Free Republic

Today, I want to speak plainly for myself as a veteran and a soldier who has seen firsthand the high cost of war. As someone who serves under President Trump's leadership, I have experienced the promise of peace... The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror and something that has held us back for too long. For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building. It was a one-size-fits-all approach of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervening...

Most voters think President Trump made the wrong decision to go to war with Iran, a New York Times/Siena poll found, leaving the Republican Party on rocky political footing heading into the midterm elections as his approval rating sinks and economic concerns rise.Majorities of voters said that the war was not worth the costs and held deeply pessimistic views about the economy.Mr. Trump’s approval rating — a key historical predictor of how a president’s party will fare in an election — has sunk to a second-term low in Times/Siena polls of 37 percent amid the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict....

A federal judge on Friday barred President Donald Trump from adding his name to that of the Kennedy Center. Judge Christopher Cooper also temporarily blocked the Washington, D.C., cultural landmark from being closed for two years for renovations. The Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees in December voted to rename the institution the “Trump Kennedy Center,” 10 months after Trump removed several trustees from the board and appointed himself as a trustee. “The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial...

Iran has damaged 20 US military sites since the start of the war, satellite images and videos analysed by BBC Verify show, suggesting the attacks are more extensive than publicly acknowledged. Iran has targeted key facilities across eight countries in the Middle East since the end of February, causing millions of dollars of damage to state-of the-art air defence systems, refuelling aircraft and radars. Tehran has targeted both US bases and shared military facilities in retaliation to the US-Israeli strikes across Iran and Lebanon over the past three months. The Pentagon says it has hit more than 13,000 targets in...

The world's diplomatic attention is fixed on Pakistan, on ceasefire memoranda, on whether Mojtaba Khamenei will emerge from hiding long enough to initial a document. In that distraction, Israel has done something strategically significant in Lebanon that has received almost no serious analysis (but was highlighted on Arutz Sheva). It has crossed the Litani River. Israeli forces have advanced beyond the Litani, a line that for decades functioned as an unofficial boundary in southern Lebanon. Troops are now pushing northward toward the Zahrani River, roughly ten kilometers away. The IDF has declared the entire area between the two rivers an...