Free Republic

The difference between voting present and real leadership. (Big Hollywood) Yesterday, Sarah Palin called on NATO to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya. From her Facebook Page, via FOX Nation: It’s a little perplexing looking at the White House today. There was a statement on the horrible earthquake in New Zealand, and certainly our hearts go out to all those affected by this horrible natural disaster. But nothing on the slaughter in Libya? The protests in many places in the Middle East affect regimes that have cooperated with the U.S. on issues from peace with Israel, fighting al Qaeda, hosting...

Libyan rebels carry away a comrade wounded during fighting with forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on June 7. It was supposed to have been over in a few days. World powers would go in with fighter jets and the world's most sophisticated precision-guided weapons to render Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi powerless. But that's not the way things happened. As NATO's airstrikes crossed the 100-day mark, analysts blamed a host of faulty assumptions, including success based solely on surgical airstrikes, for a protracted war that some fear could drag on for more months. "It's absolutely wrong to think that...

In a speech at Colorado Christian College earlier this week, Sarah Palin laid out a five-point set of standards by which the United States should commit its troops to military action. Bearing the palpable influence of her new foreign policy adviser -- Peter Schweizer, a scholar at the conservative Hoover Institution who has been on SarahPAC's payroll for less than three weeks -- Palin's criteria for military action seemed at first glance to be less aggressive than the hawkish foreign policy she has consistently espoused. As recently as February, Palin had been among the first prominent Republicans calling for a...

It is considered unusual for a former governor who holds no public office and is not currently running for another to have a foreign policy adviser. But Sarah Palin, not known for being conventional, has chosen Peter Schweizer for that job. Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution with expertise in international relations, national security affairs, and the U.S. presidency. He is also the author of a number of books, including two on President Reagan, one on the Bush family, and a critique on the effects of big government on the world economy. Most recently, Schweizer published a...

Back in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama suggested that he'd violate the sovereignty of Pakistan in order to fight terrorism. His opponent, John McCain, scoffed. From the 2008 Time Capsule: During Friday's debate, Obama criticized the Bush administration for sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan without ridding the border region of terrorists. "If the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out," Obama added. McCain fired back hard, arguing that newly elected Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has had his...

In light of Obama’s morally indefensible and dyslexic policies regarding Egypt, Iran, Israel, Libya, and Syria, it is important that our eventual presidential nominee articulate a bold distinction in the realm of foreign policy. Conservative domestic policy doctrine is quite indubitable and lucid (except among many elected Republicans); limited government, free enterprise, protection of individual liberties, limitation of criminal liberties, secure borders, and a robust civil society. Foreign policy is more ambiguous because it is governed more by prudence than by doctrine. Even though the overarching principle of any foreign policy initiative is American exceptionalism, the murkiness of America’s security...

Whatever else you think of Sarah Palin, she has, since the 2008 presidential campaign, been a clear voice in favor of a robust American presence in the world, a defender of the Afghanistan war, a friend of Israel and a counterweight to neo-isolationist elements on the right. But careful observers of Palin noticed that recently she was sounding more like Obama’s liberal critics than the VP candidate who echoed Sen. John McCain’s forward-leaning foreign policy. She put out a statement on Facebook last week on Libya that can only be described as incoherent. It was hard to tell if she...

The big Sarah Palin news today is that she has lost her longtime foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. Scheunemann is a well-known neoconservative who worked for Jesse Helms and was intimately involved in the push for the Iraq war. He later became an aide to John McCain on the 2008 presidential campaign, where he met and linked up with Palin. He's been associated with her ever since. The question is: Why did they Scheunemann, who runs the lobbying firm Orion Strategies, leave Palin now?

Sarah Palin has parted ways with the neoconservative foreign policy advisers who had been writing speeches and advising her on policy since she joined the McCain campaign. An aide to Palin, Tim Crawford, confirmed that Orion Strategies' Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb are no longer working for her PAC. They parted, both sides said on good terms. "Randy flat out said, 'We can't give you the time,'" Crawford said. (snip) Crawford said they've been replaced by Peter Schweizer, a writer and fellow at the Hoover Institution who blogs regularly at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. The personnel shift carries an ideological...

Palin Doctrine? Sarah Palin spoke at a Tribute to the Troops at Colorado Christian University. "The Soldier fights not because he hates what's in front of him. But because he loves those and what's behind him!"....G.K. Chesterton 1. We should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interest are at stake.2. IF we have to fight, we fight to win. We use overwhelming force, we only send in our troop into war with the objective to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible: We do not send in our military to stretch out the mission with an open-ended...

Many have tired of Donald Trump hogging so many headlines as of late, so now it’s time to let that attention-starved potential Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin get some of her spotlight back. In her latest Facebook post, Palin unleashes a harsh assessment of President Obama’s Libya policy and throws out a few lines that should start to remind people that the bombastic Trump is not the only Republican who is ready to talk tough and who can legitimately bring the fight to Obama. Palin demands to know from Obama why exactly are we fighting in Libya, suggesting: “Between you...

Governor Palin posted the following Facebook note this morning: Please make up your mind, Mr. President. You can’t vacillate when spending America’s human and fiscal resources in yet another foreign country without good reason. You said that Libyan leader Gaddafi has got to go. Many of us heard that as your call to action and agreed, “Okay, you’re right. He’s an evil dictator who kills his own innocent people, so enforce a no-fly zone so he can’t continue an aerial slaughter.” But then you said our mission in Libya isn’t to oust Gaddafi after all. (Or vice versa on the...

Please make up your mind, Mr. President. You can’t vacillate when spending America’s human and fiscal resources in yet another foreign country without good reason. You said that Libyan leader Gaddafi has got to go. Many of us heard that as your call to action and agreed, “Okay, you’re right. He’s an evil dictator who kills his own innocent people, so enforce a no-fly zone so he can’t continue an aerial slaughter.” But then you said our mission in Libya isn’t to oust Gaddafi after all. (Or vice versa on the order or your statements. Between you and your advisers...

Please make up your mind, Mr. President. You can’t vacillate when spending America’s human and fiscal resources in yet another foreign country without good reason. You said that Libyan leader Gaddafi has got to go. Many of us heard that as your call to action and agreed, "Okay, you’re right. He’s an evil dictator who kills his own innocent people, so enforce a no-fly zone so he can’t continue an aerial slaughter." But then you said our mission in Libya isn’t to oust Gaddafi after all. (Or vice versa on the order or your statements. Between you and your advisers...

The U.S. and its allies should provide more air support and financial aid to Libyan rebels, Senator John McCain said in Benghazi after President Barack Obama sent armed Predator on missions over the nation. Those seeking to oust Muammar Qaddafi’s regime are “patriots who want to liberate their nation, they are not al- Qaeda,” McCain told a press conference today in the rebel capital city. The Arizona Republican said North Atlantic Treaty Organization states need to “urgently” increase close air support for rebel ground operations. He also said the rebels’ Transitional National Council should receive some of Qaddafi’s frozen assets...

Benghazi, Libya (CNN) -- Libyan opposition leaders received a major morale boost Friday as a top U.S. senator made a surprise visit to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and urged greater American involvement in the bloody campaign to oust longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi. The visit from Arizona Sen. John McCain came a day after the United States said it was deploying predator drones to Libya. (snip) He said he was against U.S. troops on the ground -- echoing Obama administration policy -- but argued that Western powers need to do more to "facilitate" the delivery of weapons and training for...

BENGHAZI, Libya -- The Libyan rebels fighting Muammar Qaddafi's forces are getting a shout out from U.S. Sen. John McCain, who is calling for increased military support, including providing weapons, training and giving close air support to the opposition on the battlefield. The Arizona Republican senator said at a news conference Friday in the rebels' stronghold in eastern Libya that all nations should recognize the opposition's Transitional National Council as the legitimate voice of the Libyan people. He said nations need to provide the council with "every appropriate means of assistance," including "command and control support, battlefield intelligence, training and...

Along the line of, “some things never change”, we have now entered a realm similar in to the passage of the Health Care Bill. Recall at that time, Madam Pelosi posited that because the bill was so large and unwieldy, and there was so little time to read it, it would be necessary to, “pass the bill, so we would know what was in it.” Now, at a time when the UN is full of itself in the absence of an American-interest protecting President of the United States, at a time when the world is waiting expectantly to see which...

Dismissing concerns over possible links between Libyan rebels and al Qaeda, the Obama administration has notified Congress it is providing $25 million in nonlethal aid to the rebels’ effort to drive Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s regime from power. “The president’s proposed actions would provide urgently needed nonlethal assistance to support efforts to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack in Libya,” said Joseph E. Macmanus, acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, in an April 15 letter. A copy of the letter, sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was obtained by The Washington Times.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday evening that he and a group of negotiators have “nailed down” language on a Libya resolution and are waiting for instructions from leadership on how to proceed. The measure would serve as a symbolic gesture of support for President Barack Obama’s use of military force in the North African country. Under the War Powers Act, Congress must authorize continued military presence in Libya after a May deadline if American troops are still active there, but it’s unclear if the Senate needs to act. “We pretty well got the resolution nailed down and now we’re...