Free Republic

INDEPENDENCE, Missouri -- The half-circle of 13 chairs that framed the statue of President Harry Truman in the heart of the historic Independence Square this past fall was placed there in the days after 13 American soldiers were killed in the attack on the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, in late August. The flags on either side of Truman flew at half-mast, with the chairs bearing the names of each service member lost in that attack. All hailed from small-town corners of our country. Their average age was 22. Eleven were Marines, one was a member of the Army, one a...

An Afghanistan man has been sentenced to twenty years in jail for "insulting Islam". All for downloading and handing out papers at his university that spoke of women's rights. Rights that Islam obviously has a problem with. Actions like this and the Christians of Iraq being under attack are why I am against nation building with Muslims.

AT THE END of one of Europe’s many holiday weekends, the irony is so thick here you can layer it on with a trowel. Europeans, with a few laudable exceptions, detest what the American cowboys have done in Afghanistan and Iraq and are happy to tell you so. The irony, of course, is that 60 years ago, American troops liberated Paris, marched on to Berlin and saved Britain and the rest of Western Europe. Our interest in defeating the Nazis was the same as our interest in defeating the Taliban and Saddam Hussein: in the short term, to free oppressed...