Free Republic

Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word "quagmire" has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not, given the scars scoured into the national psyche by defeat in Southeast Asia. For all the differences between the two conflicts, and there are many, echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable. Today, for example, Defense Secretary Donald H....

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 10 - It wasn't supposed to be like this. Everything seemed to be in place for a powerful run by Senator John Kerry in Ohio in the stretch drive after Labor Day. Al Gore lost the state by 175,000 votes in 2000, despite having pulled all his advertising early in October. Ohio has shed 250,000 jobs since George W. Bush became president. Rocked by scandals and an unpopular tax increase, the statehouse Republicans, from Gov. Bob Taft down the line, have been in unaccustomed disarray for weeks. At the end of last month, the Census Bureau reported...

WASHINGTON, April 8 — At least for the moment, the political planets seem to be sliding into alignment for President Bush, and he looked and sounded as if he knew it today when he appeared in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for a news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Mr. Bush was self-assured, blunt-spoken and aggressive. For once, the English language seemed his ally rather than his worst enemy. He betrayed not the slightest doubt about the decisions he has made on the war in Iraq so far or the ones he faces. "I hear a lot of talk...

The collapse of government authority in Baghdad, dramatized by the toppling of a colossal statue of President Saddam Hussein, constitutes the high-water mark for a new American determination to use the nation's military might to project its power around the world. The resurgence began in 1981 with the Reagan administration, which took office with the humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis looming large in the national psyche. That had come to symbolize President Jimmy Carter's less robust approach to foreign affairs, and Ronald Reagan campaigned against him on promises to rebuild the military and pursue aggressive policies. Since then,...