The recent drone attack that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and a Shiite militia leader in Iraq led predictably to a retaliatory strike by Iran. Twenty or so ballistic missiles were launched at bases in Iraq where U.S. troops were housed. Fortunately, no one was killed. Instead of launching a counterattack, President Trump stopped. Since
Starting in 1975, Lebanon descended into civil war. Its various ethnic and religious groups—Shia, Sunni, Druze, and Christian—formed factions that alternately fought or aligned with one another. Outsiders, including Palestinians and Syrians, added to the chaos and the bloodshed. Having faced harassment from Palestinian terrorists operating in Lebanon for many years, Israel invaded in 1982.
After the House of Representatives’ recent decision to issue two articles of impeachment, it appears the Democrats are having second thoughts. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) thus far has refused to transmit the articles to the Senate because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) publicly has expressed doubts regarding the merits of impeachment and the
An Iowa man has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for stealing and then burning a rainbow gay pride flag from a local church. Adolfo Martinez is no angel; in fact, he has a record with numerous previous arrests. But the real reason his sentence was so long is that the prosecutor classified this
News arrived last week that emboldened both the president’s supporters and his opponents. The inspector general’s report on the FBI’s 2016 investigation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign revealed significant mistakes and irregularities, which, in the words of the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, do not “vindicate anybody.” At nearly the same time, the
If you grew up in the 1980s, it was hard to miss Nancy Reagan’s call to “Just Say No” to drugs. While the Baby Boomers famously ingested a lot of narcotics, drug use among young people declined significantly in the years following this public relations effort. The “War on Drugs” was not just about law
Over an otherwise peaceful Thanksgiving, the only news that really stood out was a terrorist knife attack in London. Two people were killed by an Islamic terrorist. The capstone of the attack was a dramatic and improvised takedown of the terrorist by some locals, who used a fire extinguisher and . . . a narwhal
For a very long time, conservatives had been engaged in a fighting retreat. They might parry a thrust here or weaken a law there, but overall, they were losing. They fought the New Deal, the Great Society, the Sexual Revolution, gay marriage, and affirmative action. In every case, they lost. The social welfare state expanded,
Over the past month, the far-Right’s troll culture turned against Conservatism, Inc., by haranguing the establishment’s “youth outreach” guy, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA (TPUSA). TPUSA is a large and well-funded youth movement, but it is starting to lose its audience because many are asking what exactly TPUSA aims to conserve? The answers they
Questions of foreign policy, particularly those of war and peace, are among the most critical in politics. A lost war can destroy an empire and erase a nation. Victory can attain safety, security, and prosperity for many generations. An inconclusive campaign—such as our neverending stalemate in Afghanistan—can sap national confidence and shatter the minds and
