Free Republic

As we’ve seen in Iraq, premodern enemies have become more effective in insurgencies against postmodern societies. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON tells why. Image credit: Photo by flickr user pingnews.com.Is it five or ten—or fifteen—years that are necessary to win wars of counterinsurgency such as Iraq? By now, Americans are well acquainted with such warnings that patience—along with political and economic reforms, not just arms—defeats guerrillas.In these messy fights, Western nations can’t, for both practical and moral reasons, use the full advantages of overwhelming arms against terrorists that hide among civilians. Such conflicts are fought far from home for perceived long-term...

Despite bin Laden’s bragging, America remains the big stumbling block, the stronger horse We’ve been arguing over al Qaeda’s aims since before 9/11. Some take Osama bin Laden’s specific complaints seriously. But we shouldn’t, as we learned this month from his latest rambling communiqué, which faulted America for seemingly everything — global warming, high interest rates, shaky home mortgages, and free-market democratic capitalism itself. Remember that back in the 1990s, he declared war on America for three other reasons: We had troops in Saudi Arabia. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq. And America supported Israel. Now it...

Something quite strange is happening: Despite all the bad news about the Middle East from the European and American media, things actually seem to be improving. Iraq is getting better, and the opposition to the war is, in the current campaign cycle, is starting to shift away from the “war is lost” to something more like “stabilizing the government over time would not be worth the cumulative cost in American lives and treasure.” All sober Democrats realize not only that the Moveon.org ad was a political disaster, but more importantly, that the Moveon.org/Michael Moore/Cindy Sheehan/Hollywood ticking bombs actually scare...

This week the American public will surely be focused on Iraq, as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker present their reports to Congress. Petraeus and Crocker undoubtedly will speak of the striking military success of the surge strategy, while Democrats will try to focus on the failure of Iraqi politicians to reach agreement on major issues. But Iraq is not the only challenge America will face in the coming years. Islamist terrorists will continue to try to attack the U.S. and undermine, if not destroy, our free society. Americans, for all the media's concentration on Iraq, seem aware of...

On that day, we watched tape of the doomed in suits diving head first from the burning floors, hoping to splatter on roofs rather than crush and kill incoming firefighters — as some tragically did. I remember reading about the last hours in the stairwell of the Cassandra FBI agent John O’Neill, who chose to go back into the inferno. His year-long, near solitary race to save us against the evil of the al Qaeda planners Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh came to an end that day — and with it O’Neill himself. And I remember reading the accounts...

“You don’t roll out a new product in August,” said President Bush’s aide, Andrew Card, apropos Iraq in the summer of 2002. But in this seventh September of a no longer new war a somewhat battered product is in need of a rebranding. It was launched in the days after 9/11 as a “war on terror,” an artful evasion deemed necessary on the grounds that a war on any enemy beginning with “Islamist,” “Islamo-,” or “Islamic” might give the impression we had some, ah, issues with Islam itself and only complicate things further with various “friends” like Mubarak and the...

Some set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on. I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises (even...

"Mess," "fiasco," "disaster," "blunder," and "catastrophe." Fill in the blanks with almost any stock noun of gloom these days when speaking about Iraq. For finger-in-the-wind politicians, writing off Iraq is mere throat-clearing before moving on to any discussion of immigration reform or taxes. For ahead-of-the-curve pundits, starting out with “The failure in Iraq” is like opening their browser before daily pontificating. No need of explanation or empiricism, one just gets things out of the way at the very beginning with our new postmodern ritual. Usually the more vehemently one used to clamor for the idea of removing Saddam Hussein —...

At 91, Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Middle Eastern Studies who for more than half a century has been considered one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, is the author of more than two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe and is the subject of envy because of his remarkably lucid mind and memory. Both qualities were on display on Wednesday evening, May 2, 2007 when he addressed an overflow audience in the ballroom of the Loew’s Philadelphia...

Scholars and writers gathered at Queens College the past two days to discuss threats to Israel and the West under the conference title: "Is it 1938 Again?" The participants, representing the pro- Israel center left and center right positions, expressed vigorous differences. The editor-at-large of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, spoke of a World War IV against Islamofascism and favored American military action against Iran's nuclear capability. A professor at Hebrew University, Moshe Halbertal, told The New York Sun that Mr. Podhoretz's target was too broad, saying there should be a more "calibrated definition" of specific targets to avoid increasing jihadism. In...

It is best if an enemy nation comes and surrenders of its own accord. —Du You (735-812) To the student of counterinsurgency warfare, the war in Iraq has reached a critical but dismally familiar stage.On the one hand, events in that country have taken a more hopeful direction in recent months. Operations in the city of Najaf in January presaged a more effective burden-sharing between American and Iraqi troops than in the past. The opening moves of the so-called “surge” in Baghdad, involving increased American patrols and the steady addition of more than 21,000 ground troops, have begun to sweep...

Machiavelli could offer President Bush what he needs most at this pivotal juncture: a philosophical blueprint for confronting the Iranian nuclear threat and successfully prosecuting the broader war against radical Islam. A leading figure of the Renaissance, Niccolo Machiavelli served as a diplomat and militia commander for the short-lived Florentine Republic of the early sixteenth century. His seminal experiences in office, coupled with a remarkably deep reading of history, led Machiavelli to the pioneering political philosophy which he would outline in The Prince and elaborate upon in Discourses on Livy. Like all great books, The Prince transcends the time for...

Hillary Clinton recently said: "If I had been president in 2002, I would not have started this war." "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will." Both of these certitudes ignore the context and the realities. This may be because the Democrats by and large are in denial or believe that America is to blame for terrorism. If only America would stop oppressing the Arabs or stop favouring Israel, terrorism would greatly diminish. Even if they are prepared to accept that we are in World War IV with Islamists, staying engaged in Iraq...

An important and interesting report by an independent think-tank released in Britain Monday has found that young Muslims are heading toward religious extremism. This is not just a warning bell, it is a thunderous one, but Europeans are unable to take action lest they be accused of not being liberal. On the contrary, the main lessons drawn from the British research is one of self–flagellation, with Brits asking what they did wrong and why they had discriminated against the Muslim community. The research was based, among other things, on a survey conducted among the Muslim population that showed 37 percent...

President Bush is a genuinely awful speaker. Wouldn't it be a shame if we lost a war for the survival of western civilization because we had a President who reads his speeches in a dispassionate drone? It's been interesting to watch the media respond to the speech. Not that many months ago, the media was reporting on the speeches of Democrats and other critics of the war, talking about how Bush's plan in Iraq had failed because we always needed "more boots on the ground." None of them -- not even the generals who hated defense secretary Rumsfeld with such...

A third World War is already underway between Islamic militancy and the West but most people do not realize it, the former head of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad said in an interview published Saturday in Portugal. ‘We are in the midst of a third World War,’ former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso. ‘The world does not understand. A person walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Buenos Aires and doesn’t get the sense that there is a war going on,’ said Halevy who headed Mossad between 1998 and 2003. ‘During World War I and II...

Charles Krauthammer writes an internationally syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group. He is also a monthly essayist for Time magazine, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, and a weekly panelist on Inside Washington. He was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, and Financial Times recently named him America’s most influential commentator. This enote is based on his keynote address at FPRI’s November 14, 2006, annual dinner, at which Dr. Krauthammer was the second recipient of FPRI’s Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service. We are now in a period of confusion...

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed." She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust. Later, as a teenager in...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - Five members of a family accused of scheming to send sensitive information about Navy warships to China were indicted Wednesday on new conspiracy charges, prosecutors said. The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury, added counts of conspiracy to export U.S. defense articles to China, possession of property in aid of a foreign government and making false statements to federal investigators to existing charges. Named in the supplemental indictment were Chi Mak, a U.S. citizen who worked for Anaheim defense contractor Power Paragon; his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu; his brother, Tai Mak; Tai Mak's wife,...

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, and we review the half a decade of war on terror since, the central question that comes to the minds of both experts and policymakers is this – who is winning the war and where are we in its prosecution? And to refine, is al Qaeda on the retreat, is Afghanistan working, is Iraq surviving the challenge, and is Lebanon’s Cedars Revolution on the rise or has it been defeated? Is Hezbollah’s war changing the U.S. strategy regarding Iran and Israel? And finally, is the U.S. homeland secure,...