Free Republic

For the Democratic Party, history began and ended with the election of George W. Bush. Nothing had happened before him. Every world crisis began with him and would only come to an end when the Democratic Party finally squeezed one of its own into the White House. If there was a problem, Bush had caused it. If another country hated America, it was Bush’s fault. Bush alienated Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Antarctica. It was all his fault, the media, academia and angry Trotskyite grandmothers marching for peace and tyranny in San Francisco agreed. Books...

US President Barack Obama has the authority to launch air strikes against Syria. But he has to notify lawmakers in Congress -- a process which has begun, according to both sides. "The administration is actively consulting with members of Congress, and we will continue to have these conversations in the days ahead," Kerry said Monday in a strongly-worded statement on Syria.

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Texas bar talk just ain't right for international diplomacy. That's the opinion of Russia's Foreign Ministry, which is dismayed by language used by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack at a briefing this week. McCormack accused Russia of violating the essence of an updated EU-brokered cease-fire with Georgia. "Look, these guys are trying to — at every turn, trying to wiggle out of a commitment they made and that their president put his name to," McCormack said Wednesday. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko expressed on Friday Moscow's displeasure with the remark. "I would like to say...

A man, they say, can be judged by his friends. If that's the case, then Barack Obama can surely be judged by George Clooney. The UK Daily Mail reported this week that the "Ocean's Eleven" actor regularly speaks with and text messages the presumptive Democratic nominee, advising him on everything from fashion to foreign policy. "George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East," stated a Democratic Party insider. "George is pushing him to be more 'balanced' on issues such as...

End the cowboy diplomacy. The next President needs to begin their term by restoring American credibility and American political and moral authority around the globe by reaching out to the rest of the world.

In its current cover story, Time magazine trumpets "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy." President George Bush himself seemed to admit as much when he said that he would avoid talking about getting enemies "dead or alive" because "in certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted." As North Korea fueled and then shot off a missile whose sole purpose is to reach the United States, the US not only did not preemptively destroy the missile on the launch pad - as even two Clinton-era defense officials publicly advocated - but spoke only of the need to return North Korea to...

There is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in U.S. foreign policy — what Time magazine clumsily dubbed “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy.” It is true that there is now a regrettable new quietism about promoting democracy in the Middle East. And the United States also insists on multiparty talks with the ghoulish regimes in North Korea and Iran, in a fashion that purportedly seems much different from the go-it-alone caricature of 2001/2. But think hard: Has George Bush, or the world itself, changed in the last five years?One obvious difference...