Free Republic

Another scandal for the "scandal-free" Obama administration. Not all ICE targets work construction or smuggle drugs. Some are key figures in the Dem machine. But the era of Obama corruption is over. There's a new sheriff in town. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this week arrested two millionaire fugitives from Ecuador whose family donated heavily to American political campaigns. Roberto and William Isaías, 74 and 75, were detained Wednesday in Miami and taken to a detention facility for undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation, The New York Times reported Friday. ICE told the Times that the brothers were “unlawfully present” in...

Ukraine and Taiwan are proxy fights over the soul of American foreign policy: does it exist to protect America's security interests, or everyone else's?If you thought for one moment that the embarrassing multi-decade debacle in Afghanistan would lead to some soul-searching from the failed interventionists responsible for America’s 21st-century Vietnam, think again. Instead of taking a step back to understand exactly why and how their grandiose plans to use the mightiest military in history to impose a top-down, secular, Western-style democracy didn’t quite pan out, they’re doubling down on failure.When you’re a hammer, everything is a nail, and when you’re...

There’s no nice way to say this, but somebody has to: There have been a lot of bad reactions on the right to the Afghanistan calamity.em>(Watch the video for the monologue and an interview with WMAL and The Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese on the how we can fix our foreign policy.)The war in Afghanistan is finally at its end. It was a catastrophe and a mess — a mess that some of us saw up close, a mess that some of us are still living through in Kabul — and a mess that cost many lives.There’s no nice way to...

That the decrepit state of planning in the leadup to a known and announced withdrawal deadline persists so late in the game is unforgivable.That the decrepit state of planning in the leadup to a known and announced withdrawal deadline persists so late in the game is unforgivable. …U.S. officials have insisted the military will be able to keep terrorism threats in check through what’s known as over-the-horizon operations, or those launched from outside the country. But plans for exactly how those operations will work and where those troops could be based are still being crafted. The United States does not...

In the end, all America’s troops and dollars can’t build a cohesive, peaceful democracy out of nothingness. The future of Afghanistan needs to be up to the Afghan people.Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., is speaking out in favor of extending America’s longest war, even as most Americans overwhelmingly favor pulling out of Afghanistan. Kinzinger recently gave an interview to NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” in which he lamented America’s looming withdrawal from Afghanistan and compared the 20-year war to a simple peacekeeping mission.“I’m proud of the American people for sticking by this mission for 20 years. We actually needed...

Al-Shabaab does not pose a threat to America that cannot be handled more effectively by our global intelligence networks and ability to strike direct threats to our country.On Dec. 4, President Trump ordered most of the approximately 700 U.S. troops out of Somalia. The move wasn’t a full withdrawal, however, as the White House specified the forces will be moved to neighboring countries to continue targeting the al-Shabaab terror group. While addressing the tactical actions our troops would continue to perform in Africa, there was no mention of the strategic justification for our presence—because there is none. Al-Shabaab is unquestionably...

Any person or foreign entity that interfered in the 2020 election is on notice.The 2020 Election was full of fraud and deceit. Numerous actions have been uncovered by private citizens related to the election. Soon the Director of National Intelligence (DNI John Ratcliffe) is required to release his report which is to cover an inventory of all known acts of foreign intervention into the 2020 election. Based on what we know to date, this report should have a litany of observations and evidence.We reported previously how the DNI’s report due on December 18 (45 days from the 2020 election) could...

One factor in a bunch of Americans opting for Donald Trump in 2016 was his promise not to start a new war in the Middle East — but the D.C. establishment secretly kept troops in Syria, and lied about it to the president.Defense One, a subsidiary of The Atlantic, came out with a story last week about a man named Jim Jeffrey. If you haven’t heard of him, don’t feel bad, but he’s pretty important in Washington, D.C. Under his fancy title, he’s been appointed to oversee the U.S. fight against ISIS and what are supposed to be the limited...

A reprioritization of America’s strategic interests would cement the legacy of the first president in the era of great-power rivalry.n a recent memo advocating a swift U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller gave shape to the fundamental political stand of the Trump administration—realism and restraint. “We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end,” the memo read. This comes after a rapid purge in the last couple of weeks, in which President Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark...

A recent Foreign Affairs essay predictably gives the public a false binary choice, blames the current administration, and defends the foreign policy establishment. Who do you think is responsible for the current coronavirus foreign influences fiasco? If you ask the Washington foreign policy establishment, the answer is evident. It is President Trump’s disdain for “the foreign policy establishment” that has led to this current crisis.This is their same answer for every problem humanity has faced since 2016. If only we listened to the establishment! If only they learned their lesson in 2016. Apparently not, if you go by the Foreign...

That President Trump had to make this call, how, and the mortal danger to American assets it presents, illustrate exactly why U.S. forces should not spend a day longer in Iraq. President Donald Trump’s order to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad was the right call. At the same time, that he had to make this call, how he had to make it, and the mortal danger to American assets it presents, illustrate exactly why U.S. forces should not spend a day longer in Iraq than necessary to end our long-dwindling interests.Iran needed to learn a hard, swift lesson....

Now Iran knows America is unconstrained by politically correct rules of engagement, and no longer acting out of delusions about bribing a jihadist regime into peace. On New Year’s Eve, Iran-backed militias attempted to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, engaging in an unsuccessful act of war as American forces secured the compound. In the aftermath, President Trump warned Iran that it would “be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities,” and “pay a very BIG PRICE. This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei...

The best way to neutralize Iran is to have them overstretch. An older, forgotten grand strategy where adversaries bleed each other is in the Western interest. Here’s all one needs to know about what is happening in Iraq: As France 24 reported, “Iraqi security forces made no effort to stop the protesters as they marched to the heavily-fortified Green Zone after a funeral held for those killed in the US air strikes, letting them pass through a security checkpoint leading to the area.” Consider that for a moment, and let the anger surge through your veins.These are the same people...

Chinese activity beyond its borders does not inherently threaten America. The twin narratives of Trump ‘abandoning’ the Middle East and any Chinese presence as a threat to America are false. While his critics claim the president “eyes the exits” from the Middle East, they excoriate him for “abdicating a strong U.S. role” in the region, which some claim is enabling China’s rise. This common characterization of Trump’s foreign policy may be worrisome, but it is also demonstrably wrong.Far from eyeing the exits, Trump continues a concerning trend of deepening U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. As important, Chinese activity...

Media figures are lying about Tuesday's attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Why? You can tell that the Obama administration’s legacy in the Middle East is in danger because the media, as the self-appointed janitors of that legacy, have gone into overdrive obfuscating the timing, context, and significance of this week’s attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad. Although President Donald Trump has gone a long way to dismantling Obama’s legacy in the region, much more remains to be done, including a halt to American taxpayer money that has been flowing into Iranian-controlled governments in Iraq and Lebanon.Earlier...

Three years gone, thousands of lives lost, tens of billions in debt-funded spending, and we’re right back where we started, with a permanent entanglement in the longest war in U.S. history. President Trump plans to pull about 4,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan early in 2020, officials in his administration reported in mid-December, a partial withdrawal that would put American force levels in our longest war exactly where they were when Trump entered office. Three years gone, thousands of American and Afghan lives lost, tens of billions in debt-funded spending, and we’re right back where we started, with an apparently permanent...

“How to stop a civil war” says the cover of the latest Atlantic magazine. I can suggest a fix: the international community should intervene in the US. Of course Americans have a right to self-determination but the priority now is saving democracy.

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. "On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged...

Talk about your Hobson's Choice . . . on today's Morning Joe, Nicolle Wallace, citing GOP consultants, suggested that--other than social conservatives--Republicans concerned with foreign policy should consider supporting Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Hillary supporter Harold Ford, Jr. could be heard chiming in with a "well said." Wallace was echoing the argument laid out by Joe Scarborough: that on a range of issues from foreign intervention to Israel, taxing the rich to breaking up the banks, Clinton's positions are closer to those of the GOP establishment than Trump's. But Joe, Nicolle and those Republican consultants are forgetting one overriding...

NEW DELHI: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama can now expect help from an unexpected quarter — Lord Hanuman. All-India Congress Committee member Brij Mohan Bhama has organised a 11-day religious ceremony at Karol Bagh here for his success in the U.S. elections. The idea of sending an idol of Hanuman dawned on him after friends in the United States mentioned a “prominent American politician who carried a miniature Hanuman idol in his pocket for luck,” Mr. Bhama said speaking on the first day of the ceremony on Tuesday. “After hearing that, I decided to gift Mr. Obama a larger, gold-plated...