Free Republic

Chinese activity beyond its borders does not inherently threaten America. The twin narratives of Trump ‘abandoning’ the Middle East and any Chinese presence as a threat to America are false. While his critics claim the president “eyes the exits” from the Middle East, they excoriate him for “abdicating a strong U.S. role” in the region, which some claim is enabling China’s rise. This common characterization of Trump’s foreign policy may be worrisome, but it is also demonstrably wrong.Far from eyeing the exits, Trump continues a concerning trend of deepening U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. As important, Chinese activity...

Liberals sometimes say that law enforcement’s approach to the Mafia offers a model for how to deal with jihadists, even though the latter tend not to limit their demands to protection money. This past Sunday, Egberto Willies of Daily Kos claimed that if terrorist attacks were “treated as they should be, like organized crime, it would neuter ISIS. After all…the group is no more powerful than a large band of thugs with weapons.” But crimefighting methods weren’t the main concern of Willies’s piece. Rather, it was his belief that “neocons” wish to exploit fear of terrorism in order to start a war which...