Free Republic

“I do not fear Trump. We must thank the new American president because he showed the real face of America and because he exposed what we have been saying for decades about the political, moral and economic corruption in it.” This is the recent statement made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the newly-elected US administration. Yes, we’re passing through a new phase. There has been a major transformation following the reactive years of isolationism which show the depth of the roots that America has returned to in terms of engaging with world crises and contributing to managing...

The death of Fouad Ajami this weekend, at the age of 68, deprived this country and the world of a uniquely powerful voice – one that is at the same time both Arab and American – that could have helped guide us, as he has in the past, through the hazards and complications of his native Middle East. [....] Born in Lebanon, Fouad became an American by choice. He embraced the values of his adopted country, the United States, with a passion that matched his adoption of English. But he never lost sight of where he had come from or...

It is with profound sadness that we learned of the passing of Fouad Ajami, who lost his battle with cancer on Sunday. Fouad is truly one of the most brilliant Middle East scholars of our time. His Hoover Institution family will forever miss his superb scholarship, quick wit and gentle spirit. As we reflect upon a man whose life and intellectual contributions influenced so many, our thoughts and prayers go to his lovely wife, Michelle. Fouad Ajami was born September 18, 1945 in Arnoun, Lebanon. Ajami was a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, and more recently the Herbert and...

'A Muslim has no nationality except his belief," the intellectual godfather of the Islamists, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, wrote decades ago. Qutb's "children" are everywhere now; they carry the nationalities of foreign lands and plot against them. The Pakistani born Faisal Shahzad is a devotee of Sayyid Qutb's doctrine, and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, was another. Qutb was executed by the secular dictatorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1966. But his thoughts and legacy endure. Globalization, the shaking up of continents, the ease of travel, and the doors for immigration flung wide open by Western liberal societies...

No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue. With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was...

It was the furies of the Arab world, not Afghanistan, that struck America eight years ago today. ArticleThe road that led to 9/11 was never a defining concern of President Barack Obama. But he returned to 9/11 as he sought to explain and defend the war in Afghanistan in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, Ariz., on Aug. 17. "The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight and we won't defeat it overnight, but we must never forget: This is not a war of choice; it is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on...

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These "townhallers" who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled "evil-mongers" (Harry Reid), "un-American" (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These "townhallers" who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled "evil-mongers" (Harry Reid), "un-American" (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse. A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized

America's diplomacy of freedom is officially over. "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," President Barack Obama said in his inaugural. But in truth, the new way forward is a return to realpolitik and business as usual in America's encounter with that Greater Middle East. As the president told Al-Arabiya television Monday, he wants a return to "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." Associated Press/Al-Arabiya Barack Obama is interviewed by Al-Arabiya television on Monday. Say what...

Cowboy Capitalism made us the greatest nation in history. Will a third-world clamor for a charismatic redeemer lead us down the road to loserdom; joining the ranks of our flaccid, declining, collectivist European cousins? Two smart men give us their take on what's happening to our society in two excellent Wall Street Journal columns. Dan Henninger reminds us of our greatness and the brave, frontier attitude that got us here. Fouad Ajami worries that Obamamania is driving our country towards "the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies." Here's Henninger's celebration of America, sure to encourage conservatives and...

Lebanon's 'Soldiers of Virtue' By FOUAD AJAMI July 23, 2008 There have been a dozen prisoner exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel since the early 1990s, but Samir Kuntar was always a case apart. In 1979 Kuntar and his companions killed a policeman, kidnapped a young father, Danny Haran, and killed him in front of his 4-year-old daughter. Then Kuntar turned to the child and crushed her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle. In the mayhem, Danny Haran's wife, Smadar, hiding in her home, accidentally smothered to death the couple's 2-year-old daughter. Now Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah,...

I believe in the Iraqi project. Ryan Crocker, U. S. ambassador in Baghdad, who knows the ways of the region, said something that I truly believe in. He said, "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be much more important than how we came." The debate thus far has been about how we came. Bush lied, people died, there were no weapons of mass destruction. There's no connection between al-Qaeda, which is religious, and the regime of Saddam Hussein, which is secular. We spent five years and we are now in year six of this...

We tell the Iranians that the military option is "on the table." But three decades of playing cat-and-mouse with American power have emboldened Iran's rulers. We have played by their rules, and always came up second best. Next door, in Iraq, Iranians played arsonists and firemen at the same time. They could fly under the radar, secure in the belief that the U.S., so deeply engaged there and in Afghanistan, would be reluctant to embark on another military engagement in the lands of Islam. This is all part of a larger pattern. As Tehran has wreaked havoc on regional order...

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush hosted an Oval Office ceremony on Thursday to honor authors, historians and others with the National Humanities Medal. I was fortunate enough during my short career as a Middle East observer to get to know two of the honorees, Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis. Fouad was my houseguest when he first arrived in DC from Princeton back in late '79, early 1980. He was reading the famous Raj trilogy and Freud and a number of other books not directly related to the Middle East. We actually were going to invest in a couple...

Author Fouad Ajami Says US-Led Invasion of Iraq Was A Noble War By Judith Latham Fouad Ajami, director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University, comes from a Shi’a family in Lebanon. Professor Ajami is the author of numerous books on the Middle East, the latest of which is The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq - to be published in July. Unlike many Arab intellectuals, Professor Ajami is a strong advocate of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He says the war in Iraq was a “noble war” and a “gift”...

Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American analyst, notes the contradiction of "an Arab world that besieges American embassies for visas and at the same time celebrates America's calamities."[1] But this seeming paradox actually makes sense. The more attractive the United States is to Arabs, the more pro-U.S. feelings threaten Arab nationalists and Islamists. As a result, both Arab nationalists and Islamists have an even greater incentive to distort Washington's policies and the nature of U.S. society in their propaganda. For these opponents of liberalism, the United States becomes the great Satan whose devilishness justifies their behavior and explains their failures. The anti-American...

   Arafat's war By Fouad Ajami, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of "The Dream Palace of The Arabs" [Vintage 1999]. Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2002   The Arab summiteers in Beirut were on their way to dinner, it turned out, when a young man from the West Bank town of Tulkarm struck at Netanya for that terrible "Passover massacre." In a land soaked with blood, this was a deed whose memory will endure for years to come. The man of Tulkarm struck within "Israel proper," behind the "green line," away from...