Free Republic

If you believed America's longest war, in Afghanistan, was coming to an end, be advised: It is not. Departing U.S. commander Gen. John Campbell says there will need to be U.S. boots on the ground "for years to come." Making good on President Obama's commitment to remove all U.S. forces by next January, said Campbell, "would put the whole mission at risk." "Afghanistan has not achieved an enduring level of security and stability that justifies a reduction of our support. ... 2016 could be no better and possibly worse than 2015." Translation: A U.S. withdrawal would risk a Taliban takeover...

Donald Trump won more votes in the Iowa caucuses than any Republican candidate in history. Impressive, except Ted Cruz set the new all-time record. And Marco Rubio exceeded all expectations by taking 23 percent. Cruz won tea party types, evangelicals and the hard right. Trump won the populists and nationalists who want the borders secure, no amnesty and no more trade deals that enable rival powers like China to disembowel American industries. And Rubio? He is what columnist Mark Shields called Jimmy Carter, 35 years ago, “the remainderman of national politics. He gets what’s left over after his opponents have...

Whoever wins the nominations, the most successful campaigns of 2016 provide us with a clear picture of where the center of gravity is today in both parties and, hence, where America is going. Bernie Sanders, with his mammoth crowds and mass support among the young, represents, as did George McGovern in 1972, despite his defeat, the future of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton has been tacking left tells you Sanders is winning the argument. Should she avoid indictment in the email scandal, and win the nomination and the election, Clinton would be a placeholder president. Yet, should Sanders win...

The conservative movement is starting to look a lot like Syria. Baited, taunted, mocked by Fox News, Donald Trump told Roger Ailes what he could do with his Iowa debate, and marched off to host a Thursday night rally for veterans at the same time in Des Moines. Message: I speak for the silent majority, Roger, not you, not Megyn Kelly, not Fox News. Diss me, and I will do fine without Fox. And so the civil-sectarian war on the right widens and deepens.

Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO -- a revolutionary in name only? So they must be muttering around the barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps today. For while American hawks are saying we gave away the store to Tehran, consider what ayatollah agreed to. Last week, he gave his blessing to the return of 10 U.S. sailors who intruded into Iranian waters within hours of capture. He turned loose four Americans convicted of spying. And he gave final approval to a nuclear deal that is a national humiliation. Ordered by the...

Michael Smerconish asks Pat Buchanan about his ideas being carried forward by Donald Trump, and what Trump's chances are in the 2016 race.

Did the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, 9/11, have nothing to do with the Islamic faith? Did Fort Hood and the San Bernardino massacres, the London subway bombings and the killings at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the slaughter at the Bataclan in Paris, have nothing to do with Islam? Does the lengthening list of atrocities by terrorist cells of ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front have nothing to do with Islam? Is it really illiberal to inquire "into the religious opinions" of those who perpetrate these atrocities? Or is it suicidal not...

"If you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate." So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN's Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria. "Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it," blurted Christie: "I would talk to Vladimir Putin ... I'd say to him, 'Listen, Mr. President, there's a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.' "Yes, we would shoot down the planes of...

"Buchanan, if you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, be sure to put your money on X." So, Richard Nixon told me half a century ago, after he had been badly burned in just such a futile and failed enterprise. It was the Cleveland Governors Conference of 1964. Sen. Barry Goldwater had just defeated Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in the final and decisive winner-take-all primary in California. As the story is told, Stu Spencer, Rocky's man in California, had come to his candidate and said, "Governor, I think it's time to call in the Eastern establishment." To...

An Establishment Unhinged December 10, 2015 By Patrick J. Buchanan Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words — xenophobe, racist, bigot — have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to Hitler and Mussolini. The establishment seemed to have become unhinged. Why the hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration tramples all over “American values” and...

When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago -- claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a "60 Minutes" segment about President Bush's National Guard service -- the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as "old news." So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money. Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including...

Having established a base on the Syrian coast, Vladimir Putin last week began air strikes on ISIS and other rebel forces seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad. A longtime ally of Syria, Russia wants to preserve its toehold on the Mediterranean, help Assad repel the threat, and keep the Islamic terrorists out of Damascus. Russia is also fearful that the fall of Assad would free up the Chechen terrorists in Syria to return to Russia. In intervening to save Assad, Putin is doing exactly what we are doing to save our imperiled allies in Baghdad and Kabul. Yet Putin’s intervention has...

Though Gen. David Petraeus claims Vladimir Putin seeks to re-establish the Russian Empire, this misses the point. If Putin sought that, he would by now, 15 years in power, have annexed Belarus and Ukraine, but he has not even annexed the pro-Russian Donbass. Putin is a nationalist who sees his country as one of the world’s great powers and sees himself as protector of Russian peoples everywhere. He believes Moscow should have its own Monroe Doctrine, and that rival powers should not be planting military bases on Russia’s doorstep.

With that kumbayah moment at the Capitol in South Carolina, when the Battle Flag of the Confederacy was lowered forever to the cheers and tears of all, a purgation of the detestable relics of evil that permeate American public life began. City leaders in Memphis plan to dig up the body of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is buried in a city park that once bore his name. A statue of the great cavalrymen will be removed. “Nathan Bedford Forrest is a symbol of bigotry and racism, and those symbols have no place on public property,” said council Chairman...

"Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide," wrote James Burnham in his 1964 "Suicide of the West." Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization. Was he wrong? Consider what is happening in Europe. Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia, small nations sensing they will be swamped by asylum seekers from the Muslim world, are trying to seal their borders and secure their homelands. Their instinct for survival, their awareness of lifeboat ethics, is acute. Yet they are being...

he Wednesday morning murders of 24-year-old Roanoke TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were a racist atrocity, a hate crime. Were they not white, they would be alive today. Their killer, Vester L. Flanagan II, said as much in his farewell screed. He ordered his murder weapon, he said, two days after the slaughter of nine congregants at the African-American AME church in Charleston, South Carolina. “What sent me over the top was the church shooting,” said Flanagan. To be sure, racism does not fully explain why Flanagan, fired from that same WDBJ7 station, committed this act...

Enter the Donald. If there is a single theme behind his message, it would seem to be a call for a New Nationalism or New Patriotism. He is going to “make America great again.” He is going to build a wall on the border that will make us proud, and Mexico will pay for it. He will send all illegal aliens home and restore the traditional value of U.S. citizenship by putting an end to the scandal of “anchor babies.” One never hears Trump discuss the architecture of our rules-based global economy. Rather, he speaks of Mexico, China and Japan...

While perhaps too early for Democratic elites to panic and begin bailing out on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as a doomed vessel, they would be well advised not to miss any of the lifeboat drills. For Hillary’s campaign is taking on water at a rate that will sink her, if the leakage does not stop, and soon. Initially, the issue of Hillary and the emails she sent and received as secretary of state seemed too wonkish, too complex, too trivial a matter to sink a candidacy as strong as hers. Her nomination was considered as assured as any since Vice President...

“Trump’s immigration proposals are as dangerous as they are stunning,” railed amnesty activist Frank Sharry. “Trump … promises to rescind protections for Dreamers and deport them. He wants to redefine the constitutional definition of U.S. citizenship as codified by the 14th Amendment. He plans to impose a moratorium on legal immigration.” While Sharry is a bit hysterical, he is not entirely wrong. For the six-page policy paper, to secure America’s border and send back aliens here illegally, released by Trump last weekend, is the toughest, most comprehensive, stunning immigration proposal of the election cycle. The Trump folks were aided by...

Pat Buchanan has for years been such a virulent opponent of Israel that he has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism, and this column condemning Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly interfering in America’s internal affairs by opposing the Iran deal is not going to erase that impression. The paleocon Right hates Israel with such abiding passion that it is increasingly self-contradictory: for a small government advocate like Buchanan defending Barack Obama and tacitly supporting a deal that threatens not just Israel, but the U.S. as well, manifests a moral myopia of catastrophic immensity. But it’s no surprise. I’ve noted before how the...