Free Republic

Now that the election is behind us, perhaps we can put politics aside and acknowledge a hard fact: On September 11, 2012, America was defeated by al-Qaeda in the Battle of Benghazi.About this battle many questions remain. The media and Congress have a responsibility to get answers — not only because we should know the truth, not only to assign blame, but, more important, to learn from failure. At the least, we should try to understand what lessons our enemies have learned — because they will apply those lessons in the future.It is possible to lose many battles and...

June 18, 2009, 0:00 a.m. How to Crush DebateStart with a lie, add a little slander, stir with incitement to violence. By Clifford D. May Following the deadly shootings of a Kansas abortion doctor and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, two prominent New York Times columnists, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, spoke out forcefully against those in the media who spout lies and, possibly, incite violence. There are “lunatics” out there, Krugman wrote, and “media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.” Rich warned of “toxic rhetoric” and “media demagogues,” fueling a rage...

The question posed by social scientist Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner this month could hardly have been simpler — Do Americans want the United States to be like Europe? He asked as someone who admires Europe and Europeans. He asked also because it is becoming increasingly apparent that restructuring the United States along the lines of the European social-democratic model is the change many in the new administration - perhaps including President Obama himself - believe in. Mr. Murray is convinced that Europeanizing America is a bad idea, and not only because the European model creates...

The question posed by social scientist Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner this month could hardly have been simpler: Do Americans want the United States to be like Europe? He asked as someone who likes and admires Europe and Europeans. He asked also because it is becoming increasingly apparent that restructuring the U.S. along the lines of the European social-democratic model is the change many in the new administration — perhaps including President Obama himself — believe in. Such a redirection surely deserves consideration. Murray is convinced that Europeanizing America is a bad idea, and not only...

June 19, 2008, 0:00 a.m. We’re Not Addicts!The case for energy abundance and diversity. By Clifford D. May People say we’re addicted to oil, but that’s imprecise and unfair. Our automobiles are addicted to oil. And America has been designed around the automobile. We — America’s taxpayers — have built an elaborate interstate highway system. We have constructed sprawling cities (Los Angeles, for example) with neighborhoods connected only by roads. A big slice of our population is housed in suburbs conveniently accessible only by car. We have built thousands of shopping centers with acres of parking. Is it possible...

        Is it the sight of Americans that causes people to kill one another? Or is it perhaps our smell?In Iraq, we have been losing not clashes of arms but clashes of perceptions. Our enemies understood early on that they could not defeat American troops in combat. But they were clever enough to realize they didn’t need to. Instead, they could win a war of ideas. Their strategy was audacious: They would target their enemies — “occupiers,” “infidels,” and “collaborators” — only opportunistically and sporadically. Their most lethal weapon, the suicide bomber, they would deploy against ordinary Iraqis shopping in...

To be fair to our enemies, they are only doing what comes naturally. We are the historical oddballs. Wars have been fought since time immemorial. The vast majority have been over power and resources, to defeat rival civilizations, to vanquish hated “others.” Why did Spartans, Persians, Macedonians and Romans fight? What motivated Bonaparte to take on the Austrians, the Ottomans, the Russians and the English? What caused Imperial Japan to attempt to conquer Asia? Almost a thousand years ago, Genghis Khan provided a candid and classic answer: “Man's highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies; to pursue them; to...

  Our enemies know this grim truth: War has never become obsolete By CLIFFORD D. MAY TO BE FAIR to our enemies, they are only doing what comes naturally. We are the historical oddballs. Wars have been fought since time immemorial. The vast majority have been over power and resources, to defeat rival civilizations, to vanquish hated “others.”“Man’s highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies; to pursue them; to deprive them of their possessions; to make their beloved weep; to ride on their horses; and to embrace their wives and daughters,” Genghis Khan said.Sure, grievances may be a...

To The Washington Post they were simply “gunmen.” The New York Times non-judgmentally called them “armed men.” The elite media fastidiously avoid such harsh words as "terrorist" – even to describe those who, last week, rounded up five Iraqi teachers from outside their school, dragged them into a classroom, lined them up against a wall and shot them to death. The Post was quick to inform readers that “no children were hurt in the attack.” Are we to regard that as restraint on the part of these “gunmen”? The Times noted that “the killings appeared to have been motivated more...

June 27, 2005, 1:29 p.m. The Greatest Generation A suggestion for the president's Tuesday night address. My fellow Americans, my parents' generation is known as the Greatest Generation. But it was not because they were the Greatest Generation that they prevailed in World War II. Rather, they became the Greatest Generation because of the struggles and hardships they were willing and able to endure — in order to win World War II. Their struggle then was against the forces of totalitarianism and terror. Our struggle today is — once again — against the forces of totalitarianism and terror. Their challenge...

President Bush's appointment of Karen Hughes and Dina Powell to the two top communications jobs in the State Department tells us this: He recognizes that perception is as important as reality -- not just in domestic politics but also in the most critical area of foreign policy, the “War of Ideas” against terrorism and the ideologies that drive it. Hughes is Bush's confidante, a former journalist who has long helped him communicate more effectively with the audience that most matters to any politician: voters.Powell is 31, Egyptian-born, Arabic-speaking, charming, brainy and beautiful. The fact that she could come to America...

When a politician or a journalist talks about an "exit strategy" from Iraq, there is only one appropriate response: Roll your eyes and leave the room. Imagine some senator or reporter during World War II asking Roosevelt and Churchill to define their "exit strategy" from Europe and the Pacific. They probably would not have dignified the question with an answer. Or, if they had, they might have said: "We have a strategy for victory. The alternative would be a strategy for defeat. Do we look like defeatists to you?" Indeed, the leaders of the Anglo-American alliance made no attempt to...

An old saw has it that a lie can circle the globe before the truth even laces its sneakers. That's more accurate now – an era when satellites and the Internet have revolutionized communications – than ever before.  In Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the United States is fighting not just a war of arms but, simultaneously, a war of ideas. Consider how effectively our enemies have learned to meld actions, words and images into weapons.When Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, bombs Iraqi policemen, murders aid workers, or decapitates foreign hostages while rolling video cameras, and...

We've come to believe we had just two choices in Iraq: (1) stay out and hope to keep Saddam Hussein “in his box”; or (2) proceed exactly as President Bush did – remove the dictator, occupy the country and attempt to bring peace, freedom, human rights and democracy to the Iraqis. But there were other options. Thinking about them may help us determine where to go from here. Start with this: Almost exactly two years ago, then-Presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer said that Bush administration's policy was “regime change.” But, he added, that did not necessitate a military invasion. “The...

THE TERRORIST ATTACKS of 9/11 — self-evidently — signaled the worst intelligence failure in American history. Less well understood: They also signaled the worst policy failure. For more than two decades, extremist ideologies within the troubled Islamic world gathered strength. On campuses and in Washington think tanks, most “experts” either misunderstood radical Islamism or underestimated the terrorist threat it posed. “Experts” in the Foreign Service prescribed only weak broths as remedies. Such failures should be prompting re-examinations within the foreign-policy community. Evidence that is not happening is the formation of a group calling itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change....

The 60th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy gave President Bush an opportunity to draw parallels between World War II, on the one hand, and the war in Iraq and the broader global conflict, on the other. Astonishingly, this proved controversial. “Many here … emphatically reject Bush's repeated comparison,” the Washington Post's Keith B. Richburg wrote from France. Richburg quoted Helene Luc “a Communist Party senator,” who insisted that “the American army must leave Iraq,” and Abu Mohammed, a Moroccan immigrant who asserted that “there is a big difference” between the liberation of France in 1944 and the liberation of...

In World War II, Americans sought victory. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the totalitarian regimes against which they fought. A few years later in Korea, the United States did accept less - an armistice. President Eisenhower preserved the independence of the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, but the north was left in the hands of totalitarian extremists who, more than 50 years later, continue to oppress the people of that land and to threaten Americans. The war in Vietnam ended without victory and without even a real truce....

CONSIDER WHAT’S required to wear the label “Pro-Palestinian.” To start, you have to appear non-judgmental about innocent Palestinian children being raised to become human bombs. You must refer to those who send such children on suicide/mass murder missions as “political leaders” or, even better, as “spiritual leaders.” Call them militants if you must, but never terrorists. To be thought of as pro-Palestinian, you must cite the plight of the Palestinian refugees as a key motivation for violence, ignoring the fact that there would have been no refugees had Israel’s Arab neighbors not launched a war to destroy the tiny Jewish...

Bob Woodward's new book is less an expose than an inkblot test. It's remarkable how people can see the same words on the same pages - and come away with entirely different pictures. In an election year, it's to be expected that members of the opposition party would thumb eagerly through a book like "Plan of Attack," looking for stones to throw at the incumbent president. More troubling is that so many media figures also are viewing the book through a partisan prism - headlining whatever casts the president in an unfavorable light, conspicuously ignoring those chapters that challenge the...

It's not supposed to be about politics. It's not supposed to be about settling scores. It's not supposed to be entertainment. But those are the ways the 9/11 commission's work is being framed for American and international audiences. The 9/11 Commission — formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — was charged with two goals: (1) Figure out how trans-national terrorists managed to defeat America's intelligence and national security community, and (2) provide recommendations for more effectively combating the Free World's sworn enemies in the future. But partly because of the elite media's penchant...