Melancholy Lessons from Iraq
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 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 […]
The Federal Octopus
Federal agencies now exist not for the public good but for their employees’ benefit and Obama’s agenda. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online When IRS Commissioner John Koskinen arrogantly told Congress that he had no apologies for an agency that has targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny, had a top-ranking bureaucrat take the Fifth Amendment, […]
The Decline of Western Civilization in a Few Paragraphs
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Every once in a while, a criminal case — consider the O.J. trial — reflects the immoral course of our current trajectory. Here is an ongoing local criminal case that pretty much sums up what is happening to our culture, laws, and society at large. Perla Ibeth Vazquez, 27, […]
Immigration and America’s Failure of Nerve
by Bruce Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The number of unaccompanied children from Central America into the U.S. has reached 47,000 since October, and may hit 90,000 by the end of this year. The official story is that they are fleeing drug-gang mayhem and political violence in their home countries, and so are refugees and asylum-seekers. But the […]
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 Two and a half years ago, the U.S. pulled every soldier out of a mostly quiet Iraq. In the void thus created, formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists calling themselves “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” […]
Lots of Recent Man-Caused Disasters
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Even the administration is now considering some sort of overseas contingency operation to cope with an outbreak of workplace violence worldwide. Each morning it seems we read that Islamic killers of Boko Haram have kidnapped or slaughtered more children. Israel alleges Hamas affiliates are behind the kidnapping […]
The New Children’s Crusade
Almost everything we are told about illegal immigration is both a lie and amoral. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Sometime around 1212, mystics in Europe cooked up the idea that kids could part the seas, reach the Holy Land, reclaim Jerusalem, and convert the infidel Muslims. Thousands of children in Northern Europe […]
Book Review: A Genius for Destructive Change
by Terry Scambray // New Oxford Review, May 2014 Darwin: Portrait of a Genius. By Paul Johnson Viking. 176 pages. $25.95. It is a measure of the cultural contamination of materialism, given great impetus by Charles Darwin, that even a giant like Paul Johnson can be infected and attenuated by it. For Johnson is one of […]
War Was Interested in Obama
by Victor Davis Hanson // 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, […]
Obama Quits Afghanistan
Bringing Bergdahl home was useful for closing Gitmo and winding down the war. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Soon we shall get to the bottom of the swap of five Taliban kingpins from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for one Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. In time we will learn whether Bergdahl really served with […]
Illegal Immigration and Eric Cantor
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Eric Cantor’s luck ran out, when his long insistence of pushing immigration-reform legislation finally coincided with a massive and sudden rush of thousands to the U.S. border from Central America. That lining up of the planets explains why a good but obscure candidate beat a supposedly invincible […]
Was Benghazi a Scandal?
Scandals — or fundamental transformations? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online If the CIA wanted to smuggle guns to Syria or interrogate al-Qaeda suspects in Benghazi, that was its business, not necessarily the administration’s. To the degree Obama was involved in overseeing events in Libya, his involvement was most likely limited to a vague […]
Fictions as Truth
For the Obama administration narrative to be accurate about the swap of five Taliban/al-Qaeda-related kingpins for Sgt. Bergdahl, we are asked to believe the following: by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media For the Obama administration narrative to be accurate about the swap of five Taliban/al-Qaeda-related kingpins for Sgt. Bergdahl, we are asked to believe […]
The Progressive Gitmo Myth
by Bruce Thornton// FrontPage Magazine The swap of probable deserter Bowe Bergdahl for 5 “high-risk” Guantánamo detainees is about more than political public relations. By releasing some of the worst murderers, this deal prepares the ground for Obama’s long-term goal of shutting down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and releasing the remaining detainees. According to […]
Airlifts to D.C.?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online (The Corner) Concerning the latest and deliberate lack of border enforcement, all one can say is that it is very unlikely that impoverished Mexican nationals, many of them school-age children sent across the border ahead of their parents in search of American residency, will not be airlifted to […]
The Troubling Plight of the Modern University
Today’s campus is more reactionary than the objects of its frequent vituperation. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. But university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged […]
Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas & the Bergdahl Swap
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine President Obama’s exchange of 5 high-ranking Taliban murderers for a soldier who possibly was a deserter and collaborator encapsulates everything that is wrong with this administration’s foreign policy. The serial failures of the past 5 years reflect a toxic brew of partisan politics and naïve ideology.
Our Future Is 1979
Obama’s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The final acts of the Obama foreign policy will play out in the next two years. Unfortunately, bad things happen when the world concludes that the American president has become weakened, distracted, or diffident about foreign policy.
The Bergdahl Release Is Just the Beginning
by Victor Davis Hanson // The Corner (National Review Online) There has been a lot to think about during these years of Obama’s foreign policy. But the problem is not just the existential issues, from reset to Benghazi, but also the less heralded developments, such as young non-high-school graduate Edward Snowden’s trotting off with the […]
The New Regressives
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Today’s liberalism is about as liberal as the Hellenistic world was Hellenic — a glossy veneer over a rotten core. In the old days, liberalism was about the means to an end, not the end itself. Since the days of Socrates, liberalism enshrined free inquiry, guided by inductive […]