Free Republic

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo has written a strong and sobering essay at his website, UnderstandingTheThreat, called "Unfit for Duty." It argues that two senior Trump administration officials, HR McMaster and Sebastian Gorka, are "catastrophically wrong" in their assessment of Islam as publicly stated and that this is "leading America down a disastrous road towards defeat." I agree. However, the problem is much, much larger than that. It is true that the statements (excerpted below) of both men serve to sever the logical, in fact, blatant connections between Islam and what I will call Hot Jihad (terrorism, war) and...

Dear Victor Davis Hanson, You suggest in your syndicated column, "Harry Reid: A McCarthy for Our Time," that we "ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) the same question once posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy by U.S. Army head-counsel Joseph N. Welch: 'Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?'" First, I would like to ask you a question: Are you aware of the context of Welch's showboating remarks? M. Stanton Evans did the spadework in "Blacklisted by History," his groundbreaking -- no, orbit-reversing -- book about the late Sen....

Imagine, pre-9/11/12, that you were responsible for arranging the defense of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Would you have considered American interests and personnel best protected by bringing in a local security outfit called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade? The question has yet to come up in House hearings, but I think it holds the key to the Obama administration’s betrayal of the American people in “Benghazi-gate.” To an American with common sense not subverted by advanced degrees, the thought of putting Islamic “martyrs” in charge of American “infidels” in Benghazi – which, fun fact, literally means “city of...

To keep former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna behind bars until 2024 for the "unpremeditated murder" of an insurgent during the war in Iraq, U.S. military prosecutors have resorted to strange and disturbing twists of law, logic and morality. They were all on display again this week in Behenna's final plea before the military's highest court of appeals in Washington, D.C. It was enough to make the gold eagle on top of the American flag in the courtroom shake and then hang its head. Or so I imagined while listening intently as questions from the five civilian judges began...

It would be nice to go fishing. It would be nice to worry about John Roberts. It would be really nice to think Karl Rove was worth worrying about. But something wholly distracting is going on. Must be that war on whatever it is, and its very real casualties. Barbecues smoke, kids come home from summer camp and ballplayers get busted for steroids. Life goes on. But does it really? I wondered this recently, as my laptop was profiled (or not) in an examination at an airport security checkpoint. Watching the guard wave a practically magic wand over every angle...

If Kafka met Monty Python, and George Orwell edited their collaboration, they might have come up with something like the following real-life exchange. It took place in an Australian court where two Christian pastors were found guilty of "religious vilification" of Muslims by lecturing to their flock on Islam -- a set-up that right away projects grimly satirical possibilities. At one point during the trial, defendant Daniel Scot began to read Quranic verses in his own defense. The Pakistani-born pastor hoped to prove to the judge that his discussion on the inferior status of women under Islam, for example, had...

hate women. Let me rephrase that: I hate "women" -- the ones who make a career of it, the feminists who like to blow things up and then cry as the pieces rain down, choking on the vapors. Such vapors filled the air, apparently, up at Harvard when big, bad Lawrence Summers -- Harvard's prez, who has just got to stop saying he's sorry -- declared in a meeting that the dearth of women in the hard sciences might have something to do, not so much with (yawn) male chauvinism, but with the innate differences between the sexes. "I felt...