Free Republic

In the less-than-gracious way President Barack Obama compares himself to his predecessors and other mere mortals, we’ve come to expect oblique swipes at President George W. Bush. They’ve been sprinkled in Obama’s inaugural address (“we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals…our power alone cannot protect us”); in prime-time addresses (“the decision to go into Iraq caused substantial rifts between America and much of the world…I’ve spent this year renewing our alliances”); in his Cairo speech (“Iraq was a war of choice…there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of...

A huge swath of the world is now struggling with his nonsensical leadership. I’ve watched our president with great interest over this last week. I have to admit a good amount of trepidation about being critical of any commander-in-chief during a time of war: it’s typically liberals undermining our troops and berating the president during a military fight. On the other hand, the president insists we aren’t at war in Libya, so I guess that gives clearance.President Obama projects timidity and indecision at home and abroad: he’s afraid of the optics of America dropping bombs on another Islamic country; he...

Obama has clearly been the greatest (most effective) President in the history of the nation. Many take his seeming incompetence as a flaw instead of a means to his larger ends. The evidence: 1. Basic economic annihilation of the U.S. economy and the drowning of the Federal Government in permanent and unsustainable debt. Status: COMPLETED 2. Working with the Muslim Brotherhood to establish rule in all Islamic Countries. Status: UNDERWAY, PROSPECT of TOTAL SUCCESS. 3. Creation of local brigades (union/student/progessive) to transform "days of rage" into permanent revolutionary action, intimidate all opponents. Status: UNDERWAY, PROSPECT of TOTAL SUCCESS. 4. Neuter...

Obama doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present. Now we’re seeing the familiar domestic pattern in foreign policy as well. Few Americans realize that Obama has had a longstanding interest in multilateral efforts to combat war crimes and genocide. Obama would like to see a more constraining international legal regime on war crimes, even at the cost of national sovereignty, not to mention the blood and treasure of the countries doing the enforcing. In general, Obama has said little about...

(CBS/AP) The son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi accused Western powers on Sunday of making a "big mistake" by carrying out airstrikes against the country. "One day you'll wake up and you will find out that you were supporting the wrong people," Saif al-Islam Qaddafi told ABC's "This Week." His father vowed a "long war" after the U.S. and European militaries blasted his forces with airstrikes and more than 100 cruise missiles, hitting air defenses and at least two major air bases, and shaking the Libyan capital Tripoli with explosions and anti-aircraft fire. The strikes gave immediate, if temporary, relief...

Applying the Obama Doctrine The President gives us words to live by. Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, and straining mightily beneath the weight of all the water she was carrying for the Obama Administration, Andrea Mitchell of NBC offered this definition of the “emerging” Obama Doctrine: “When you have a catastrophe you can avert, and the benefits outweigh the costs, and you have international or multilateral support, go for it. You cannot stand idly by.” She’s trying to explain Obama’s policy on Libya, but why don’t we test the soundness of the Obama Doctrine by applying it to...

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes. It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment. As the best...

Leave aside for a moment whether it was wise for President Obama to order our military to intervene in Libya's civil war, siding with rebels we know little about against a dictator who has sponsored terrorism against us. A more fundamental question comes first: Did Obama have constitutional authority to do it? President Washington's actions counsel otherwise. In responding to Indian raiders, Washington repeatedly declined to order offensive -- as opposed to defensive -- military action because Congress had not approved it, as he believed the Constitution required. In 1792, William Blount, governor of the territory that became Tennessee, wrote...