Sometimes a little historical context can put current events in perspective. Two weeks after the fall of Kabul, the United States successfully extracted over 120,000 Americans and Afghans from the capital. But thirteen American servicemen and women were killed in a terrorist attack during the high-risk mission to protect the ongoing airlift. Two weeks after […]

It’s amazing how America’s national security landscape changed in just four years. With the Islamic State on the ropes after the fall of Mosul, in February 2017 defense expert Andrew Exum proclaimed, “Donald Trump will defeat ISIS and it will mostly be due to the work of his predecessor.” But with Trump’s successor just weeks […]

That Donald Trump betrayed America's Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS should come as no surprise; Trump betrays everyone sooner or later. But Trump's treachery in codifying Turkey's ethnic cleansing of the Kurds across the Syrian border is different in kind and degree. After all, agreeing with President Erdogan that the Turks "had to […]

Mitt Romney has never missed an opportunity to be an opportunist. Romney the leveraged buyout pioneer took advantage of the U.S. tax code to pocket tens of millions of dollars from investments in companies that failed. Mitt the mythical Massachusetts moderate transformed himself into the "severely conservative" 2012 presidential nominee by turning his back on […]

By now, most Americans know not to take former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at his word. The Fox News regular and failed GOP presidential candidate, after all, is on his third religion and his third wife. (Callista Bisek, currently Mrs. Gingrich No. 3 and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, was previously known as Newt's "frequent […]

In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Republicans were shocked--SHOCKED--to find that President Trump was providing air cover for neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Declaring "there can be no moral ambiguity," House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted, "White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for." Mitt Romney, the GOP's […]

The end is nigh for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. To be sure, ISIS affiliates in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere will remain dangerous. And its fighters and sympathizers will continue to launch terror attacks in Europe and the United States for years to come. But the writing is on the wall for […]

The grief and suffering of the families of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 must be unbearable and interminable. Only someone with the most hardened heart would fail to understand their pain and anguish. But that doesn't mean the latest efforts of some of the relatives, enthusiastically supported by Republican hardliners, to […]

And now for some friendly advice for my Republican friends. If you want to criticize President Obama on anything having to do with Iran, don't waste your energy seething about "Iran" and "ransom" and "hostages" and what Ronald Reagan would do. It won't end well for you. After all, it wasn't Reagan's inauguration that secured […]

One day after the horror in Munich, German authorities are still assembling a fuller picture of the 18-year-old assailant who killed 9 people in a shopping mall there. With the revelations that the gunman was a seriously depressed loner who had researched past school shootings including Columbine and Virginia Tech, it appears increasingly likely his […]