by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Image credit:Barbara Kelley “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals.” —Barack Obama, April 2016 The media recently went ballistic over President Trump’s impromptu promises of “fire and fury” in reply to the latest North Korean threats—and even more so when he later doubled down under …
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas As missiles fall on Syria in retaliation for Bashar Assad’s medieval use of chemical weapons—and as voices call for the use of some American ground troops to expedite his removal—we might reflect upon American military interventions in the post-Vietnam era. America’s major interventions include Iraq in 1991, the …
What do conservatives do when there is no conservative candidate? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online I watched Donald Trump serially blast apart all my preferred candidates — Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz — as if for sport they were sent up in succession as clay pigeons. And now the November …
Donald Trump’s account of the Iraq War is all wrong. Why aren’t his Republican opponents saying so? Donald Trump constantly brings up Iraq to remind voters that Jeb Bush supported his brother’s war, while Trump, alone of the Republican candidates, supposedly opposed it well before it started. That is a flat-out lie. There is no …
By Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Nations in the Middle East that once aligned with America are now indifferent. Interests who opposed the United States grow defiant. Fence-sitting countries that calibrated their policies to the perception of U.S. strength are leaning toward our adversaries. Chaos is the result. The recent splashdown in the Straits …
Public opinion veers with every change in current conditions in Iraq. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Probable Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush got himself into trouble by sort of, sort of not, answering the question whether he would have supported going into Iraq in 2003 — had he known then what we know …
Obama and European leaders are repeating the mistakes of their 1930s predecessors. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it? The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise …
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media After six years, it is no surprise that the Obama administration does not see the Taliban as “terrorists” or that it will not associate “violent extremism” with radical Islam or just Islam. After all, when Maj. Hasan murdered U.S. soldiers it was nothing more than “workplace violence,” as …
Democrats are hypocritically silent about Obama’s policy of targeted assassinations. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online There are lots of hypocrisies surrounding the recently released executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. But they pale in comparison to the current Democratic silence about President Barack …
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The news that President Obama has sent a secret letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei––apparently promising concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for help in defeating ISIS–– is a depressing reminder of how after nearly 40 years our leaders have not understood the Iranian Revolution. During the …