The Islamist Pull

by Victor Davis Hanson

NRO’s The Corner

Although information is still too sketchy to draw any comprehensive conclusions (other than that the Boston killings are not, as recently suggested, fall out from sequestration, the NRA, lack of gun control, climate change, right-wing tea-party zealots, etc.), there emerges a familiar profile to the suspects that we have seen before.  Continue reading “The Islamist Pull”

Iraq–Agony, Ordeal, and Recovery

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

I. The Case for Invasion

Wise

The Bush administration built a broad domestic coalition and an adequate foreign alliance (more inclusive than the UN-sanctioned effort against North Korea in 1950). Continue reading “Iraq–Agony, Ordeal, and Recovery”

Obama’s Hypocritic Oath

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Barack Obama has a habit of identifying a supposed crisis in collective morality, damning straw men “them” who engage in such ethical lapses, soaring with rhetorical bromides — and then, to national quiet, doing more or less the exact things he once swore were ruining the country. Continue reading “Obama’s Hypocritic Oath”

The New Age of Falsity

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

We live in an age of falsity, in which words have lost their meanings and concepts are reinvented as the situation demands. The United States is in a jobless recovery — even if that phrase largely disappeared from the American lexicon about 2004. Good news somehow must follow from a rising unemployment rate, which itself underrepresents the actual percentage of Americans long out of work. Continue reading “The New Age of Falsity”

Oh What a Tangled Web

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Supporters of President Obama have dubbed those who question administration statements about Libya as either partisans or conspiracy theorists, on the premise that the administration had no reason to dissimulate. But in fact, it had plenty of political reasons not to be candid, as the following questions make clear. Continue reading “Oh What a Tangled Web”

The Wages of Libya

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

We have had ambassadors murdered abroad before, but we have never seen anything quite like the tragic fate of Chris Stevens. Amid all the controversy over Libya, we have lost sight of the human — and often horrific — story of Benghazi: a US ambassador attacked, cut off and killed alone, after being abused by frenzied terrorists, and a Continue reading “The Wages of Libya”

Do We Believe Anymore?

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

Our Age of Disbelief

We live in an age of disbelief, in which citizens increasingly do not believe what their government says or, for that matter, what is accepted as true by popular culture. Continue reading “Do We Believe Anymore?”

The Stakes in Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate

by Bruce Thornton

FrontPage Magazine

Foreign policy, the topic of tonight’s debate, was suddenly thrust into the voters’ consciousness by the murder of 4 Americans, including our ambassador, in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11. Intensifying the fallout of this event has been the Obama administration’s incoherent, clumsy, duplicitous, and rapidly unraveling attempt to blame the terrorist murders on a YouTube movie trailer lampooning Mohammed, in order to downplay the strength of the heavily armed jihadist outfits, some connected to al Qaeda, now swarming in Libya as a result of our overthrow of Muammar Gadhafi. Continue reading “The Stakes in Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate”

The Ever-Stranger Case of a Murdered US Ambassador

by Victor Davis Hanson

NRO’s The Corner

In the past — in Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc. — the murder of an American ambassador sparked immediate debates over security lapses, but in the Libyan case the media seems to be doing its best not to investigate the circumstances around the murders. Continue reading “The Ever-Stranger Case of a Murdered US Ambassador”

Obama’s Middle East Delusions

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

The Premodern Middle East and Postmodern West Don’t Mix, Mr. President

Globalization certainly did not bring the premodern world of the Middle East closer together with the postmodern West — despite Barack Obama’s 2007 narcissistic vows that his own intellect and background could bridge such a gap. Continue reading “Obama’s Middle East Delusions”