Have you noticed an uptick in the appearance of a specific talking point from the political and military elite about President Trump’s recent drawdown in northern Syria? It goes something like this: Yes, the president was in a tight spot in Syria—caught between Turkey, a NATO ally, and the Kurds, who we were allied with
Going back to the time of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled from present-day Turkey and presided over a dominion which stretched across much of the Middle East and parts of North Africa, the Muslim world was divided between two sides of the Islamic coin: the first was that of the majority Sunnis and the second
Last week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) took center stage to become the withering face of the ongoing Democratic Party push to impeach their great bugaboo, President Donald J. Trump. As she closed her meandering remarks, Pelosi invoked America’s greatest moderate, Benjamin Franklin, when she reminded audiences that Franklin was asked by an
The Democrats now believe they have finally caught their White (or, possibly, orange?) Whale, Donald Trump. Congressional Democrats claim that President Trump violated election rules by asking Ukraine’s president for his assistance in investigating the Biden family’s potentially corrupt dealings in Ukraine during the time Joe Biden was vice president. Regardless of whether there is
Politics cannot be divorced from culture. Many people are wedded to the misperception that, in a democratic society, we elect leaders who are somehow better than the ordinary voter. In fact, democratic societies tend to elect leaders who are, in most ways, a reflection of the voters themselves. Since political leadership in a republic is
The September 11, 2001 attacks were the result of an unmitigated intelligence failure. No, 9/11 was not an “inside job,” as many conspiracy theorists believe. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network were responsible. But the 9/11 plot did not happen in a vacuum. In reality, America’s elephantine national security state had known of bin
Tulsi Gabbard is arguably the most interesting woman in American politics today. A combat veteran from the Iraq War, the Hawaii Democrat's beliefs were forged not only in the desert wastelands of Iraq but also by the wastefulness of America’s permanent bipartisan fusion party. Having served in the U.S. Army National Guard in a medical unit
President Trump is a throwback to another time in American history. For most of his critics, that fact that makes him “problematic.” He’s “not normal.” Yet, for many, this is but one of the attributes that has made him so appealing for our time. That’s why when news broke last week about Trump’s interest in
On the eve of the 1980 presidential election, as the insurgent conservative candidate, Ronald Reagan, was delivering his closing argument to the nation, the actor and union leader-turned-politician did not offer some cold, ideological claim divorced from kitchen table realities for the voters. Instead, he appealed to the hearts of ordinary Americans who sensed something
