President Biden’s decision to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan by September 11 may turn out to be one of the more significant decisions of… Read More »Blog No. 287. Afghanistan and the Coming Debacle
On November 17, Acting Secretary of Defense, Chris Miller, announced that American military forces in Afghanistan would be reduced to 2,500 by January 15. That… Read More »Blog No. 273. Afghanistan: Withdraw in haste, repent at leisure
During the campaign, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton did battle on a wide variety of subjects, but neither had much to say on the subject… Read More »Blog No. 147: Afghanistan: Return of the Forgotten War
The defining impression of President Trump’s recent foreign tour was probably formed by his few days in Europe which clearly reflected mutual discomfort between Trump… Read More »Blog No. 144. Donald of Arabia
In the wake of the murderous assault on Charlie Hebdo and other attacks in Paris, President Obama was been robustly criticized for his failure to attend the rally of solidarity in Paris, or even to send a high level representative. We believe that the criticism was justified. Indeed, even the White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, acknowledged that a mistake had been made, a remarkable admission for a White House from which mea culpas do not escape easily. Earnest, however, did not offer any credible explanation of how or why the mistake had been made. It may be plausible to claim that adequate security for the President could not be provided on short notice, but presumably the security needs of Vice President Biden could have been satisfied by the arrangements put in place for forty world leaders. And one of the more curious footnotes was the unexplained failure to attend even by Attorney General Holder who was already in Paris.Read More »Blog No. 58 Charlie Hebdo, Barack Obama, and Radical Islam
Back on July 30, we posted Blog 43, Part I: The ISIS Crisis. In that post we observed that on June 13 President Obama had belatedly acknowledged for the first time the existence of an threat by ISIS that demanded his attention. The action he had announced, however, was conspicuously limited—dispatching 300 military advisers to assess the situation—and he insisted the problem was a regional one posing a threat to “American interests” that was at most remote and contingent. For our part, we quoted current and former government officials who saw a far more serious and immediate danger to the United States, and we urged Republicans “ to press for the articulation of some coherent and realistic strategy” to meet that danger.Read More »SECOND UPDATE to Blog 43, Part I: The ISIS Crisis