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September 8, 2007 Bin Laden Unplugged Osama bin Laden's strength as an orator has always been his ethos. He is an eloquent and seemingly honest speaker, proud of his role in the attacks of 9/11, a principled spokesman for radical Islam's war against the West. Though bin Laden may not have penned all his words personally, the force of his ideas always shines through. As Bruce Lawrence notes in Messages to the World, "these messages are not ghostwritten tracts of the kind supplied by professional speechwriters to many politicians in the West, whether American Presidents, European Prime Ministers, or their Middle-Eastern counterparts." August 21, 2007 Ban the Old Ways We are about to learn the meaning of “ethics” in the United Nations administration of Ban Ki-moon. Eight months after Secretary-General Ban took office, promising to “restore tr... August 20, 2007 Welcoming an Asian Elephant in Africa All eyes are on China and its growing involvement in Africa, but India’s expanding relations with African countries have gone largely unnoticed. China’s intentions create anxiety; Ind... August 20, 2007 The Audacity of Shallowness Among certain Arab elites, there is considerable interest in how a Democratic administration would differ from the eight years of George W. Bush. It's a good question. Most Democrats, at lea... August 16, 2007 On the Move The new National Intelligence Estimate caught the media’s attention in mid-July by discussing an aspect of the war on terror that some analysts have warned about for over a year: al Qaeda&r... August 15, 2007 Surging: It’s getting harder to deny that General Petraeus is making progress “The only thing this surge will accomplish is a surge of more death and destruction.” That was the prediction of blogger and anti-war activist Arianna Huffington back in December of l... August 14, 2007 China’s Play for Somalia’s Oil As this column has chronicled over the past year and a half, United States policy toward the remnants of the former state of Somalia has evolved into a sort of dramatic farce played out in the fo... August 14, 2007 Protect the American Media — Whether They Deserve It or Not It is a hard thing to defend the American media. Even when they are right and even when they badly need defending. In large part, that’s because press hypocrisy is so striking. Jou... August 13, 2007 Welcome to Ramadi I was not told about our trip to Ramadi — provincial capital of Iraq’s Anbar province — until the night before. This was in order to preserve “operational security... August 9, 2007 Quién es una amenaza para la patria? El senador y candidato presidencial Barack Obama quiere luchar contra al-Qaeda en Pakistán – después de aceptar la derrota de manos de al-Qaeda en Irak. Sus críticos di... August 9, 2007 Selling AFRICOM In my testimony last week before the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the United States House of Representatives, I noted that the creation of the n... August 8, 2007 Who Threatens the Homeland? Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan -- after accepting defeat at the hands of al-Qaeda in Iraq. His critics say that shows his inexperience. But he... August 7, 2007 Providing Security While Peacekeepers Tarry Last week the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1769, which authorizes a force of up to 26,000 peacekeepers to restore security to the Darfur region of Sudan where fou... August 7, 2007 FISA: Don’t Mend It, End It We should all breathe a sigh of relief that sanity prevailed when Congress enacted emergency legislation over the weekend to address a national-security crisis: the hamstringing of our intelligen... August 6, 2007 An Idealistic Alternative to the Saudi Arms Deal The US Government is considering a new gigantic arms sale to the Saudi Kingdom, up to 20 billion dollars' worth of complex weaponry. The proposed package includes advanced satellite-guided b... August 2, 2007 Private Eyes I recently met a young soldier who spent most of the last seven months in Baghdad, a private first class in the 2nd Infantry Division out of Colorado. We met at the Ali Al Salem air base and &ldq... August 2, 2007 “Total Force” for AFRICOM Early last month, President George W. Bush named Army General William E. "Kip" Ward to be the first commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM). If confirmed by the Senate – hea... August 1, 2007 The Good News is Bad News It’s tough being a member of Congress. Even if you’re in the majority, as is Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas, you never know when your ears may be assaulted by outrageous and offensive ide... August 1, 2007 Las Buenas Noticias son Malas Noticias Es duro ser miembro del Congreso. Incluso si uno está en la mayoría, como la representante Nancy Boyda de Kansas, uno nunca sabe cuándo sus oídos pueden verse asaltado... July 31, 2007 Cut Iraq Some Slack Granted, Iraq's government has disappointed. Americans liberated Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and gave them the right to vote. What we couldn't give them are the institutions, values and... July 30, 2007 Symposium: Turning Point? Yes, Virginia, there are some rational, reasoning liberals. Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack have long been among them. They are serious students of national security. They are Democrats bu... July 26, 2007 Hot in Tehran On the same day that Tony Blair debuted in Portugal as Middle East envoy for the Quartet, a group attempting to advance peace efforts in the Middle East, another kind of meeting convened in Syria... July 25, 2007 Imaginando la Derrota Sólo por argumentar, imagine que los opositores de la guerra en Irak tienen razón. Suponga que nuestro ejército – diseñado para enfrentar a un enemigo distinto,... July 25, 2007 Mired in Mogadishu Two weeks ago a "national reconciliation congress" that Somalia's ineffectual "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG), under pressure from international donors who are its only means of supp... July 25, 2007 Suicide Reversal? As is the case for most surveys of public opinion in the Muslim world, the Pew survey is a mixed bag. It is encouraging that support for suicide bombings has declined in seven of the eight countr... July 25, 2007 Imagining Defeat For the sake of argument, imagine that opponents of the war in Iraq are right. Suppose that our military — designed to confront a different enemy, on a different battlefield, in a different... July 22, 2007 Degrees of Enmity and the “War on Terrorism” Last Tuesday, the Bush Administration released portions of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland. The first of the "key judgments" of the NIE com... July 22, 2007 Give War a Chance! Two items in the batch of international news and commentary at the end of last week strike us as particularly noteworthy, justifying our recall in a new context of the title of P.J. O'Rourke... July 18, 2007 The Indian Tiger’s African Safari While the African travels of Chinese leaders and their troubling arms sales to regimes on the continent, have caused increasing concern in Washington and other Western capitals, India's grow... July 18, 2007 The First Openly Muslim Priest The day before the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops voted to confirm the church's first openly gay bishop in the late summer of 2003, conservative humor website ScrappleFace satirize... July 18, 2007 Know Thine Enemies It would be nice — or at least more convenient — if America could fight just one enemy at a time. But that’s seldom how it works. World War II was called a world war fo... July 18, 2007 Conozca a sus Enemigos Sería agradable – o por lo menos más conveniente – que Estados Unidos pudiera luchar sólo contra un enemigo a la vez. Pero raramente funciona así.... July 16, 2007 We Need a National Security Court In this 2006 white paper, which will be incorporated in a forthcoming AEI book on Outsourcing American Law, Andrew McCarthy, director of FDD’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism, explore... July 16, 2007 Preventing the West from Understanding Jihad In the years that followed 9/11, two phenomena characterized the Western public's understanding of the terrorists' ideology. The first characteristic stemmed from the statements made by... July 16, 2007 Six-Party Celebration? According to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, North Korea has shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Those familiar with North Korea’s recent history are forgiven... July 15, 2007 Musharraf Gets Tough In a country that for the past year has consistently ceded ground to terrorists, the storming of the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad was a rare bit of good news. As Pakistani forces wrapped up the... July 13, 2007 The ACLU Loses in Court The American Civil Liberties Union's Steven Shapiro is one of the best lawyers in the United States. Still, he was flat wrong when he told the New York Times that a federal appeals court&#03... July 12, 2007 Duty, Honor, Country Thursday’s interim progress report on the surge in Iraq ran into a long-expected cold shower: Nobody wants to hear it. Bad news out of Iraq is what the market wants. Signs of progress cause... July 11, 2007 A New Strategy in Iraq? Contrary to what you’ve read in the newspapers, we are not debating whether to “change course” in Iraq. We are debating whether to accept defeat in Iraq. Contrary to wh... July 11, 2007 ¿Una nueva estrategia en Irak? Contrario a lo que Ud. haya leído en los periódicos, no estamos discutiendo si “cambiar el rumbo” en Irak. Estamos discutiendo si aceptar la derrota en Irak. Co... July 10, 2007 The Security Challenge of West Africa’s New Drug Depots Last week, gendarmes in the Senegal seaside resort of Nianing seized fifty-one 24-kilogram sacks containing a record 1.25 metric tons of cocaine with a street value of over $100 million.... July 10, 2007 Can the U.N’s Global Compact Initiative Teach Good Corporate Behavior? Can the United Nations teach good corporate behavior? That’s the mission of a fast-growing UN initiative called the Global Compact – run out of the Secretary-General’s executive... July 9, 2007 For Senator Clinton, It’s 1993 All over Again I n February 1993, just days after their bomb failed to bring down the Twin Towers (though it did kill several people, injure over a thousand, and cause nearly a billion dollars in damage), jihad... July 8, 2007 Living History .. with the New York Times “U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ‘05.” So blared the top headline of Sunday’s New York Times. Breathlessly, correspondent Mark Mazzetti reported... July 4, 2007 The Moral Hazard of Kosovo’s Independence Last week's summit between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin resulted in no "grand bargain" that could pave the way for the birth of an independent Kosovo. The mo... July 4, 2007 Cabinda: The “Forgotten Conflict” America Can’t Afford to Forget Because of the sense of urgency repeatedly communicated by this column as well as the parallel efforts of other "Africa hands," the precarious situation of Nigeria – which I have described... July 3, 2007 Iranian Trip Wire The West's standoff with Iran reached an ominous point recently when Tehran hinted that it might expel inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency should the U.N. Security Council... July 3, 2007 Let’s Accept the Truth of Our Own Defeats As the current situation in Palestine worsens, let Arabs not forget their past. Events that are portrayed as victories by Arab politicians are not always victories for the Arab people. Last month... July 2, 2007 Andrew McCarthy Discusses Al-Qaeda Prisoner Dentention Case In this online debate, Senior Fellow Andrew McCarthy discusses the recent al-Marri case in which a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit held that the president could not... July 1, 2007 Islamic Terror Strikes the U.K. …Again The investigation of the latest terror plot to target the United Kingdom is very fluid. Right now, the headlines are these: There have been at least three attempted car-bomb attacks, the perpetra...

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