In my work as a journalist, I try to personalize what is otherwise an ‘issue’ and apply universal principles of human rights to policies that impact human lives. That’s the case for many national and global news stories, breaking and current or ongoing. When President Donald Trump issued the Executive Order on immigration and refugees […]
Unlike our leaders, ISIS doesn’t confuse victory and defeat.
The rhetoric of President Obama is hollow on this issue.
The left has a long history of marrying incompetence and malice.
Some thoughts on U.S. policy toward Syria on the occasion of the just-ended “Friends of Syria” meeting in Tunisia: Since the end of the cold war, many Americans have a sense of being so strong, they don’t need to think about their own security but can afford to focus on the immediate humanitarian concerns of […]
From Damascus to Tehran, a test for world leadership is underway. Daily, the Syrian military—well-armed, highly trained thugs whose current mission is to keep dictator Bashar Assad in power—kills up to 200 or more of its own citizens. Protests from Washington, the withdrawal of the U.S. ambassador, and an effort to condemn Syria in the […]
As active U.S. military involvement in Iraq draws to a close, what does the moral scorecard on this adventure look like from an American point of view? Granted that a comprehensive weighing of results will only be possible some years from now, at the moment the picture is something like this. In a perverse way, […]
Suddenly, it seems, President Obama is all about the Pacific. As he put it at a weekend summit of the region’s leaders in Hawaii, “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay.” Unfortunately, thus far in his presidency, Mr. Obama has caused many of his guests to see America as […]
For some time, the outlines of an Obama Doctrine have been apparent. It can be summarized in nine damning words: Embolden our enemies. Undermine our friends. Diminish our country. These days, it is hard to avoid proof that these outcomes are not inadvertent, or attributable to sheer and sustained incompetence. Rather, they are a product […]
One of the problems with Obama’s Middle East speech was that parts of it were so deliberately balanced — so meant to appease all sides — that they go nowhere. For example, look at the portions where he discusses democracy in the Middle East versus the alternative — Islamist rule, which he does not name. […]
President Obama’s recent explanation for militarily engaging Libya is yet another example of how U.S. leaders increasingly rationalize their policies via sentimental and idealistic platitudes, rather than reality or the long view—or just plain common sense. In a speech replete with moralizing intonations, Obama did manage to evoke U.S. “interests”—six times—though he never explained what […]
The Libya situation is complicated. I envy no president stuck with the task. Among the complexities, the most daunting unknown is what’s behind the opposition. We would all like to see Moammar Gaddafi tossed to the ash-heap of history, but the rub is who, or what, would replace him. What a tragedy it would be […]
After decades of stasis, the Middle East is in uproar. With too much going on to focus on a single place, here’s a review of developments in four key countries. Libya: With most Americans not quite realizing it, their government haphazardly went to war on Mar. 19 versus Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya. Hostilities were barely acknowledged, […]
How curious. At the very moment that the threat posed to U.S. interests by the toxic Islamist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming ever more palpable, a top Senate Democrat seems determined to suppress Americans’ understanding of that menace. Even the New York Times is now acknowledging the obvious: the principal beneficiary of […]
As with Egypt, American sympathies instinctively side with Libya’s oppositional forces as they seek to overthrow the tyrant Qaddafi—and rightfully so. But where U.S. foreign policy is concerned, prudence is in order. This is especially the case considering that the Obama administration has evinced inconsistency, if not incoherence, regarding the Middle East: vowing not to […]
The official hymn of the U.S. Marine Corps famously begins with “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” The reference to Tripoli alludes to the Battle of Derna of 1805, the first overseas land combat fought by U.S. troops and […]
