In Afghanistan, the mission failure appears complete. The trillion-dollar project to plant Western democracy in a Muslim nation historically fabled for driving out imperial intruders has crashed and burned after 20 years, and the Taliban are suddenly back in power. After investing scores of billions in training and arming a force of 350,000 Afghani troops,...
The first returns from the delayed census of 2020 are in, and they have made for celebratory headlines in the mainstream media. Big takeaway: Between 2010 and 2021, the white American population declined in real and relative terms, with more deaths than live births, as the white share of the U.S. population fell from 63...
In April, President Joe Biden told the nation he would have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on the continental United States. Given the turn of events of the past week, that 20th anniversary may be celebrated by a triumphant Taliban, now on...
Suddenly, Sunday, a riveting report came over cable news: The U.S. embassy was urging all Americans to “leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.” Message: Get out while you can. Adding urgency was news that three northern provincial capitals, including Kunduz city, had fallen to the Taliban, making it five provincial capitals overrun since Friday. The...
A week ago, the MT Mercer Street, a Japanese-owned tanker managed by a U.K.-based company owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer, sailing in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman, was struck by drones. A British security guard and Romanian crew member were killed. Britain and the U.S. immediately blamed Iran, and the Israelis...
Just seven weeks into his presidency, Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Among the largest spending bills in history, it was passed without the vote of a single Republican. The plan sent direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans, extended a $300 per week unemployment insurance boost until Sept. 6...
In his final state of the nation speech Monday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte defended his refusal to confront China over Beijing’s seizure and fortification of his country’s islets in the South China Sea. “It will be a massacre if I go and fight a war now,” said Duterte. “We are not yet a competent and...
To understand what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee investigation of the Capitol Hill events of Jan. 6 is all about, a good place to begin is with the sentencing hearing last week of Paul Hodgkins. A crane operator from Tampa, Florida, Hodgkins, 38, pleaded guilty to a single count of obstructing a joint session...
Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both. Kennedy’s message to Moscow and his fellow Americans: “If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now...
Article IV of the Constitution addresses the obligations of the federal government to the state governments that were being asked to surrender aspects of their sovereignty to form our new Union. “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” reads Article IV, “and shall protect each of...
Traveling to Philadelphia Tuesday, President Joe Biden laid out in apocalyptic terms the gravity of the “threat” to American democracy from Republican efforts to reform and rewrite state election laws. We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then...
Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought. Yet, consider. On taking office, Biden held a winning hand. Three vaccines, with excellent efficacy rates, had been created and were being administered at a rate of a million shots a...
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan. Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost. And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which...
As our July Fourth celebrations were beginning, the U.S. quietly closed and abandoned Bagram Air Base, the largest American military base between the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea. Afghan looters were soon seen scavenging inside the base. The long retreat of the American Empire is underway, and this longest war is likely to...
Respect LBGT rights or get out of the EU, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte instructed Hungary’s Viktor Orban at last week’s gathering of the European Union in Brussels. According to Reuters, attendees described it as the “most intense personal clash among the bloc’s leaders in years.” What caused the clash? Hungary just passed a law...
About that clash between a British destroyer and Russian warplanes and warships in the Black Sea last week there are conflicting versions. The Kremlin version is the more dramatic. HMS Defender, says Moscow, entered the Black Sea, made port in Odessa, Ukraine, and then sailed for Batumi on the coast of Georgia. However, the British...
On Tuesday, Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams took the lead in the New York mayoral race with 32 percent of the Democratic primary vote, 10 points more than progressive Maya Wiley, who had the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How did Adams beat the elite? Said The New York Times: Adams...
Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted 168-55, more than 3-1, to provide new guidance for receiving Holy Communion. Behind the decision? Bishops’ alarm that the public religious practice of President Joe Biden is conveying a heretical message to the faithful and the nation. At Sunday Mass, Biden regularly receives Communion. Yet he...
By a vote of 30-1 in the House, with unanimous support in the Senate, Juneteenth, June 19, which commemorates the day in 1865 when news of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation reached Texas, has been declared a federal holiday. It is to be called Juneteenth Independence Day. Prediction: This will become yet another source of societal...
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Karl Marx’s comment came to mind as President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to equate their tete-a-tete at the G7 confab in Cornwall, England, to the Atlantic Charter conference of 80 years ago. Those were historic days, to which these days cannot compare....
In 1859, Abraham Lincoln related the tale of an Eastern monarch who charged his wise men with discovering words that would everywhere and always be true. The wise men went away and returned to present the monarch with this six-word sentence: “And this, too, shall pass away.” So, the question: How long will Sen. Joe...
“Take away this pudding; it has no theme,” is a comment attributed to Winston Churchill, when a disappointing dessert was put in front of him. Writers have used Churchill’s remark to describe a foreign policy that lacks coherence or centrality of purpose. For most of our lifetimes, this has not been true of the United...
Speaking in Tulsa on the 100th anniversary of the racial atrocity there, Joe Biden belatedly turned to the issue of voting rights, to explain why he is having such difficulty winning passage of the party’s priority legislation. I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’ Well, because Biden...
Through the long Memorial Day weekend, anyone who read the newspapers or watched television could not miss or be unmoved by it: Story after story after story of the fallen, of those who had given the “last full measure of devotion” to their country. Heart-rending is an apt description of those stories; and searing are...
After nine people were shot to death by a public transit worker, who then killed himself in San Jose, the latest mass murder in America, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke for many on the eve of this Memorial Day weekend. “What the hell is going on in the United States of America? What the hell...
When the U.S. created NATO, a primary purpose of the alliance was to serve as a western wall to defend Germany against the 400,000 Russian troops on the eastern side of the Elbe River. Seventy years later, Germany has decided to double its dependence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for the natural gas needed to run...
When he took the floor of the Senate to reject the Democrats’ Jan. 6 Commission, Mitch McConnell may have salvaged his party’s chances to recapture the House in 2022. For that commission, being spun as a “bipartisan” effort to learn what “really happened” in the Capitol that fateful day, is a Democratic scheme to have...
“Israel is Winning Battles, Hamas is Winning the War.” So ran the headline in the Jerusalem Post atop an analysis of the Gaza war, which began, “The IDF is registering great achievements in Operation Guardian of the Walls, but meanwhile the house appears to be collapsing from within.” Hard to disagree. Consider this New York...
On taking the oath of office, Jan. 20, Joe Biden may not have realized it, but history had dealt him a pair of aces. The COVID-19 pandemic had reached its apex, infecting a quarter of a million Americans every day. Yet, due to the discovery and distribution of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the incidence...
Within hours of Saturday’s shooting in Times Square where three bystanders, including a 4-year-old girl, were wounded, the two leading candidates to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio were on-site. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired captain of the NYPD, and Andrew Yang, who declared: My fellow New Yorkers … Nothing works in our city...
“There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money,” is an insight the famed biographer James Boswell attributed to Samuel Johnson. Clients of the late Bernie Madoff, however, might take issue. Over four decades, Madoff, acclaimed as the greatest fraudster of them all, ran a Ponzi scheme...
“Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.” So declared Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican, in his televised rebuttal to Joe Biden’s address to Congress. Asked the next day what he thought of Scott’s statement, Biden said he agrees. “No, I don’t think the American people are racist.” Vice President Kamala Harris also...
Joe Biden may not be a radical socialist, but he is doing the best imitation of one this writer has lately seen. After enacting a COVID-19 relief package of $1.9 trillion in March without a single Republican vote in Congress, Biden proposed a jobs and infrastructure program of $2.2 trillion. He has now added an...
“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?” asked President Abraham Lincoln, who answered his own question: “Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” And Congress’ saying that D.C. is a state would equally contradict truth and reality, as our nation’s capital lacks...
How can America unite again to do great things if we are led by people who believe America suffers from a great sickness of the soul, an original sin that dates back to her birth as a nation? Consider. After his long night of prayer for “the right verdict” to be pronounced—Derek Chauvin was convicted...
When President Joe Biden announced he would withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, GOP hawks like Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham responded predictably. “Grave mistake,” muttered McConnell. “Insane,” said Graham, “dumber than dirt and… dangerous.” Of more interest were the responses of conservative Republicans who commended the president....
“It is time to end the forever war.” So said President Joe Biden in his announcement that, as of Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, all U.S. troops will be gone from Afghanistan. The longest war in our history, which cost 2,400 dead, 20,000 wounded and...
What are Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping up to? In recent days, Russian tanks, artillery, armor, trucks, and troops have been moving by road and rail ever closer to Ukraine, and Moscow is said to be repositioning its 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade in Crimea. Military sources in Kyiv estimate there are now 85,000 Russian...
When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines first proved their efficacy, preventing nearly 95 percent of coronavirus infections in those who got the shots in test trials, a vexing issue immediately arose. Who should get priority in receiving these life-saving shots? Generally speaking, the answer, while differing slightly from state to state, was that those most...
Last Monday, in a single six-hour period, NATO launched 10 air intercepts to shadow six separate groups of Russian bombers and fighters over the Arctic, North Atlantic, North Sea, Black Sea, and Baltic Sea. Last week also brought reports that Moscow is increasing its troop presence in Crimea and along its borders with Ukraine. Joe...
If Joe Biden’s American Jobs Program, outlined in Pittsburgh, is enacted, then the federal government will take a great leap forward toward irreversible control of the destiny of the Republic. To finance this leap, to subsidize this giant stride toward socialism, U.S. corporations are to be forced to turn over to the government a far...
“I’ve known Xi Jinping for a long time. … He doesn’t have a democratic—with a small ‘d’—bone in his body,” said Joe Biden in his first press conference as president, and then he ambled on: He’s one of the guys, like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, who thinks that autocracy is the...
During a joint interview with Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary-general of NATO, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, fresh from his bout with the Chinese in Anchorage, took on Angela Merkel and the Germans. Issue: Nord Stream 2, the Baltic Sea pipeline Vladimir Putin is building to complement his Nord Stream 1 and carry more natural...
Our mainstream media largely ignored it, the world media did not. Ascending the stairs of Air Force One on Friday, to fly to Georgia, President Joe Biden slipped and stumbled. Getting up, he slipped again and then fell. The scene was jolting and disquieting. Adversaries abroad will use it as a metaphor for the decline...
Asked bluntly by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a killer,” Joe Biden answered, “Uh, I do.” Biden added that he once told Putin to his face that he had “no soul.” Biden also indicated that new sanctions would be imposed on Russia for the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny...
Friday, as the jury was being empaneled for the trial of fired police officer Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis City Council voted 13-0 to approve a record $27 million civil settlement with the family of George Floyd over his death in police custody. The jury will not likely miss this message sent by the city fathers: I.e.,...
Today, the four premier leaders of The Quad—the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan—conduct their first summit, by teleconference. The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal strategy forum of the major Indo-Pacific democracies that some wish to see evolve into an Asian NATO to contain China, as NATO contained the Soviet Union for 40...
During a Democratic debate in 2020, the candidates were asked if their health care plans would cover “undocumented immigrants.” Each raised his or her hand, including front-runner Joe Biden. From that stage, the message went forth: If the Democrats win this election, then it is amnesty for all and open borders in America. The message was...
“That attack, that siege” of the Capitol, FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress, “was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it was behavior we at the FBI view as domestic terrorism.” “Domestic terrorism,” said Wray, echoing his boss. For what had been President-elect Joe Biden’s reaction to the Capitol riot? “Don’t dare...
Thursday, in its first military action, the Biden Pentagon sent two U.S. F-15Es to strike targets of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia just inside the eastern border of Syria. The U.S. strikes were in retaliation for a missile attack on a U.S. base in Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, which killed a contractor and...