Free Republic

As America debates whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan, in the ninth year of a war for ends we cannot discern, a riveting new history recalls times when Americans fought for vital national interests. "A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent" is Robert Merry's brilliant biography and history of that time. Merry goes far toward righting the injustice done by historians who have denied this great man his place in the pantheon of presidents, because they believe "Jimmy Polk's War" to have been a war...

Over the last two years, I have found increasing numbers of conservatives deeply concerned by U.S. military intervention in Iraq. They voted for and admire President Bush, but were profoundly disturbed by his second inaugural address pledging to spread democracy worldwide. Now, there is an important new book that eloquently puts in perspective their alarms about America's course in the post-Cold War world. Sands of Empire by Robert W. Merry, a respected Washington journalist, warns of the United States as the ''Crusader State'' transporting American exceptionalism around the world. The book, to be published this month, contends this crusade threatens...