Melancholy Lessons from Iraq

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via Wikicommons
Photo via Wikicommons

The unfolding collapse of Iraq’s government before the legions of al Qaeda jihadists is the capstone of Barack Obama’s incompetent and politicized foreign policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), armed with plundered American weapons and flush with stolen money, is consolidating a Sunni terrorist state in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, replete with mass executions, sharia law, and the beheading of violators. With revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling the Shia faithful to arms, a vicious civil war between Shia and Sunnis will likely intensify in the coming days. But whoever wins, the fallout for our security will be disastrous – a Shiite “crescent” from Aleppo to Mosul allied with Iran, which looks ever more likely to be nuclear armed, and a safe haven for terrorist training camps to prepare “martyrs” for attacks against the West. And our allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all will to various degrees find their own security and interests impacted by this administration’s criminal foreign policy negligence.

Continue reading “Melancholy Lessons from Iraq”

America’s Middle East Dilemma

Toppling tyrants is ineffective in the long term without years of unpopular occupation.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

War Was Interested in Obama

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia 

obama_trotsky_6-15-14-1
Photo by EdDriscoll.com via PJMedia

Leon Trotsky probably did not quite write the legendary aphorism that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” But whoever did, you get the point that no nation can always pick and choose when it wishes to be left alone.

Barack Obama, however, never quite realized that truth, and so just declared [1] that “the world is less violent than it has ever been.” He must have meant less violent in the sense that the bad guys are winning and as they do, the violence wanes — sort of like Europe around March 1941, when all was relatively quiet under the new continental Reich.

Continue reading “War Was Interested in Obama”

Obama Quits Afghanistan

Bringing Bergdahl home was useful for closing Gitmo and winding down the war.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

The Fruit of Obama’s Abandonment of Iraq

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

Anbar province, the region of Iraq that 1,300 American soldiers died pacifying, is at risk of being taken over by al Qaeda jihadists and their affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Continue reading “The Fruit of Obama’s Abandonment of Iraq”

Bad Reasons for Bombing Syria

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

President Obama Saturday laid out the case for a military strike on Syria. He evoked the same rationales Secretary of State Kerry and others, including some conservatives, have been articulating for the last week. We’ve heard of “international norms,” “common understandings of decency,” the “international community” that codified a “normal prohibition against chemical weapons” in the Chemical Weapons Convention, the need to act to deter other rogue states like Iran, and the imperative to punish “crimes against humanity.” Continue reading “Bad Reasons for Bombing Syria”

The President’s Boilerplate Address to Berliners

by Victor Davis Hanson

NRO’s The Corner

Aside from the usual Obama “hope and change/yes we can” boilerplate platitudes, there were also the same old disturbing and disingenuous statements in his Berlin speech. Continue reading “The President’s Boilerplate Address to Berliners”

Why Did We Invade Iraq?

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the back-and-forth recriminations continue, but in all the “not me” defenses, we have forgotten, over the ensuing decade, the climate of 2003 and why we invaded in the first place. The war was predicated on six suppositions. Continue reading “Why Did We Invade Iraq?”

Obama Derangement Syndrome?

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

I’d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you’ve lost your mind. — John Edwards

When does the legitimate “I oppose Obama” descend into the illegitimate “I hate Obama”? Continue reading “Obama Derangement Syndrome?”

The Great Madness of 2004-10

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

The First Symptoms of Hatred — 2004 to 2008

For about seven years the nation lost its collective mind — and was only partially coming-to in November 2010. Continue reading “The Great Madness of 2004-10”