When Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced his “definitive” retirement from politics last week, his armed militias and allies did what they usually do. The riots in Baghdad killed at least 30 people. Al-Sadr, after ordering his followers to leave…
If I were an American ally in NATO or the Indo-Pacific region, I would be nervous about President Joe Biden’s leadership of the free world. A year has passed since our disgraceful exit from Afghanistan. Neither Biden nor any of…
We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America By Kurt Schlichter (Regnery Publishing: 256 pages, $26.99) In February of 1991, young Army officer Kurt Schlichter huddled with his platoon in Iraq, ready to move in on Saddam Hussein’s chemical…
Madeleine Albright is being celebrated in death for many reasons, including being a pathbreaker as the first woman secretary of state and one of the triumphs of America’s immigration story. These positive parts of her story warrant praise from friends…
You probably know or knew one. A veteran who served in a horrible place surrounded by death inflicted upon his buddies, that he inflicted upon the enemy, who maybe suffered permanent PTSD as well as physical wounds. And yet he…
Afghanistan and Iraq are vastly different. Afghanistan has been dominated by feuding warlords for many centuries, without a central and respected writ of authority. Iraq, as an integral part of the Levant, has been a nation-state actor connected to much…
If you know nothing else about former Secretary of Defense Donald Henry Rumsfeld, who died last Wednesday at age 88, you should know this. At 9:37 a.m. on September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorists crashed United Airlines Flight 77 into the…
“He snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” was how my dad described it. After President George H. W. Bush had confronted Saddam Hussein over his takeover of Kuwait, gathered allies for the fight, and then smashed Iraq’s armed forces…
Pope Francis returned to Rome today after a historic four-day trip to Iraq. During the trip, he visited Baghdad, Ur, Erbil, Mosul, and several other sites. The first-ever papal visit to Iraq came at a time when the country is…