Free Republic

Murtha's got it wrong: We're winning in Iraq December 27, 2005 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN Five weeks ago a wave of hysteria swept through Washington. Suddenly the Washington establishment became convinced that the war in Iraq was lost. This conviction was sparked off by the speech of Rep. John Murtha, a crusty former Marine usually described as a conservative Democrat, who declared that U.S. policy in Iraq was "a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion" and called for "immediate redeployment" of U.S. troops. The speech was like a match on a bonfire. Murtha was the lead story in newspapers and on...

A top secret map for a 1979 Warsaw Pact war game -- titled "Seven Days to the River Rhine" -- was released at a press conference that marked the opening of the Poland's heretofore secret communist-era military intelligence files. It was chilling. The map showed large red mushroom clouds along a line from the Danish border through Germany and Belgium to the French border. They blotted out such cities as Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Antwerp and Brussels. Massive SS-20 missiles were being planted in Eastern Europe and aimed at Western cities. (The red mushroom clouds show their destinations.) "Peace rallies" throughout...

Last Friday in Warsaw the world saw for the first time exactly how the Soviet Union intended to fight a nuclear war in Europe. A top secret map for a 1979 Warsaw Pact war game — entitled “Seven Days to the River Rhine” — was published at a press conference that marked the opening up of the Poland's hitherto secret military intelligence files from the communist era. It was a chilling experience. The map showed large red mushroom clouds along a line going from the Danish border down through Germany and Belgium to the French border. They blotted out such...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and anti-communist dissident who went directly from jail to the leadership of his country in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, has kept himself busy since retiring from the presidency. For several years he has been the host of an annual conference, Forum 2000, which brings together a diverse set of public figures to debate international issues. Because Havel is one of that endangered species, the pro-American European, he invites a genuinely diverse group of debaters. Because of his vast prestige his invitations are very rarely refused. Hence the former director of the...

In less than a month's time -- Sept. 16 and 17 -- the world's great and good will be gathering at the United Nations in Manhattan for what is officially called the High Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. This meeting, attended by the heads of government of most countries, including the major powers, has become a regular event in recent years, but one of ceremonial importance rather than of substance. This year it will be very significant indeed. For the plenary session will almost certainly pass an obscure document, now circulating in draft form among U.N. delegations,...

President Bush's broadcast tonight on the Iraq war will almost certainly prove to be a major turning point in his presidency. Either it will be the first of a line of broadcasts that track a gradual collapse in the will of the American people to win the war. Or it will be the broadcast that persuades the American people to fight the war to a finish in the realistic spirit that no war can be won without casualties and setbacks. In embarking on this persuasion, the president cannot afford false optimism. If people are persuaded by a well-argued case that...

London; Prague; Budapest – Central and Eastern Europe is a good vantage point from which to judge President Bush's recent visit to Moscow for the anniversary of VE Day — and the resulting debate over Yalta and the value of his democracy project. After all, Prague and Warsaw were the flashpoints that prepared and ignited World War II. Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939 because the German army had crossed the Polish borders the Allies had guaranteed six months earlier (in response to Hitler's seizure of the rump of Czechoslovakia). Poland was one of the four...

May 22, 2005 -- SOME years after the 1974 collapse of the Sunning dale Agreement — Northern Ireland's first experiment in cross- community, unionist-nationalist power-sharing — Willie Whitelaw, the Tory minister who had negotiated the deal, was reminiscing about it with T.E. Utley, the conservative author of "Lessons of Ulster," still one of the most perceptive books on the "troubles." Utley pointed out that this first power-sharing arrangement would probably have survived if it had not been accompanied by an All-Ireland Council that alienated almost all unionists. That had not only inspired a working-class Prod rebellion that killed Sunningdale but...

Vladimir Putin's sinister nostalgia John O'Sullivan National Post Wednesday, May 11, 2005 PRAGUE - Statesmen from all the over the world gathered in Moscow this week to mark the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. Two heads of state were noticeably absent, however, namely the presidents of Lithuania and Latvia. They declined invitations to attend because Vladimir Putin, Russia's President, refuses to apologize for the Soviet occupation and ethnic cleansing of their countries after 1945. Russia officially regards that as a liberation. It is greatly to the credit of U.S....

Americans are accustomed to thinking of Britain as their most reliable ally, always there in a crisis. Broadly speaking that has been true since 1941 — and mutual. With the exception of a few wobbles like Suez and Edward Heath's refusal of landing rights to U.S. planes supplying arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur war, the Brits have shared a common approach with the U.S. on defense policy, intelligence cooperation, nuclear weapons, trade liberalization, and much else. Margaret Thatcher's backing for Reagan's Libyan raid and Tony Blair's commitment of British forces to the Iraq war strengthened this habitual cooperation....

My first opinion piece for the Evening Standard appeared this morning. It's an attempt to give an overview of the election campaign — and the broad political environment that is shaping it. Once again, with the permission of the Evening Standard's editor, to whom I am grateful, I reprint it below. It has one or two minor amendments, explaining things to a non-British audience, but it is otherwise unchanged except for copyediting:“Henry Kissinger was once asked why academic disputes were so bitter and famously replied: ‘Because the rewards are so small.’ The narcissism of small differences in this election campaign...

Congress tried to use supeona power in an effort to save Terri Shiavo's live. They may have supeoned the wrong Shiavo. Michael Shiavo has been given a pass by the legally blind Judge Greer and the main-stream media outlets. If the Supreme Court does not make the effort to answer the many questions pertaining to this case as the previous courts have done, then congress and the President must step in just as they had to during the Slavery issue. I believe Congress must demand that Michael Shiavo be forced to answer at least these questions before he be given...

Those in a rush to kill Schiavo ignoring facts of case March 23, 2005 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN In November 1940, just one month before his assignment was due to end and 13 months before Hitler declared war on the United States, William L. Shirer, an American correspondent in Berlin, began to uncover disquieting evidence of one aspect of the Nazi government's then-unknown crimes against humanity. Oddly worded death notices began to appear in German provincial newspapers. Shirer already suspected that the Nazis were contemplating a policy of the euthanasia of the mentally ill and incapacitated. He looked into the matter...

In her two days of confirmation hearings before the Senate, secretary-designate Condoleezza Rice struck all the right notes — or at least all the expected ones. Though unyielding in her defense of Iraq policy and firm in asserting America's right to defend its vital interests in the absence of U.N. approval, she was friendly towards multilateralism, happy to cooperate with international bodies, and positively eager to mend fences with "Europe." "Europe," the U.N., and the U.S. foreign-policy establishment had been hoping for just such a balance. They were resigned to the likelihood of a tough stance on Iraq and the...

With the race tightening in the final stretch, Democrats have begun to believe — for the first time since the Boston convention — that Kerry really will win. Their spirits are rising, their "get out the illegals" drives in full swing, their lawyers primed and ready. But what if they lose again after all? Few Democrats have been prepared to discuss this awful prospect in public. That is partly for reasons of decorum and partly because Kerry may well win — and where would the pessimistic strategist be then? But there are occasional brave cases of men who will put...

My back was turned when, to my surprise, I heard my mother's voice on the evening news. I promptly assumed I must have been mistaken: Why would the evening news interview a 92-year-old retired lady from a Liverpool suburb? Of course, my assumption was correct: The network was interviewing an 86-year-old retired lady from a Liverpool suburb -- the widowed mother of Ken Bigley, the British hostage in Iraq. She was pleading for her son's life. Ken Bigley is one of more than 100 foreigners who have been taken hostage in Iraq since April. They include Turks, Canadians, Egyptians, Brits...

Why those swift boaters want Kerry to sink August 24, 2004 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN Vladimir Bukovsky, the great anti-Soviet dissident, once reproved me for quoting the old joke about the two main official Soviet newspapers: ''There's no truth in Pravda [Truth] and no news in Izvestia [News].'' He pointed out that you could learn a great deal of truthful news from both papers if you read them with proper care. They often denounced ''anti-Soviet lies.'' These lies had never been reported by them. Nor were they lies. And their exposure was the first that readers had been told of them....

Radical Islamism: 'bastard child' of Marxism John O'Sullivan National Post In his stirring speech to the British on Sunday justifying the Anglo-American bombing of Kabul and Kandahar, Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against any tendency to blame all Muslims for the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and the Taleban. "This is not a war with Islam," he declared. "It angers me, as it angers the vast majority of Muslims, to hear bin Laden and his associates described as Islamic terrorists. They are terrorists pure and simple. Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion, and the acts of these ...

Saturday, August 21, 2004 If the presidential election still looks open in America itself -- the polls show the two candidates continually overtaking each other -- Senator John Kerry is agreed to be the firm favourite in Europe. The Senator himself claims that European leaders quietly wish him luck, and according to the polls, European voters have a deep distaste for George W. Bush, too.But this European backing may not be altogether helpful to Kerry. When Adlai Stevenson was asked to explain his landslide defeat by Ike, he quipped: "I was running in the wrong continent."To judge from how...

Truth bound to come out on Kerry's military duty August 10, 2004 BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN When Sen. John Kerry saluted and announced that he was "reporting for duty" at last month's Democratic Convention, he made his military record a legitimate subject of political attack and journalistic investigation. That moment was the culmination of the powerful "Vietnam theme" that has distinguished the Kerry presidential campaign from almost all recent Democratic campaigns. He had turned around a failing primary season in Iowa with the filmed testimony of the sailor whose life he saved when he pulled him back into the swift boat...