Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Nothing accounts for the dumbing down of public debate quite like hundreds of millions of people relying on social media for news and information. After all, even tweets and posts by erstwhile intelligent people often smack of snark – intended more to incite emotion than provoke debate. Only this explains Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the… Read more.
President Obama is channeling President Nixon with his justification for deploying Special Forces to help combat ISIS. Of course, Nixon justified deploying the FBI and other intelligence agencies to illegally wiretap, entrap, and otherwise undermine anti-Vietnam protesters as follows: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal. (“Nixon-Frost Interview,” New… Read more.
And Putin is trolling him with a coalition of his own … to do the same. American-trained Syrian fighters gave at least a quarter of their U.S.-provided equipment to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria early this week, the U.S. Central Command said late Friday. In a statement correcting earlier assertions that reports of the turnover were… Read more.
[M]illions could be wandering through Europe, in migrant formation, before the end of the year. At that rate, Europe might end up with a majority non-White population before the United States… Germans are greeting this first wave of migrants with banners, cheers, and food. But don’t be surprised if these same Germans are hurling xenophobic epithets… Read more.
Nothing has bedeviled U.S. nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq quite like the determination of Sunnis and Shiites to fight each other instead of Islamic jihadists. Now, Turks and Kurds are fighting each other instead of ISIS, thereby complicating ongoing efforts in Iraq and bedeviling efforts to prevent Syria from becoming the Somalia of the Middle… Read more.
In “Demystifying ISIS: Case against Obama’s Bush-lite War on Terrorism,” September 10, 2014, I delineated why it’s a patent folly that the United States is meddling, yet again, in the internecine struggle between Sunnis and Shias. Not least because these two factions of Islam have been waging it for a thousand years, and may continue… Read more.
This is a very complicated and convoluted issue; therefore, I shall begin with a few clarifying points: Despite the media inciting hysterical calls for war against them, the jihadists rampaging across the Middle East, who call themselves ISIS/ISIL (hereinafter ISIS), pose no security threat to the United States. They represent little more than the latest surge… Read more.
Marathon negotiations between U.S. and Russian diplomats at a Geneva hotel produced a sweeping agreement that will require one of the most ambitious arms-control efforts in history. The deal involves making an inventory and seizing all components of Syria’s chemical weapons program and imposing penalties if President Bashar Assad’s government fails to comply will the… Read more.
Much is being made of a Russian proposal to resolve the “Crisis in Syria.” In sum, it calls for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons arsenal to international demolition experts and sign the international convention against their use to avoid military strikes by the United States. Notwithstanding understandable skepticism … on both sides, a fearful… Read more.
Author’s Note: President Obama is scheduled to make his case for war (um, er, a “shot across the bow”) against Syria in an address to the nation tonight. He’s hoping the art of persuasion that got a record number of Americans to support his re-election less than a year ago will get at least one… Read more.
