Free Republic

September 11 taught us many lessons. To our peril, we have forgotten them. Most of the current acrimony over counterterrorism is stale. The debate is simply a rehash of issues that were discussed and, in fact, resolved early last decade. Let us review them one more time. MOST TERRORISTS ARE NOT POOR AND DOWNTRODDEN September 11 taught us that a Mohammed Atta or a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed does not commit mass murder out of hunger, want, illiteracy, or Western oppression. No doubt Middle Eastern poverty contributes to religious violence. But the poor in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen...

... It was like listening to the blind talk about art, the deaf about music or eunuchs discussing sex based on hearsay. Because with the exception of the left-wing Die Tageszeitung, the conservative Die Welt and the centrist Die Zeit, every German newspaper and magazine followed the advice of Green Party co-leader Claudia Roth, who said "de-escalation begins at home," and erred on the side of caution by not republishing the cartoons. Prominent German psychoanalyst advised: "The West should refrain from any provocations that produce feelings of debasement or humiliation." Of course, ... left open the question of whether "the...

... But a civilization becomes incompetent not only when it fails to learn the lessons of its past, but also when it becomes crippled by them. ... Our deeper incompetence stems from an inability to recognize the proper limits to our own virtues ...  Thus we reject profiling on the commendable grounds that human beings ought not to be treated as statistical probabilities. But at some point, the failure to profile puts innocent lives recklessly at risk. We also abhor waterboarding for the eminently decent reason that it borders on torture. But there are worse things than waterboarding—like allowing another...

The Origins of ObamismI do not think it will be easy to delay Obamism. It is not just that both houses of Congress are under liberal leadership with ample majorities, with a White House and captive media egging them on. The problem is that now the entire engine of the federal government is harnessed in the most unapologetic way to pushing through a far left agenda. There is no shame, no hesitancy in using the full powers of the state.How does that work out? Without qualification (remember we are in a new age of transparency and ethical reform) votes are...

Why attack the productive classes who want to be rich? There is class warfare going on in this country — but it’s not against the established rich. It’s against those who are trying to become wealthy. President Obama has declared that those who make over $200,000 will pay higher income taxes. Caps on payroll taxes are supposed to come off as well for the upper class. Envisioned estate taxes will take 45 percent of individual inheritances valued over $3.5 million. Many states have also hiked their income taxes on the upper brackets. Again, most of those targeted are not...

The Great Debate Oddly Is Not OverWe are still in a great public debate between capitalism and socialism, and individual freedom versus statism — odd since hundreds of millions worldwide have escaped poverty the last 30 years due to the spread of Western-inspired free markets.Many choose sides in the debate based on their own predicaments. Sometimes the more independent and secure who have thrived under capitalism promote it, the more dependent who have not - detest it.At other times the realist mind is opposed to the idealist.  And we can also envision the split as an age-old dichotomy between the...

President Obama has given a number of major speeches touching on world affairs since he announced his bid for the presidency. All have invoked historical examples — usually for moral purposes, but often at the expense of both literal and figurative truth. THE VICTORY COLUMN SPEECH1) Candidate Barack Obama had supposedly made a presumptuous request to speak at the Berlin Wall and been denied (the Germans might later have regretted that turndown, since a year later Obama, tit-for-tat, declined an invitation to speak there on the 20th anniversary of the wall’s fall), and so he chose the Victory Column as...

No one in the Obama throng has ever believed much in the Roman concept of a “wheel of fortune” — rota fortunae — so often alluded to by the likes of Cicero and Boethius. But that metaphor for changeable fortune reminds us that at times we all enjoy inexplicable good luck — and therefore must brace for the moment when the wheel turns, and inevitable adversity follows. Of course, the downturn is always worse for those who were flippant on the upturn — or so medieval moralists reminded haughty royalty. All cultures are aware of the fickleness of fortune —...

After ten months of dissing his predecessor, embracing our enemies, and abandoning our allies, it’s time for Obama to make another fresh start Obama wanted to set our diplomacy on a new track. And that’s just what he has done.      After ten months of “Bush did it” diplomacy, the Obama administration needs to reset its reset button.  EUROPEOn substantial issues, relations with Europe have not improved. The governments in France, Germany, Italy, and, soon, Great Britain are conservative, and increasingly skeptical of Obama’s diplomacy. Germany bowed out on further stimulus. Sarkozy lectured us about utopian rhetoric without action on Iran’s...

That was such a strange speech. Deploring partisanship while serially trashing Bush at each new talking point. Sending more troops, but talking more about when they will come home rather than what they will do to the enemy. There was nothing much new in the speech, yet apparently it took the president months to decide whether even to give it. Ostensibly the talk was to be on Afghanistan; instead, the second half mostly consisted of the usual hope-and-change platitudes. Still, the president, to his credit, is trying to give the best picture of the Afghanistan war. Obama started well in his...

So, fellow critics of Obama, what would we do instead? It is easy to harp, as Obama did in 2007-8, but hard to govern, as Obama learned in 2009. So for all the criticism, let us put up some sample proposals of our own.    Ok, try the following.1. Pay as you go, balanced budget—whatever you wish to call a return to fiscal sanity. Conservatives need to stop talking about tolerable deficits in terms of GDP; and liberals should cease the charade that trillion-plus annual borrowing is great stimulus.The psychological effect on the American people of paying down the debt through...

…is what America has done since 1941. Obama wants to get off. Fine. Many of our countrymen are tired of the ride. But what makes him think that on the ground with the gnashing beast is any safer than on his back?What Causes Wars?I do not mean here the existential reasons for strife, brought about through pride, status, envy, honor—or even the supposed desire for riches and natural resources. But rather, less grandly, what allows those aggressions to devolve into legalize murder on a vast scale?I ask that question, because I am not sure our President or his advisors have...

The growing problem for the Obama administration is that the public has finally caught on that the president's tough rhetoric and soaring oratory don't match reality. "Considering all options" and "wanting more information" essentially mean dithering and voting present on Afghanistan, even after announcing the adoption of a new bold strategy. "Saving jobs" means conjecturing about the effects of massive borrowing and enhancing your figures through the creation of fictitious congressional districts and bogus employment reporting. "Punishing KSM" means giving the liberal community a world platform for legal gymnastics designed to repudiate the past administration and demonstrate that community's "tolerance"...

The Arab Preference for War Michael J. TottenEgyptian playwright Ali Salem visited Israel in 1994 to “rid himself of hatred,” as he put it, and he wrote a slim volume about his experience called A Drive to Israel. His book was a bestseller in Egypt, but Cairo’s intellectual class ostracized him. The Egyptian Cinema Association and the Egyptian Writers Association canceled his memberships.The Middle East Media Research Institute just translated an interview with him in Kuwait’s daily An Nahar newspaper that makes for depressing reading. His interlocutor harangues him throughout and comes across only somewhat more reasonable than the intellectual...

How to distill the news? After watching it far too much the past nine months, I offer five random conclusions from what I think is going on in the age of Obama.1. Disconnect. There is little semblance between how one lives and how one envisions others should live. We saw that with the cabinet nominees. Tom Daschle, cheating on the taxes on his free limousine service, was the obvious caricature of someone who likes the high life, has found a way through tribuneship to get it, and makes so much money that he easily has enough money to pay for the...

In his latest video Bill Whittle compares the destruction of ACORN with one of the most brilliant military victories of all times: Hannibal's decimation of Romans in the Battle of Cannae. Whittle says that the main war is not with ACORN but with the media. The Media is no longer "news media", because, as it was highlighted, again, in the ACORN affair, is not just biased and selective, but now engaged in suppressing the news. It's not free media anymore.As Hannibal learned that fighting all powerful Rome is dangerous, Breitbart should also be worry - he'd drawn blood of...

Parts I and IIThe Taxpayers' March on Washington as seen through the eyes of an ex-Soviet immigrant.Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from Ukraine, currently lives in New York. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red SquarePart IOn September 12, 2009, I took part in the largest anti-big-government demonstration in the history of mankind. To borrow an expression from Joe Biden, the Taxpayers’ March on Washington was clean and articulate. It was clean because over a million earners of American wealth didn’t litter or destroy things and generally behaved...

War II ThoughtsWe can learn a lot about our present dilemmas through looking at the past. This month I’m teaching an intensive class on World War II, and again reminded how history is never really history. One lesson: do not judge past decisions by present considerations or post facto wisdom from a Western point of view, but understand them given the knowledge and thinking of the times from an enemy perspective.We ridicule the disastrous Japanese decision to go to war against the American colossus on December 7, 1941. But that correct analysis enjoys the benefit of hindsight, and does not...

Where to begin with the “surprise” announcement of a second, previously undisclosed “nuclear facility”? Some thoughts: (1) This is Iran’s answer to the Obama video peace offensive. This summer we kept quiet while thousands went into the streets of Tehran to protest brutality and a rigged election — just so that Obama’s much-heralded peace offensive, planned for October, could showcase his transnational diplomatic charisma. I think all that brilliance has just been preempted by the theocracy, which quite understandably concluded that Obama not only would not support democratic dissidents in the new “reset button” era, but was increasingly desperate, as...

We didn't have political articles by Orson Scott Card for awhile, and here is one with promises of more. For those who don't know who he is: Orson Scott Card is one of the best living Sci-Fi writers. His Ender's series are enormously popular and translated to many languages. His websites attract attention of readers from all over the world.Since 9/11 he wrote many political essays. He is a conservative democrat of a Zell Miller type (there are still a few around) who is upset with hijacking of his party by the Left. He considers himself a moderate, which (some...