Free Republic

Ayatollah Iran treats the world as a war zone. Here's a list of regional battlegrounds: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Persian Gulf Arab nations, Yemen and Jordan. On Jan. 28, a drone launched by an Iranian proxy militia operating in Iraq struck the U.S.-manned Tower 22 observation outpost in northeastern Jordan. The explosion killed three U.S. Army soldiers and injured at least three dozen more service members. Yemen's Houthis, an Iranian proxy army, wage war on global shipping. Their attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean spike maritime insurance rates. That increases prices for everything,...

On March 1, the U.S. tentatively approved the sale $600 million in hi-tech weapons to Taiwan for its U.S.-made F-16 aircraft. The weapons sale would impress anyone familiar with 21st century air to air combat. Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles. AGM-88B High Speed Anti-Radiation (HARM) missiles to destroy communist Chinese land-based radars guiding attacking Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) jets. Attacking is that last sentence’s critical word. On March 1, 19 PLAAF aircraft violated Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). They were bluffing attacks. Land radars would play key roles in a communist Chinese assault on the island. Taiwan’s...

Syria: As A Bonus It Annoys The Turks December 1, 2015: After initially avoiding ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant) targets in Syria Russia has switched its air power from attacking Syrian rebels doing the most damage to the Syrian government to ISIL. The switch came in early November when Russia realized that it was indeed, as ISIL claimed, a terrorist bomb that brought down an airliner full of Russian tourists over Egypt on October 31st. Then came the ISIL Paris attack on the 13 th and suddenly France and Russia were allies in Syria and going after...

“Mark my words,” Joe Biden told a group of wealthy contributors. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like it did John Kennedy.” A moment later Biden added, “Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” So let’s play Name That Crisis, the one Biden says will test Obama within six months of his inauguration. Understand any answer will be tentative. Even if the prognosticator correctly identifies the antagonists and the battlefield, the actual sequence of events will defy astrologers, political science-fiction scenarists and intelligence...

Washington's high-decibel debate over funding U.S. military operations in Iraq has utterly drowned out one of the most important voices we must consider in any substantial discussion of goals and consequences: the voice of the Iraqi people. Enter Marc Danziger. Danziger works for a software company in California and -- using the wry pseudonym "Armed Liberal" -- writes for the Website WindsOfChange.net. Late last week, Danziger sent an email that began: "As most of you know, I'm a liberal Democrat (pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, pro-progressive taxation, pro-equal rights, pro-environmental regulation, pro-public schools) who supported and supports the war in Iraq. As...

The chattering class nostrum that Free Iraq and its coalition allies have "lost the Iraq war" is so blatantly wrong it would be a source of laughter were human life and hope-inspiring liberty not at such terrible risk. In terms of fundamental historical changes favoring 21st century freedom and peace, what Free Iraq and its Coalition allies have accomplished in four short years is nothing short of astonishing. Consider what Iraq was, not simply in A.D. March 2003, but in 2003 B.C. Both historical frames provide instructive lessons in the obvious. Iraq, as ancient Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris...

HH: Got another Texan now, Col. Austin Bay of www.austinbay.net/blog, actually knows that, “Hell, Hoss, we’re at war.” Austin, welcome back. Always a pleasure. AB: Thanks, Hugh. Glad to be there. HH: Let’s remind people where they can get your latest, Embrace the Suck, a pamphlet. Where’s the website where they can grab that? AB: www.pamphletguys.com. I edited and put it together, Adam Bellow of Pamphletguys.com is the publisher. I encourage everybody to go take a look at it. I saw that the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed of mine, but most of the op-ed was comprised of terms...

Ancient Babylon flourished in Iraq's real "green zone" -- the Mesopotamian canals connecting the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Babylon, even in its current state of ruin, reflects Iraq's splendid history: the Eden of city-states, the consolidator and exporter of the Agricultural Revolution. The modern mound above old Babylon's grand decay is another matter. At a distance, the white stone edifice on the hill isn't so hideous. But approach it, on foot or in a Humvee, and you'll see Saddam Hussein's Babylonian palace for the cruel marble kitsch it is. Saddam's marble mound begs comparison to the poet Percy Shelley's trunkless...

If demography is destiny, then news of America's decline is (like Mark Twain's death) decidedly premature. Statisticians tell us Oct. 17 (at 7:46 a.m. EDT, according to the Census Bureau's estimate) was the day America's population reached, then surpassed, 300 million people. That's a three followed by eight zeroes. Unfortunately, Oct. 17 was Halloween with an extra "Boo" (B with two zeroes) for various "greens" and ecological radicals mired in Malthusian desperation and myths of looming disaster. For decades, the doomsayers have been predicting catastrophe wrought by the "population explosion" and diminishing resources. Author and columnist Mark Steyn notes in...

Several declassified al-Qaida documents -- one discovered after the June 2006 air strike that killed al-Qaida's Iraqi emir, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- strongly suggest al Qaeda's leaders fear they are losing the War on Terror. On Sept. 18, Iraqi National Security Advisor Muwaffaq al-Rabi released a letter from al-Qaida commander "Atiyah" (a pseudonym) to Zarqawi. West Point's Counter Terrorism Center (ctc.usma.edu) has the letter archived online. The letter features al Qaeda's usual religious panegyrics, but also contains strong evidence of fear, doubt and impending defeat. It seems five years of continual defeat (and that is what the record is) have...

President George W. Bush's May 27 commencement address to the 2006 West Point graduating class made it clear he knows the War on Terror will grind on for years. Last year, I criticized the Bush administration for neglecting -- at least in public -- the "multi-administration" character of the War on Terror. In the July 25, 2005, issue of The Weekly Standard, I wrote: "Al-Qaida's jihadists plotted a multigenerational war. In the early 1990s, our enemies began proselytizing London and New York mosques and, in doing so, began planting cadres throughout the world. Even if Washington leads a successful global...

In December 2004, I wrote a column that led with this line: "Mark it on your calendar: Next month, the Arab Middle East will revolt." The column placed the January 2005 Palestinian and Iraqi elections in historical context. These were not the revolutions of generals with tanks and terrorists with fatwas, but the slow revolutions of the ballot box, with political moderates and liberal reformers the genuinely revolutionary vanguard. To massage Churchill's phrase, these revolts were the beginning of democratic politics, where "jaw jaw" begins to replace "war war" and "terror terror." These slow revolts against tyranny and terror continue,...

Perhaps senior Bush administration officials thought establishing a democratic Iraq would be quick work. In an essay I wrote for the Dec. 9, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard, I described what I thought a very difficult path to peace: "Pity Gen. Tommy Franks or, for that matter, any American military commander tasked with overseeing a post-Saddam Baghdad. For in that amorphous, dicey phase the Pentagon calls 'war termination' ... U.S. and allied forces liberating Iraq will attempt -- more or less simultaneously -- to end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, generate electricity, pump...

Transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview with milblogger Austin Bay: Tuesday, June 28 Col. Austin Bay back from the Middle East, after a 51-hour return trip. And yet, he was still more coherent than Ted Kennedy on one of his sobriety days. You can read more of Col. Bay's adventures here, but below is the transcript on Hugh's show earlier this afternoon: HH: Colonel, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, and welcome back to the U.S. AB: Thanks, Hugh. It's great to be back. HH: I heard you had quite an adventurous return. AB: Yes. Fifty one and half hours...

This is the Bush Administration’s biggest strategic mistake– a failure to tap the reservoir of American willingness 9/11 produced. One afternoon in December 2001 my mother –after reading a column of mine in her local paper– called me long-distance. She told me she remembered being a teenager in 1942 and tossing a tin can on a wagon that rolled past the train station in her small Texas hometown. (Plainview– one reason I know Lanc-Corporal Solis’ hometown– it’s my parents birthplace.) Mom said she knew that the can she tossed didn’t add much to the war effort, but she felt that...

Ho Chi Saddam Trail? Nope./Iraq in the War on Terror As I suggested Sunday, reflecting on John Burns’ coverage of Syrian-backed Saddam-Zarqawi infilitration routes, Balkan smuggling rings are a more appropriate comparison than “Ho Chi Minh Trail.” But the NY Times has to impose its Vietnam template. Burns’ report still provided a lot of useful detail. Now the Washington Post has published an article on a Syrian smuggler . It provides a different perspective on the infiltration network– and I think it also illustrates that the Ho Chi Minh trail comparison was inappropriate. The article is written and reported by...

AUSTIN BAY SENDS THIS EMAIL FROM IRAQ: I must respond to those who "want a breather" or wish "to take time out" from the war. There is no time out in war. Occasionally soldiers get R&R, but that means someone else is pulling guard duty or running patrols. I see Mickey Kaus says "we need a break" and Peggy Noonan is worried that the American people want a breather because current history is too "dramatic." I read Peggy's essay and I get the distinct impression her brilliantly conceived column springs from her own personal weariness-- maybe I'm wrong, but she...

<p>The awkward killer — like the birds it mimics — begins as a shell, an oblong, egglike cylinder of fiberglass and resin with aerodynamic hollows for computer brain, robotic eyes and digital nerves.</p> <p>The killer's smooth, ungainly head and gawky wings mock stock science fiction caricatures of the high-tech future. Among film starlets and 20th-century fighter aircraft, sleek, slick and dazzling are the skin-tones of quick celebrity, and this slow vulture of a flying machine lacks easy sizzle.</p>

<p>Within a week, I deploy to Iraq, as another U.S. Army reservist called to active duty. I will serve as a staff officer in Baghdad and will not be writing newspaper columns, though from time to time a column under my byline may appear on this page. I have "prewritten" a number of columns addressing themes and concepts I think will be particularly pertinent during this long, hot and history-making summer.</p>

The year 2003 ended with the United States on high alert for terrorist strikes at home and abroad. The alert continues into 2004, a sobering reminder of our shared peril. While traveling in Southeast Asia in 2002, a counter-terrorist cop told me, in a tone as tough as his stare: "We've been targets longer than you. I don't say this to insult. … America has joined our war." He was specifically referring to the Jemaah Islamiya/al Qaeda threats to Indonesia and Singapore. His blunt words, however, echo a common insight. At the moment, every corner of the world, if not...