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With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian troops into Crimea, our war hawks are breathing fire. Russophobia is rampant and the op-ed pages are ablaze here. Barack Obama should tune them out and reflect on how Cold War presidents dealt with far graver clashes with Moscow. When Red Army tank divisions crushed the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956, killing 50,000, Eisenhower did not lift a finger. When Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall, JFK went to Berlin and gave a speech. When Warsaw Pact troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, LBJ did nothing. When, Moscow ordered Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski to smash...

There may be no way for the United States to reverse the Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. The Obama administration still has the opportunity to send a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin to punish Moscow for this aggression in response to the ouster of one of their stooge in Kiev by a popular uprising. Indeed, he would do well to listen to the advice of Senator Marco Rubio who outlined eight steps the U.S. should take in response to the crisis. But whether or not the president acts appropriately now, it’s probably too late to preserve the...

It happens after every war. America disarms. And so invites the next attack, and next war. The same haphazard pattern is emerging now -- even before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, much as this administration pretends they are in order to cut the defense budget. On both those fronts, the enemy is rushing to fill the vacuum left by the American withdrawal. This country's retreat has allowed al-Qaida, its branches and assorted allies and successors, whether the Taliban in Afghanistan or freelance terrorists in Iraq, to advance. At this rate, it may be only a matter of...

The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) is spearheading a return to the non-interventionist policies of Robert Taft of the 20s to the early 50s. Taft was defeated at the 1952 Republican National Convention for the nomination by Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is telling that Barry Goldwater attended that convention as an Eisenhower, not a Taft delegate. The neo-non-interventionists are destined for far more success in the Republican Party than any economic libertarian will ever find in the Democratic Party. As usual, history is instructive. Our Wars of 1812, Mexican-American and Spanish-American were strictly imperialistic. Our entry into WWI was engineered by...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Ron Paul Institute Blames America for Muslim Kenya Mall AttackPosted By Daniel Greenfield On September 30, 2013 @ 11:10 am In The Point | 56 Comments The Ron Paul Institute is not the institution to which Ron Paul has been committed. It’s the Ron Paul outlet. And it reflects his Blame America for Muslim Terror philosophy. What happened in Kenya is a terrorist act. But for Obama to tell the rest of the story would undermine his narrative and unravel Washington’s strange relationship with the al-Qaeda affilliated al-Shabaab organization that claimed responsibility for the...

The Force is strong with the isolationists this week. John Kerry: This is not the time for armchair isolationism. Bret Stephens: Most Republicans don’t want to become, again, the party of isolationists. Michael Gerson: Nations such as China, Russia and Iran would see this as the triumph of a political coalition between the peace party of the left and the rising isolationists of the right. Calling someone an isolationist isn’t a devastating quip or even an accurate descriptor. Rather it’s the answer to a question that’s been looming over the bombadiers of yesterday’s right: How do they effectively label their...

The Robert Taft Republicans Return - Isolationism has never served the interests of America, or the GOP. 'We'll be lucky to get 80 Republicans out of 230." That's an astute GOP congressman's best guess for how his caucus now stands on the vote to authorize military force against Syria. At town hall meetings in their districts, the congressman reports, House Republicans are hearing "an isolationist message." It's not America's war. The evidence that the Assad regime used chemical weapons is ambiguous, maybe cooked. There isn't a compelling national interest to intervene. "Let Allah sort it out." We'd be coming in...

The biggest question mark over Ron Paul has always been his affinity for unsavory wack jobs on the fringes of American politics, but these days he’s turning that question mark into an exclamation point. The Daily Beast reports that the ex-Texas Congressman is creating the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, a think tank concerned with what Paul considers important foreign policy and civil liberty issues. It appears that the institute’s board contains some truly bizarre characters: Putin shills, Serb genocide apologists, 9/11 truthers, and pro-Confederate loons. Here’s a summary of one of the members, John Laughland: A prominent...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Observing the correlation of forces in this city and the intensity of conviction in the base of each party, the outcome of the ongoing fiscal fight between Barack Obama and the Tea Party Republicans seems preordained. Deadlock. There will be no big jobs-for-taxes deal. The can will be kicked down the road into the next administration. A second truth is emerging. When the cutting comes, as it shall, the Pentagon will be first to ascend the scaffold. Why so? Consider. The Republican House cannot agree to tax increases without risking retribution from the base and repudiation by...

Republican congressman Ron Paul says the US is aiding and abetting Israel in Gaza through its financial and military support for Tel Aviv. "The weapons being used to kill so many Palestinians are American weapons, and American funds, essentially, are being used for this," said the congressman Friday. Israel launched an all-out war against the Gaza Strip and its democratically-elected ruler, the Hamas movement, to put an end to rocket attacks against southern Israel. At least 821 Palestinians have been killed during the operation and some 3,330 others are reported wounded. At least 10 Israeli troops have been killed during...

Jon Huntsman's presidential campaign is firing back at a top aide to Republican rival Tim Pawlenty who suggested Monday that Huntsman's skepticism about the ongoing U.S. mission in Afghanistan is "isolationist." In a Monday appearance on MSNBC, Pawlenty senior adviser Phil Musser previewed a "major" foreign policy speech that the former Minnesota governor is slated to deliver tomorrow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Musser said Pawlenty plans to "push back the isolationist strand that we are seeing in Republican Party," a remark that appeared to be aimed, in part, at Huntsman's call for swift troop reductions...

The debate was on public display Sunday as two of the GOP's leading figures on defense and foreign policy, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, criticized Republican presidential hopefuls and congressional leaders who question the country's military intervention around the world. "There has always been an isolationist strain in the Republican Party," McCain said on ABC's "This Week," "but now it seems to have moved more center stage.... That is not the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world." Graham said on NBC's "Meet the...

Via Playbook, John McCain raps the Republican presidential field for what he sees as an isolationist strain that's emerging as the candidates shift away from strict hawkishness on foreign policy, and which cropped up at the New Hampshire debate last Monday. From the pre-taped interview with "This Week:" McCAIN: “Well, I was more concerned about what the candidates in New Hampshire the other night said. This is isolationism. There's always been an … isolation strain on the Republican Party — that Pat Buchanan wing of our party. But now it seems to have moved more center stage, so to speak....

The 2012 presidential election cycle is underway. With the Democratic candidate a foregone conclusion, there is not much uncertainty about where the Democratic Party is going. For better or worse, Democrats will likely continue to “dance with who brung them,” meaning Barack Obama and his brand of 21st century liberalism. Not so on the Republican side. After historic defeats and victories in the past two elections, respectively, the Republican Party has yet to define itself for the future. It must come to grips with the fact that its miraculous comeback in 2010, after crushing defeats in the presidential and congressional...

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) told Sean Hannity tonight that he will announce his intent to run for President of the United States tomorrow. Ron Paul also praised notorious anti-Semite Michael Scheuer as someone he respects on foreign policy. And, of course, Ron Paul still blames the United States for Islamic extremism.

(CNN) – Former President George W. Bush is worried the U.S. might pull out of Afghanistan too early to the detriment of that country's women. In an interview with Fox News that aired Thursday, Bush warned that Afghan women will "suffer" should the Obama administration decide to downscale troop levels there. "My concern of course is that the United States gets weary of being in Afghanistan and says 'It's not worth it, let's leave' and Laura and I believe that if that were to happen, women would suffer again," he told Fox's Greta Van Susteren. "And we don't believe that's...

A discussion has brewed on the right concerning the War Powers of the Executive Branch. I have read both Woods' "smack down" (his words) and listened to Levin's reasoned debate on his radio show, as well as the relevant Federalist Papers, checking back to see who wrote them, and the constitution itself. I have also read Yoo's discussion and the argument for Bush's war powers in the area of the War on Terror. That said, I have no tolerance for the Ron Paul view, nor many of his followers, not because I'm a huge fan (student) of Mark Levin, but...

A three month old baby girl was stabbed to death along with most of her family on Friday. In the Israeli settlement of Itamar on the West Bank, at least one terrorist broke into the home of Ruth and Udi Fogel (35 and 36). The mother and father of six were brutally stabbed to death in their bed. The killer(s) then stalked from room to room and slayed three of six children - two boys, Yoav (11), Elad (3), and a three month old infant girl whose name was Hadas. “The children were literally slaughtered,” an IDF officer said, describing...

In the 1980’s the United States funded Iraq’s Saddam Hussein yet considered Palestine’s Yasser Arafat and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi terrorists. And they were. But so was Saddam, who at that time was terrorizing his own people, gassing Iraqi Kurds while receiving America’s financial and political support. In the 1990’s, the US declared Hussein a menace and we apparently changed our mind about Arafat, who was even invited to the White House to shake hands with Bill Clinton. In the 2000’s George W. Bush went back to calling Arafat a terrorist, went to war with Saddam, who we also began calling...

Anything Reps. Ron Paul (R., Tex.) and Barney Frank (D., Mass.) both support should give the rest of us pause. Their proposal to slash defense spending by $1 trillion over a decade — only the most recent joint effort by the new isolationists on the Left and Right to curtail American military strength around the world — is as foolhardy as it is unrealistic. Were such a policy enacted, the nation and the world would be set on a path not toward peace, but toward instability, conflict, and a lessening of freedom in many corners of the world. As the...