by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
President Obama has announced that America would stop attacking Col. Muammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya. He instead hopes that others can force out Gadhafi — or that the dictator will leave through economic and diplomatic pressure. Continue reading “Did We Give Up on Libya?”
by Bruce S. Thornton
Advancing a Free Society
Citizen control of the military is one of the most important foundations of political freedom. Rather than an instrument of a powerful autocrat or king, the army in a republic serves the collective interests, security, and policies of the state as determined by the citizens through the constitutional processes of deliberation and election. Continue reading “Memo to the General: Free Speech Doesn’t Kill People, Jihadists Kill People”
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
President Obama just gave a weird speech. Part George W. Bush, part trademark Obama — filled with his characteristic split-the-difference, straw-man (“some say, others say”), false-choice tropes. Continue reading “Obama Still Murky on Libya”
by Bruce S. Thornton
Advancing a Free Society
The current military intervention in Libya by the West has been marketed with the claim that its purpose, as French President Sarkozy put it, is “to protect the civilian population from the murderous madness of a regime that has forfeited all claim to legitimacy.” Behind this humanitarian idealism, however, lurk a host of questions and dangers, reflecting wishful thinking rather than a prudent foreign policy. Continue reading “Foreign Policy as Wishful Thinking”
by Bruce S. Thornton
Advancing a Free Society
The international order — comprising the United Nations, interstate diplomacy, organizations like NATO, and all the other transnational institutions that are supposed to keep the global peace and deter aggression — reminds me of the Spanish proverb about laws: they catch flies and let the hawk go free. Continue reading “Of Hawks and Flies”