Free Republic

Professor John Lewis Gaddis’ recent provocative analysis of the origins of “unilateralism” in American foreign policy highlights the pivotal role of John Quincy Adams.... (snip) John Quincy Adams possessed a remarkably clear, uncompromised understanding of the permanent Islamic institutions of jihad war and dhimmitude. Regarding jihad, Adams states in his essay series, “…he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God.” ... (snip) (Adams) Remonstrating Against the Moral Equivalence of Britain and...

George W. Bush has made as bold a transformation in American foreign policy as John Quincy Adams and Franklin D. Roosevelt did in their times. That is the thesis of Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis's just-published Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. Each leader responded to an attack on American soil with an utterly changed foreign policy, which in the first two cases remained operative for decades. After the British attacked Washington in 1814, Adams as secretary of state built a foreign policy based on pre-emption (against failing colonial powers and adjacent Indians), unilateralism (no foreign alliances), and hegemony (in...