Joe Biden’s foreign policy instincts have long been defective. In light of his most recent debacle, it is worth recalling Osama bin Laden’s low estimate of Biden. According to documents seized from his compound in Pakistan, Bin Laden had plotted…
The Spymaster of Baghdad: A True Story of Bravery, Family, and Patriotism in the Battle against ISIS Margaret Coker (Dey Street Books, 336 pages, $29) Following a three-week war in 2003, the United States tried to put Iraq on the…
Fourteen years ago today marks the low point of the Iraq War. Mounting U.S. casualties and raging sectarian violence in an undeclared civil war was the order of the day. That changed late in the afternoon when Sheik Sattar Bezia…
When the White House invited my elementary school boys choir to sing at its 2008 Christmas party, I felt deeply embarrassed. This was George W. Bush’s last Christmas as president, and even I knew he deserved better than a chorus…
Congress wouldn’t declare war or even approve presidential troop deployments in Syria. But sanctimonious legislators now are preening for the cameras, demanding that U.S. military force remain entangled in that tragic nation, seemingly forever. They show greater concern for foreign…
“In this land, the man who gives victory in battle is prized beyond every other man,” or so says Prince Feisal as portrayed by Sir Alec Guinness in the epic 1962 biopic, Lawrence of Arabia. Okay, so Feisal’s quote is…
Recently, the Trump Administration announced that it was deploying both an American aircraft carrier as well as B-52 bombers to the Middle East as a show of force against the Iranians. According to National Security Adviser John Bolton, intelligence provided…
When former Vice President Dick Cheney was being whisked from his office downstairs to the underground Presidential Emergency Operations Command (PEOC) bunker on 9/11, his view on foreign policy likely changed. Having served for years in and out of government,…
Hundreds of U.S. laws require that various executive agencies certify to Congress that something is happening (or isn’t). Certifications go hand in hand with reports to Congress that go forever unread. Some certifications are supposed to be significant, such as…
Growing up with a Protestant minister for a father, I learned very little about Catholicism. I knew Christianity — the Dutch-reformed kind. Catholics? We didn’t like them and, supposedly, we weren’t like them. Now some of my best friends are…
