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 …
Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here. by Victor Davis Hanson Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. …
by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Content Agency What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs? Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity? Or, if global warming were the fault …
With his presidency in tailspin, Carter radically changed course. Will Obama do the same? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online By the beginning of 1980, Jimmy Carter was in big trouble. Almost everything he had said or done in foreign policy over the prior three years had failed — and he was running for …
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Recent polls suggest Barack Obama has become a turn-off. Why? In part, all presidents wear on Americans. Their presence has become as ubiquitous in our lives as the busts of the emperor Augustus dotting the Mediterranean world. So who wouldn’t annoy after speaking and appearing on our screens 24/7 …
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Most two-term presidents leave some sort of legacy. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. George W. Bush prevented another 9/11, and constructed an anti-terrorism protocol that even his critical successor embraced and often expanded. Even our one-term presidents have achieved something. JFK got Soviet missiles out of Cuba. LBJ …
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner At first glance, the Republicans seemed to be losing the so-called shut-down impasse, inasmuch as Obamacare, as the president termed it, was “settled law” and the Republicans did not have the congressional clout to overturn it. No one likes, after all, to be turned away from Yosemite on …
From energy to foreign policy to the presidency itself, Obama’s agenda rolls along. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” — Barack Obama, October 30, 2008 “We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our …
Our Hamlet-in-cheif wanted simultaneously to act and not act. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Syrian fiasco arose from two mutually contradictory desires. Barack Obama sincerely wanted Bashar Assad to stop killing his own people. Barack Obama also really was not willing to use force to ensure that Assad would stop killing his …