Free Republic

Most Americans are unaware how close Russia and Ukraine came to ending the current war in April. Last March 27, Ukraine president Zelensky told his people "Our goal is obvious – peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible." He was hinting at what went unsaid: Ukraine and Russia, brokered by NATO member Turkey, reached a tentative fifteen-point peace plan to end the month old war. Key points were Russia withdraw from all Ukraine except for breakaway Donbas and Crimea. Ukraine would pass on future NATO membership, pledging neutrality between Russia and NATO....

It's not just Trump's strike at Syria. A new generation of veterans in Congress, led by Mike Gallagher, are calling for a return to order. After World War II, the United States created an international system aimed at preventing the kinds of catastrophic conflicts that consumed the first half of the 20th century. This system was underwritten by hard power such as the American nuclear arsenal and the NATO alliance. Yet, underneath those foundations, the American-backed order was really about maintaining norms of international behavior. Throughout the Cold War, successive administrations from both political parties realized that the United States...

That buildup has been going on for some time. For the past two years, the government opposition in Syria has been getting aid from the U.S., which has smuggled surface-to-air missiles and other heavy weaponry into Syria through Turkey. Along with arms, the U.S. has supplied fighters for the conflict, drawing mainly from al-Qaida-linked militias in Libya and elsewhere. This operation was at the root of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. The Obama Administration has been working to cover up the facts about Benghazi not just because of the glaring incompetence of...

There is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan. The Center for Defense Information said a few months ago that we had spent over $400 billion on the war and war-related costs there. Now, the Pentagon says it will cost about $1 billion for each 1,000 additional troops we send to Afghanistan. One Republican Member from California told me recently that we could buy off every warlord in Afghanistan for $1 billion. Fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this spending. Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit spending at home should not support it in...

One of the more unusual attractions of Pakistan, Darra is the gun factory of the Tribal Areas, located 35 kilometres south of Peshawar on the road to Kohat, a drive of about 40 minutes. To visit the gun factories, foreigners need a permit from the Home Secretary of NWFP whose office is in the civil Secretariat on Police Road. Apparently the effective control of the government is somewhat limited and it seems to be possible to just go and pay the gun-people some money. The Darra people are loving people. The take pride in reciving foreign tourists.Take a minibus from...

LONDON, July 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – A U.S. author has launched a blistering attack on U.S. president George W. Bush’s war on terror, a U.K. newspaper reported Wednesday. In his latest book titled Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated, Gore Vidal raised several question marks, U.K. daily newspaper the Daily Mirror reported. The outspoken 76-year-old said the U.S. provoked the September 11 attacks with its own military intervention in countries around the world, the paper said. Staunch democrat Vidal, a former White House aide to John F. Kennedy, insisted the U.S. should...

December 30, 2005 - The argument over whether President Bush has the authority to direct the National Security Agency to listen in on the conversations of suspected terrorists on US soil is split primarily into two camps; those who believe we are engaged in a war for our very survival against radical Islam and those who believe – and always have – that terrorism operates under a set of rules that govern its actions and therefore should be treated as a law enforcement issue. This is just another example of why there should have been a formal declaration of war...