Free Republic

BAGHDAD: The American ambassador to Iraq has urged policy makers in Washington to give "some very, very serious thought" to the consequences that could follow an early reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq, warning of a surge in sectarian killings in which civilians "by the thousands" could die.... "You can't build a whole policy on a fear of a negative, but, boy, you've really got to account for it," Crocker said in an interview on Saturday at his office in Saddam Hussein's old Republican palace, now the seat of American power in Iraq.... "In the States, it's like we're in...

As we (or the better informed among us at least) celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto this Saturday, marking the date in 1571 when the navy of Pope Pius V's Holy League turned back the Ottoman Turks from one of their recurrent jihads, it might be opportune to consider how the Islamic world has advanced politically over the last half century.... ...To each his own, says I. Better that Arab-Muslim passions be turned against their own city councilmen and politicos than against the Zionist-Crusader Conspiracy, and better that Sunnis and Shias proclaim death to each other rather than...

H.W. Crocker’s Don’t Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America at War, from Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting is three books in one. It entertains like a novel, teaches like a comprehensive text and captures the secret essence of its subject like a great biography. Wars—both conventional and unconventional—are the fundament of every nation’s history. In this book, a tour de armed force, we see 400 years of American history from what Crocker calls the “gentle art of scalping” to post-Vietnam America resurgent in the fight against terrorists.... In the beginning, there was one tomahawk. Crocker tells us that...

<p>You don't have to travel all the way to the Pakistani frontier to find mobs of America-hating fanatics -- just visit your nearest American university.</p> <p>From Harvard to Michigan to UC San Diego, editorial comment from our future "journalists" admonish us that the Sept. 11 attacks were "not unwarranted" given our "arrogance" in dealing with the rest of the world. Demonstrations by students and professors proclaim that patriotism equals hate and that a country as criminal as the United States got what it deserved.</p>