Free Republic

Expanding Afghan War Awaits New President An expanded U.S. military involvement awaits a new U.S. president in Afghanistan where the unfinished business of September 11 has flared over the past three years into a major insurgency. A raft of assessments and reviews now underway in Washington point to a fundamental rethinking of the Afghan war. But whoever is elected Tuesday will face choices on the size of the military buildup, how to strengthen the central government, how far to go in dealing with insurgent sanctuaries across the border, how to help stabilize Pakistan, and whether and how to reconcile...

Allowing the fanatics who've ravaged Islam (and who've slaughtered countless Muslims) to speak for themselves, author Laurent Murawiec quotes the late Ayatollah Khomeini: "Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war . . . I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim . . . A religion without war is a crippled religion. It is war that purifies the earth."A notorious ally of Khomeini's, Ayatollah Khalkali, put it even more bluntly: "Those who are against killing have no place in Islam." Those are but two of the hundreds of chilling citations in "The...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Laurent Murawiec, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of the new book Pandora’s Boxes, The Mind of Jihad, vol. 2, the sequel to The Mind of Jihad, vol I. FP: Laurent Murawiec, welcome to Frontpage Interview.Murawiec: Hello Jamie, I always enjoy returning to Frontpage.FP: Let’s first sum up the Mind of Jihad, vol. 1. Can you talk a bit about the bloodlust characteristics of the jihadis?  Murawiec: When you look at a political movement, a terror movement, you look at what is similar, what is different, in order to understand what...