Free Republic

Last week's successfully concluded Iran agreement is one of the two most important achievements of an otherwise pretty dismal Obama presidency. Along with the ongoing process of normalizing relations with Cuba, this move shows that diplomacy can produce peaceful, positive changes. It also shows that sometimes taking a principled position means facing down overwhelming opposition from all sides and not backing down. The president should be commended for both of these achievements. The agreement has reduced the chance of a U.S. attack on Iran, which is a great development. But the interventionists will not give up so easily. Already they...

“The U.S. Empire received a big boost from the 9/11 attack.” Former Rep. Ron Paul, the father of presidential candidate Rand Paul and past two-time candidate for the Republican nomination himself, writes in his new book that he believes “Zionism has played a role in our post-9/11 march toward empire.” Paul’s book, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity, was released last Friday. “Zionism has played a role in our post-9/11 march toward empire, and its influence has encouraged extreme interference in the Middle East,” Paul writes in a chapter entitled “Making America...

On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel. Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did — to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule. On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that...

On Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank attacked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a “rotten pig,” a “fraud,” and a “Sarah Palin phenomenon.” “I love writing about him. Yeah, the man is a rotten pig but good for our business, and yes, it is a guilty pleasure,” Milbank said. He added, “This is a perfectly legitimate story for media to be covering. It’s justified by the polls and what is this man doing but holding up a mirror to our political system? He knows how to work the media. He knows how to work the Republican...

"@Brainbow_Bite: @realDonaldTrump I AGREE WITH PAT BUCHANAN THAT YOU SIR ARE A MAN OF ACTION!" Thank you!

Donald Trump, the bombastic builder of Trump towers and Trump gambling casinos, is moving from his reality TV show to the theater of presidential elections. If he survives the first three months of mass media drubbing him and his notorious affliction of ‘leaving no impulsive opinion behind,’ he’s going to be trouble for the other fifteen or so Republican presidential candidates. Already the commentators have derided his massive egotitis – he said “I” 195 times in his announcement speech, not counting the 28 times he said “my” or “mine” or the 22 mentions of “me.” But Trump revels in self-promotion...

At the declaration by Donald Trump that he is a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, media elites of left and right reacted with amusement, anger and disgust. Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say, Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take Trump seriously. They should. Not because he will be nominated, but because the Trump constituency will represent a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class of politicians and press. Votes for Trump will be votes to repudiate that class, whole...

The 2016 presidential election is attracting an unusually large number of hopefuls. The Republicans will probably field more than a dozen candidates and the Democrats, as many as five. Presently, very few of these supposed contenders have a real chance of becoming president. Republicans Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz are long shots. On the Democratic side, that term applies to everyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton.. ~snip~ If you tell them in private, "You do not have a chance to be president," they will point to underdogs who won, such as Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, or front-runners who...

<p>Now and then I get letters and e-mail messages asking why I am so "obsessed" with Jews and Israel. The question amuses me. It would be one thing if I often wrote about Mali, or Honduras, or Borneo, or any other nation or country most people remember only as a name from geography class.</p>

Welcome to the big leagues. That’s the message several top GOP operatives say Rand Paul will get from the Republican establishment, and from the media, when he announces his candidacy for the presidency on Tuesday. These onlookers believe that Paul, who has been a media darling and a ubiquitous presence on the airwaves since his election in 2010, has gotten a pass from the press. In their eyes, he’s been allowed to skate past one controversy after another in part because he’s been a vocal critic of the Republican party. “The media treats him better than they treat other Republicans,”...

America, we have a problem. In the blood-soaked chaotic Middle East, with few exceptions like the Kurds, our friends either can't or won't fight. The Free Syrian Army folded. The U.S.-armed Hazm force in Syria has just collapsed after being routed by the al-Nusra Front. The Iraqi army we trained and equipped fled Mosul and ran all the way to Baghdad. The Turks could annihilate ISIS in Syria, but they won't fight. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs have sent zero troops to fight ISIS. A handful of air strikes is it. Now consider what our old enemies have done...

Dear Pat: Although I did enjoy your book Death of the West, for 15 years since I've watched you plunge deeper-and-deeper-and-deeper into your hermetically-sealed isolationist world... so deep, you'll contort into a pretzel -and say just about anything- to defend it. Here's some news for you: 1- It's not our job to decipher whether Iran 'means it' or not when they threaten to destroy Israel... same as it's not our duty (nor problem) to have to try and guess whether the Russians' various plutonium-encrusted threats are actually 'serious'. It's IRAN's and RUSSIA's responsibility to grow-up, drop the trash-talk... or simply learn to shut...

Hope the link works Video at link.

Vladimir Putin has said there was nothing bad about the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the non-aggression treaty which led to the carve-up of Poland at the outset of the Second World War, suggesting Britain and France were to blame for Adolf Hitler's march into Europe. […] Mr. Putin said that Western historians today try to “hush up” the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which France and Britain—led by Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister—appeased Adolf Hitler by acquiescing to his occupation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. […] Mr. Putin appeared to think Moscow’s own agreement with Hitler—the 1939 Nazi-Soviet or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—was fine, however. “Serious research...

Nusra Front is the Sunni Muslim al-Qaida offshoot which is currently fighting the Iranian-backed axis of Bashar Assad and Hezbollah in Syria. Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war, according to The Wall Street Journal. The prominent American newspaper reported that Nusra Front, the Sunni Muslim al-Qaida offshoot which is currently fighting the Iranian-backed axis of Bashar Assad and Hezbollah, "hasn't bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer" along the Golan Heights.

As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a "United States of Europe" was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe's example. There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin America Union of the Mercosur trade partnership. In an essay, "The E.U. Experiment Has Failed," Bruce Thornton of Hoover Institution makes the case that the verdict is in, the dream is dead, the EU is unraveling, One Europe is finished. Consider, first, economics. In 2013,...

If the sadists of ISIS are seeking -- with their mass executions, child rapes, immolations, and beheadings of Christians -- to stampede us into a new war in the Middle East, they are succeeding. Repeatedly snapping the blood-red cape of terrorist atrocities in our faces has the Yankee bull snorting, pawing the ground, ready to charge again. "Nearly three-quarters of Republicans now favor sending ground troops into combat against the Islamic State," says a CBS News poll. The poll was cited in a New York Times story about how the voice of the hawk is ascendant again in the GOP....

Columnist Pat Buchanan said that while the White House’s summit on violent extremism didn’t do anything “ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States of America” on Friday’s “McLaughlin Group.” “I don’t think the summit did a thing, John. But let me say this, ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States of America. If it’s a threat over there, it’s to the Sunni countries, and they’re going to have to man up and deal with it, and provide the troops without whom there’s going to be no victory” he stated.

Hopefully, the shaky truce between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela Merkel, will hold. For nothing good, but much evil, could come of broadening and lengthening this war that has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians. The longer it goes on, the greater the casualties, the more land Ukraine will lose, and the greater the likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of France on the doorstep of Europe. Had no truce been achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced to surrender...

Contrary to popular belief, there is no satisfaction in being able to say, “I told you so.” This is especially so with Iraq, where recent events are enough to sicken one’s stomach. Yet it still must be said: those who opposed the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003 — not to mention his father’s war on Iraq in 1991 and the sanctions enforced through the administration of Bill Clinton — were right. The noninterventionists predicted a violent unraveling of the country, and that’s what we’re witnessing. They agreed with Amr Moussa, chairman of the Arab League,...