by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
In Egypt the Obama administration has managed to alienate the military, secular constitutionalists, the Islamists, and the proverbial street all at once. How and why? Continue reading “Obama’s Middle East Mess”
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
There are many ways to learn about the bleaker aspects of human nature. One would be to run a pizza shop, or regularly to have to clean a public restroom. Perhaps giving close attention to the text of Thucydides might give a more abstract lesson. Also, the Old and New Testaments offer plenty of examples of the fallen state of man. Continue reading “Obama Bets Against Human Nature — and Usually Loses”
by Raymond Ibrahim // PJ Media
In the eyes of tens of millions of Egyptians, Senators John McCain’s and Lindsey Graham’s recent words and deeds in Egypt—which have the “blessing” of President Obama—have unequivocally proven that U.S. leadership is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Continue reading “Egyptians Enraged by U.S. Outreach to Muslim Brotherhood”
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com
With the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, the homes and churches of Egypt’s Christians are seeing an unprecedented rise in anti-Christian graffiti. The following are some of the pictures that were recently disseminated, captioned with translation of graffiti and location information. The name of Coptic Pope Tawadros especially appears repeatedly, and is a reminder of the jihad unleashed on Egypt’s Christians, for daring to behave like free men and women by supporting the popular June 30 Revolution against the tyrannical Brotherhood. Continue reading “Walls of Hate: Anti-Christian Graffiti Vandalizes Egypt”
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
In the globally connected and affluent world of the 21st century, we thankfully have evolved a long way from the elemental poverty, hunger, and ethnic, religious, and racial hatred that were mostly the norm of the world until the last century.
Yet who would know of such progress — and the great sacrifices made to achieve it — from the howls of our postmodern oppressed? In fact, the better life has become, the more victimized modern affluent Westerners seem to act. Continue reading “Our Postmodern Angst”
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
IRS?
A system of voluntary tax compliance cannot survive a dishonest IRS. Lois Lerner and company have virtually ruined the agency. For the foreseeable future, each time an American receives a tax query, he will wonder to what degree his politics ensures enhanced or reduced scrutiny — or whether his name as a donor, activist, or partisan has put him on a watch list. Continue reading “The Mother of All Scandals”
by Raymond Ibrahim // Gatestone Institute
Days ago, al-Qaeda’s Egyptian leader, Ayman Zawahiri, portrayed the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood as a “Crusader” campaign led by Coptic Pope Tawadros II who, according to Zawahiri and other terrorists, is trying to create a Coptic state in Egypt.
Since then, not only are Egypt’s Christians and churches now being attacked in ways unprecedented in the modern era, but new reports indicate that al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised on some of them, specifically St. George Church in Sohag. Considering that it was al-Qaeda linked terrorists who initiated one of the bloodiest church attacks in recent history, the 2010 Baghdad church attack where nearly 60 Christians were slaughtered (click here for graphic images), that al-Qaeda is singling out Egypt’s Christians bodes ill. Continue reading “Al Qaeda Flag Flies High Above Christian Churches”
by Raymond Ibrahim // FrontPage Magazine
With the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al-Qaeda has been vindicated and the terror-jihad exonerated, in the opinion of many Islamists, that is. Continue reading “The Return of Al Qaeda and Jihad”
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner
Barack Obama’s cancellation of his Russian visit is the normal sort of diplomat payback for insult and injury — in this case the asylum offered Edward Snowden in the face of administration pleas to send him home for punishment. But with Obama, as with everything with Obama, the about-
face invokes irony, hypocrisy, and paradox, because it is just the sort of normal Neanderthal tit-for-tat that was not supposed to happen under an Obama pathbreaking foreign policy. Continue reading “Putinology”
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
We’ve all run across the pill bug in our gardens. At the first sign of danger, the tiny paranoid crustacean suddenly turns into a ball — in hopes the danger will have passed when he unrolls.
That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration.
On August 4, U.S. embassies across the Middle East simply closed on the basis of intelligence reports of planned al-Qaeda violence. The shutdown of 21 diplomatic facilities was the most extensive in recent American history.
