the ongoing threats posed by land mines. During her visit, with the help of a removal expert, Diana detonated one of the remaining mines. “One down, 17 million to go,” she said while pushing the button. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the death of...

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro called on his nation's military leaders Tuesday to prepare for war against the U.S. days after the Trump administration banned Venezuelan officials from entering the nation.  "We have been shamelessly threatened by the most criminal empire that ever existed and we have the obligation to prepare ourselves to guarantee peace," said Maduro, who wore a green uniform and a military hat as he spoke with his army top brass during a military exercise involving tanks and missiles. "We need to have rifles, missiles and well-oiled tanks at the ready....to defend every inch of the territory if needs be," he added. ...

Aso refers to shooting armed N Korean refugees in crisis TOKYO Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on Saturday touched on the possibility of shooting armed refugees from North Korea in the event of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula when he talked about Japan's response on the matter. In a speech delivered in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, Aso, who also serves as finance minister, said, "Can police handle them? Will the Self-Defense Forces be dispatched and shoot them down? We'd better think about it seriously." His remarks come at a time when tensions remain high as the United...

North Korea said on Saturday that firing its rockets at the U.S. mainland was "inevitable" after U.S. President Donald Trump called Pyongyang's leader "rocket man," in a further escalation of rhetoric between the two leaders. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho's remarks before the United Nations General Assembly came hours after U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea, in a show of force the Pentagon said demonstrated the range of military options available to Trump. "Through such a prolonged and arduous struggle, now we are finally...

Most of the interviewees talk in the lugubrious tones of the defeated. We all know the story ends badly. But when it’s over, we aren’t told why we lost. The music is more memorable than the pictures, and the pictures are more compelling than the narration. We are deluged by sights and sounds but not enlightened as to cause and effect. The film casts the antiwar movement in a moderately favorable light. Are the protesters the real heroes here? What about the valiant US soldiers, 75 percent of whom were volunteers?

Kim Jong Un’s officials plucked teenage girls from North Korean schools to serve as the leader’s sex slaves, indulged in a gluttonous lifestyle while his people starved and ordered public executions that turned into horrific shows of violence, a North Korean defector revealed. Hee Yeon, who fled Pyongyang in 2015 and now lives in Seoul, told The Mirror about the years she spent living in constant fear of Kim Jong Un since the ruthless dictator took control of North Korea in 2011. “Despite our privilege we were scared. I saw terrible things in Pyongyang,” Hee Yeon said. In what heinous...

A former Soviet military officer credited with averting a possible nuclear disaster at the peak of the Cold War has died at the age of 77. Stanislav Petrov was on duty at a Russian nuclear early warning centre in 1983 when computers wrongly detected incoming missiles from the US. He took the decision that they were a false alarm and did not report them to his superiors. His actions, which came to light years later, possibly prevented nuclear war. Petrov died at his home in Moscow in May but his death has only now been made public. In an interview...

Many Americans’ moral vanity is expressed nowadays in their rage to disparage. They are incapable of measured judgments about past politics — about flawed historical figures who were forced by cascading circumstances to make difficult decisions on the basis of imperfect information. So, the nation now needs an example of how to calmly assess episodes fraught with passion and sorrow. An example arrives Sunday night. For ten nights on PBS, Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, ten years in the making and 18 hours in length, tells the story of a war “begun in good faith by decent...

In a speech to the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Breitbart Executive Chairman Steve Bannon stated that to avoid a trade war, China must cease its economic war on America. In a separate interview on Tuesday with David Martosko of The Daily Mail, Bannon mentioned President Trump’s planned visit to China in November to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and attend economic summits. Bannon said Trump will seek common ground in a new trade relationship with China because “[t]here’s too much at stake to slip into a trade war right off the bat.” “I think...

How did India and China, nuclear-armed nations collectively home to 36 percent of the world’s people, go from conflict to camaraderie in less than a week? At the end of August, two months into the worst border standoff between the two countries in decades, there were whispers of war. But this week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping joined Russia, South Africa and Brazil in declaring war on Pakistan-based terror groups. What just happened? Can it last? And should we trust it? For the moment, it appears Beijing’s aspirations to be a global leader in a...

I was one of the first American officials to arrive in Kabul at the end of 2001. The war that seemed to be ending back then is currently in its 16th year with no end in sight, and for those of us who were there at the beginning it now sometimes seems like it was a lifetime ago. President Barack Obama not so long ago referred to Afghanistan as the “necessary war.” But now it might be more appropriate to refer to it as a “forgotten war,” as President Donald Trump has sent a few thousand more soldiers to Kabul—while...

As U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated after the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, U.S. Army general William Westmoreland knew he would be simultaneously fighting two different types of enemies on the ground — the main battle force of the North Vietnamese Army and the guerilla insurgency of the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Westmoreland, who served as commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam in the early years of the war, considered the North Vietnamese Army the greater threat. However, he could not ignore the Viet Cong, a versatile and resilient fighting force guided by...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned President Trump on Tuesday that only Congress can authorize a military strike on North Korea, as tensions with Pyongyang continue to escalate. “The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges you to uphold the Constitution, and the fundamental principle of separation of powers, by recognizing the sole authority of Congress to declare war — and to refrain from the use of force against North Korea in the absence of explicit congressional authorization for the use of force,” the group wrote in a letter to Trump on Tuesday. “This drumbeat of threats over the past...