Free Republic

President Bush is absolutely right to criticize sharply direct negotiations with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Barack Obama’s embrace of the idea of direct negotiations is both naïve and dangerous and should be a big issue in the campaign. The reason not to negotiate with Ahmadinejad is not simply to stand on ceremony or some kind of policy of non-recognition. It is based on the fundamental need to topple his regime by increasing the sense the Iranian people have — that he has isolated Iran from the rest of the world, to its severe and ongoing detriment. The Iranian regime is almost...

There is something unique about what has come to be called the War on Terror. In this conflict, as the U.S. government struggles to defeat the enemy and keep our people safe, it is up against not only those who overtly and unambiguously seek to destroy us. It also confronts those prepared to reveal classified information and programs, even when that makes it harder to vanquish our foes and protect this country. The latter fall into four principal categories: • Some call themselves "journalists" who work for traditional news organizations, notably the New York Times. On occasion, they win Pulitzer...

Today I had a private conversation with Douglas Feith and Frank Gaffney Jr. It came about due to a conference call that was arranged by the Center for Security Policy of which the latter is the President. The subject of the call was Feith's recent book War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism. Feith as you may recall was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy on 911. As such he was in the thick of things. Of all the players in the planning of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, few were...

Totalitarians have an uncanny appreciation for the subversive effect of foreign propagandists. The Nazis had Lord Haw-Haw, Imperial Japan its Tokyo Rose, the Soviets the World Council of Churches (among many others) and the North Vietnamese Jane Fonda. Now, our time’s totalitarian ideologues – the Islamofascists – have the New York Times. This may not seem to be exactly a news flash. After all, the Times has been rendering invaluable service to the enemy’s information operations and military campaigns for years. To cite but a few examples: In December 2005, the paper disclosed a highly classified program for monitoring suspected...

The Coughlin Affair By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. Monday, February 25, 2008 Imagine trying to fight a war without a clue as to what motivates your enemy or governs his strategy for your destruction. Actually, you don’t have to work too hard to get your head around such an insane idea; it is the current practice of the United States government. This is not, of course, the way it is supposed to be. According, for example, to the Pentagon’s own guidelines as reflected in the Army’s Field Manual 34-130 dealing with Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB), one of the...

Last month, the president announced his intention to sell Saudi Arabia some of our most sophisticated weapons. This is a bad idea, and you should let your representative know it right away. The proposed $20 billion deal includes “satellite-guided weaponry” and “high-tech munitions,” including 900 JDAM bombs. The JDAM is arguably the smartest “smart bomb” in our arsenal. Its electronics can “guide the bomb to its target regardless of weather.” And, it is also resistant to the jamming of its GPS system. According to Reuters, the deal appears to be part of an “effort to persuade Saudi Arabia . ....

CSP Decision Brief | Feb 11, 2008 Ironically, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Rowan Williams, who in his capacity of Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England. Our thanks are not due this cleric, however, for his appalling pronouncement last week that we had better get used to the imposition of Shariah law in Britain since it is now, in his words, "unavoidable." Rather, we should be appreciative because, by his declaration of capitulation to and appeasement of the Islamofascists – who agree with him on the inevitability of the triumph of the...

It is fitting that Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of tomorrow’s so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women. Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Ms. Rice’s conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Hitler and Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia. This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease...

Irony of ironies: The principal champion of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is the United States Navy. Yet predictably few organizations would suffer more than America's naval forces from a supranational government of the oceans empowered by U.S. accession to that treaty. The absurdity of this situation was on display last week as the Navy's former senior officer, retired Chief of Naval Operations Vernon Clark, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Adm. Clark waxed on about LOST as "a Magna Carta for the oceans that guarantees navigation freedoms throughout the world's largest maneuver space." The committee's ranking...

In recent days, the people of the United States have received to messages from afar - both involving the front known euphemistically as the "War in Iraq." The two messages offer Americans starkly different visions of our future and should be considered with care. One is the report by Army General David Petraeus, our senior commander in Iraq. At this writing, its thrust is known from a letter sent to his troops by their commanding officer. The text of his report has not yet been made public. The second is the videotape released last week by Osama bin Laden, leader...

There is no more important front in the global conflict best described as the "War for the Free World" than the struggle to determine the nature and future course of Islam. If Islamists seeking to impose their intolerant, repressive strain of the faith — more a totalitarian political ideology (Islamofascism) than a religion — on the rest of us (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) are able to prevail, we are condemned to the clash of civilizations forecast by Osama bin Laden. If, on the other hand, Muslims who reject that ideology — the anti-Islamists — succeed in offering their co-religionists an...

Conservatives Fight Over Islam Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Thursday, Feb. 20, 2003 WASHINGTON – A fierce, nearly three-week running battle of accusations and counter-accusations between two conservative icons has brought to the front burner a long-festering debate among President Bush’s supporters on how far the White House should go in seeking Islamic support. Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy and a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, has accused two White House officials – Ali Talbah and his predecessor Sukhail Khan – of putting President Bush in the company of “people who have made no...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and the U.S. likely will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report. The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts. "Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former U.S. Army chief of staff...

HH: From Eastern University, I’m Hugh Hewitt. Thanks for listening to the Hugh Hewitt Show. I’m here joined by a wonderful crowd of Eastern University students, faculty and friends, as well as by two people whom I greatly admire, and I cannot imagine two better people to debate, since they come at it from very different perspectives, the role of America in the world. Please join me in welcoming Frank Gaffney from the Center For Security Policy and Eastern University’s own Tony Campolo. (applause) Now when we put this together, I knew Tony may be the most persuasive center-left Evangelical...

PBS vs. "Islam vs. Islamist"By Bill SteigerwaldFrontPageMagazine.com | April 17, 2007 Canadian novelist and veteran documentary filmmaker Martyn Burke is not someone you'd expect to get into an ugly ideological spitting match with the folks who run PBS. Burke, who lives and works in the heart of the Hollywood creative community, considers himself neither conservative nor liberal. But "Islam vs. Islamist," the documentary he made about how moderate Muslims are being silenced and intimidated by Islamist extremists, will not be part of "America at a Crossroads," PBS's new 11-part, six-night series about post-9/11 America that begins Sunday night at 9....

With Al Gore winning an Oscar for propagandizing about an admittedly somewhat hyped threat of global warming, the convergence of Hollywood with public policy is indisputable. It seems appropriate, therefore, to use an old Tinsel Town marketing line to herald the advent of a portentous strategic development: "They're Baaack!" Presumably, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meant to be reassuring when she responded to a pointed question on Fox News Sunday about Russian threats to nuke Poland and the Czech Republic if the latter cooperate with the United States on missile defense. She declared, somewhat dismissively, to host Chris Wallace, "I...

(Washington, D.C.): Urban legend has it that populations of wild rodents known as lemmings periodically commit mass suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs. In fact, these critters do no such thing. It remains to be seen, however, whether American voters will this Fall do the functional equivalent of the lemming leap: Electing politicians who seductively promise retreat from a strategy of forward defense, thus imperiling large numbers of our countrymen abroad and possibly at home. The Defeatists No longer are such politicians found only on the far left of the Democratic Party. To be sure, MoveOn.org and its champions in...

The facts are sufficiently clear that we must begin to question the judgment, if not the motivations, of those at home who persist in trying to obscure the central threat we face from the totalitarian political ideology known as Islamofascism. In recent days, it has become harder than ever to deny the true nature of the conflict in which we find ourselves. As President Bush put it recently, "We are at war with Islamic fascists." To be sure, the mounting evidence does not preclude some from denying this reality. The facts are sufficiently clear, however, that we must begin to...

Dangerous ideologues cannot be appeased. They must be destroyed. Unfortunately, at virtually the same moment that Mr. Bush was helpfully clarifying what we are up against, his subordinates were busily handing Islamic fascists their greatest victory since they drove the United States out of Somalia in March 1994: an artificial and unsustainable ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Last week, the Bush Administration sent profoundly mixed signals about its attitude towards the War for the Free World and the enemies who threaten us and other freedom-loving peoples. On the one hand, there was the President's commendable reaction to the murderous plot...

Experts debate space-based BMD assets [More Usual Suspects] By JESSICA TAYLOR UPI, July 25, 2006 WASHINGTON, July 21 (UPI) -- A new report claims U.S. anti-ballistic missile defenses must be deployed in space to be effective, but critics disagree. Several analysts say the study is based on false pretenses and the deployment of defense mechanisms into space is not in national security interests. The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank, has issued a study saying the implementation of plans for space missile defense is critical for U.S. national security and an effective system against at least some...