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In recent months, we have been bombarded with reports of the death of the Bush Doctrine. Of course, there have been many such reports since the doctrine was first promulgated at the start of what I persist in calling World War IV (the cold war being World War III). Almost all of them were written by the realists and liberal internationalists within the old foreign-policy establishment, and they all turned out to resemble the reports of Mark Twain’s death—which, he famously said, had been “greatly exaggerated.” Nothing daunted by this, the critics and enemies of Bush are now at it...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2006 – In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Bush reiterated American resolve against extremist terrorists and declared that the free world will prevail against enemies of freedom. “America, Great Britain, and our allies are determined to defend ourselves and advance the cause of liberty,” Bush said. “With patience, courage, and untiring resolve, we will defend our freedom, and we will win the war on terror.” The president acknowledged the enormity of the challenge that still lies ahead. “America is fighting a tough war against an enemy whose ruthlessness is clear for all to see,” he said....

The struggle against terror isn’t going to produce white flags of surrender, sinking enemy battleships or columns of defeated soldiers. Last week’s roundups of suspected would-be jetliner bombers – and the attendant airport delays – are pretty much what a stunning victory looks like in this war. Defeat ... well, America has already seen what that looks like, too. So has Britain, Spain and Indonesia. The arrest of dozens of possible conspirators before they succeed in murdering thousands of innocent civilians is as good as it gets. Just as we can learn from defeat, we can learn from victory. One...

Summer of Our Discontent [Michael Rubin] Condoleezza Rice may still be a media star, but her track record places somewhere around Warren Christopher in the annals of recent State Department history: Rice reversed course on Iran, and even offered this terror-sponsor nuclear reactors. Rather than moderate Tehran, her move signaled weakness and further emboldened the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khamene‘i responded to the offer by asking, four days later, “Why don’t you just admit you are weak and your razor is blunt?” Remember Iran’s centrifuges? They’re still spinning. North Korea defied international consensus to launch missiles, one of which was aimed...

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y.--If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Iraq was lost--according, at least, to the conspiracy-minded--on the pages of Commentary magazine and the other house organs of the neoconservative movement. Better yet, blame America's post-9/11 foreign policy on Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, regularly disinterred as the neocon godfathers. Yet however much one loathes lending credence to talk of a neocon conspiracy--call it Cabal Theory--it does possess a certain element of truth. That is, the Iraq intervention found its genesis not only in the immediate crises of the prewar period, but also in...

The American Dog Didn't Bark Bush critics need to acknowledge unparalleled support for Israel As Israel's counteroffensive against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon heads into its fourth week, it's time to explicitly acknowledge one huge difference between this latest chapter of Israel's 58-year-old war of self-defense and those that have preceded it. Like the Sherlock Holmes story in which the key factor is the dog that did not bark, it is the almost complete absence of United States pressure for the Israelis to halt military operations that has made this battle different from all others. Even in the face of massive...

Contrary to popular lore, it's John Howard, not George Bush, who has led the way in the alliance, says foreign editor Greg Sheridan IT is time we completely reconsidered our thoughts about ANZUS, the US-Australian alliance, especially as it has functioned during the past 10 years. The accepted view is that the Howard Government has been a loyal and passive follower in the alliance. At best, John Howard's critics may allow that he has played the politics of it shrewdly, gaining electoral advantage from quite small military deployments. In a new book, The Partnership: The Inside Story of the US-Australian...

WASHINGTON, — When they first met as United States president and Israeli prime minister, George W. Bush made clear to Ariel Sharon he would not follow in the footsteps of his father. The first President Bush had been tough on Israel, especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr. Sharon had helped develop. But over tea in the Oval Office that day in March 2001 — six months before the Sept. 11 attacks tightened their bond — the new president signaled a strong predisposition to support Israel. “He told Sharon in that first meeting that I’ll use force to...

A time for war Posted: August 2, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Alan Keyes The battle against Hezbollah threatens to expose the hollow reality of the Bush administration's conduct of the war against terrorism. In the wake of 9-11, Bush boldly and properly identified the enemy as terrorism itself. He boldly and properly challenged the nations of the world to understand the deadly threat it represents to any semblance of international order and community. He boldly and properly excluded the possibility of neutrality, making it clear that every nation would have to choose which side it was on: for or...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 — The United States firmly reiterated its position on Tuesday that there can be no cease-fire in the Middle East until there is a solid plan in place to disarm Hezbollah. “The United States is working for a cease-fire, for an end to the hostilities that will not allow a return to the status quo ante,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday night on “The O’Reilly Factor,” on Fox News Channel. “If we don’t work for a cease-fire that will be lasting and enduring, then we’re going to be right back here in several months talking...

After Compassionate Conservatism On the surface, the Republican Party appears to be better poised now than at any time since Calvin Coolidge. Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress for more than a decade (interrupted briefly by Senator James Jeffords's defection in mid-2001), occupied the White House for the last five years, and held a majority of governorships since the 1994 elections. In short, the GOP has come a long way since 1968 or 1980.So why are Republicans feeling so sour in 2006? Having now held power in Congress for over a decade, there is a sense that the corruption-fighting...

The Bush administration is now entangled in a risky new diplomatic venture in the Middle East -- and one with huge potential pitfalls even if Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice succeeds in negotiating a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in the days ahead, according to several former diplomats and specialists with long experience in the region. The controversial U.S. position -- which has pitted Washington against most European and Arab allies that pressed unsuccessfully for an immediate cease-fire -- also reflects a shift back to the Bush administration's first-term strategy, foreign policy specialists said. With Rice at the helm of...

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda. The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The president has yet to...

A Window of Opportunity July 20, 2006 National Review Online Michael Ledeen 9/11 happened when Osama bin Laden looked at us, and thought we were ready to be had. We were politically divided, and squabbling over everything. We clearly were not prepared to take casualties in direct combat. The newly elected president seemed unable to make a tough decision. And so Osama attacked, expecting to deliver a decisive blow to our national will, expecting we would turn tail and run, as we had in Somalia, and expecting he would then be free to concentrate his energies on the defeat of...

By Andrew C. McCarthy On May 31, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the startling announcement that the United States would end a decades-old policy of refusing to engage in direct negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The shift appeared to run directly counter to the “Bush Doctrine” first articulated by the president in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. That doctrine, highlighted with great moral clarity a year later in “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” asserts that: “The United States will make no concessions to terrorist demands and strike no deals with them. We...

There is as much relief from realists as there is disappointment from neo-Wilsonians over a perceived change in U.S. foreign policy — what Time magazine clumsily dubbed “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy.” It is true that there is now a regrettable new quietism about promoting democracy in the Middle East . And the United States also insists on multiparty talks with the ghoulish regimes in North Korea and Iran , in a fashion that purportedly seems much different from the go-it-alone caricature of 2001/2.

All the good feeling at the White House at President Bush's early birthday party on July 4 couldn't hide the fact that the president finds himself in a world of hurt....

Well, the Japanese are finally starting to return to adulthood. Since the end of WWII and their subsequent loss of the war to the US, Japan has been slowly evolving from the dependent child to the loud but unsure teen. Now they are about to become adults, once again, ready to step out fully on their own. And we have the psychotic, idiot that China allows to oppress the North Koreans, Kim Jong-il, to thank for this transformation. Japan has announced that it is considering the prudent step of preemptive strikes against North Korean missile launches. “Japan has warned it...

In the span of four years, the Bush Administration has been forced to rethink the pre-emptive "Bush doctrine" by which it hoped to remake the world, as the strategy's ineffectiveness was exposed by the very policies it prescribed, TIME's Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar report in this weeks cover story on 'The End of Cowboy Diplomacy' on newsstands Monday, July 9th. President George W. Bush came to office pledging to focus on domestic issues and pursue a "humble" foreign policy that would avoid the entanglements of the Bill Clinton years. After Sept. 11, however, the Bush team embarked on...

Bush: I'd rather be right than popular President, wife sit down for wide-ranging birthday interview WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush isn't troubled by some of the weakest approval ratings of his presidency, he said Thursday in a wide-ranging birthday interview with CNN's "Larry King Live." "When history looks back, I'd rather be judged as solving problems and being correct, rather than being popular," Bush said. "The president that chases the opinion poll is the president that will have failed policy," Bush said in an exclusive joint interview along with his wife, Laura, at the White House. Some members of Congress...