Latest Article from Jeff Jacoby

Iraq's new birth of freedom

March 10, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

This week's parliamentary elections in Iraq brought 12 million voters to the polls -- a remarkable 62 percent turnout, notwithstanding a vicious wave of Election Day bombings that killed 38 people and destroyed several buildings in Baghdad.

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Latest Article from Judith Miller

Against All Odds - In Iraq and Hollywood

March 8, 2010  •  Fox News

Yesterday was a good day for Iraq, and for imitation Iraq, or Hollywood. For both the Green Zone and the Red Carpet, the odds were defied, the critics upended.

In Iraq, over 70 percent of Iraqis eligible to vote turned out – compared to a 63 percent turnout during last year's hotly contested American presidential election -- despite a spasm of morning violence designed to keep voters home. Defying attacks which killed at least 36 people, Iraqis of all religions and ethnicities filled more than 50,000 voting booths in over 8,000 polling stations to cast ballots for hundreds of candidates.

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Latest Article from Frederick M. Hess

Disappointing First Leg in Education's Big Race

March 8, 2010  •  National Review Online

Amid much fanfare, the president last year launched the Department of Education's "Race to the Top" (RTT). Funded with $4.35 billion in stimulus dollars, the competitive grant program urged states to comply with 19 federal priorities and dramatically expanded Uncle Sam's role in school reform. And, as opposed to the first $100 billion in education stimulus spending, the president promised in the State of the Union that RTT would reflect a new sensibility: "Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform."

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Latest Article from Michael Rubin

The Afghanistan Withdrawal
Why Obama Was Wrong to Insist on a Deadline

March 8, 2010  •  Public Square

On December 1, after months of careful deliberation, President Obama announced a surge strategy for Afghanistan. "As Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan," he told an assembled crowd at West Point, and "after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home."

The surge in Afghanistan was modeled after the successful strategy that President Bush implemented in Iraq. Indeed, in the quote offered by Stephen Schlesinger, Obama drew parallels to the Iraq experience. By enunciating a start date for a withdrawal, however, Obama undercut the utility and effectiveness of his surge.

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Latest Article from Clare M. Lopez

SEALs Case Shows How Terrorists Use 'Lawfare' to Undermine U.S.

March 8, 2010  •  Human Events

The use of our democratic system and the rule of law by those whose intent is to destroy our civilization is a cynical tactic that Americans ought to be smart enough to see straight through.

Islamic jihadis are manipulating Western-style legal systems everywhere to their own benefit while we, the founders of those systems, are floundering in a morass of moral relativism, multicultural meaninglessness, and a deplorable amnesia about the genuine worth of our own heritage, traditions, and values.

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Latest Article from Soner Cagaptay

Who lost Ergenekon
The view from Washington

March 7, 2010  •  Hurriyet Daily News

When the Ergenekon case started in 2007 based on allegations of a coup plot against the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government, Washington agreed: "this is serious stuff." Three years, two hundred arrests, hundreds of house raids and wiretaps and a 5,800-page indictment later, with no verdict in sight, Washington now asks with a skeptical eye: "What is all this about?"

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Latest Article from Judith H. Dobrzynski

Taking the High Line: the art park that rivals MoMA

March 6, 2010  •  The Art Newspaper

If exhibition attendance were the sole measure of curatorial clout, Lauren Ross, 39, would rank almost as high as the chief curator of MoMA in the New York art world—and she doesn't even work for a museum.

Her curatorial domain is the High Line, the elevated park that courses through New York's meatpacking district from Chelsea to the West Village. Since section one (Gansevoort Street to 20th Street) opened in June 2009, it has attracted around two million visitors; if that pace continues, it could near MoMA's 2008-09 total of 2.8 million. Although many visit for the greenery and the view, the park's contemporary art installations are increasingly stealing the limelight.

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Latest Article from Clifford May

This War Would Be Hell, Too

March 4, 2010  •  Scripps Howard News Service

If a top intelligence expert said America was not prepared for war and, indeed, that if we went to war "we would lose," that would worry you, wouldn't it? Start worrying.

The expert is Mike McConnell, who served as director of the National Security Agency under President Clinton and as director of national intelligence under President Bush. He was referring not to a conventional war, a guerrilla war, or an insurgency. He was referring to a cyberwar. But understand: Cyberwar does not mean fun and video games. McConnell told a Senate committee last week that the risk we face from cyberattacks "rivals nuclear weapons in terms of seriousness."

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Latest from Tevi Troy's Blog

Scylla, Charybdis, or My Way

March 3, 2010 at 3:54 pm

By my count, President Obama's health-care speech today was at least his 40th speech focusing on health care; as part of his effort to push his health-care plan, he has had seven major "stop the presses" events on the subject: his White House health-care forum last March; his ABC infomercial with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer in June; the joint session of Congress speech in September; his State of the Union address in January; last Monday's release of his new eleven-page proposal; the health-care summit last Thursday; and now his 1:45 pm speech today.

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Latest Article from Jonathan Schanzer

$150 Million for Yemeni 'Encouragement'
America won't get much for its money

March 2, 2010  •  The Washington Times

"Yemen's willingness... to confront the serious threat al Qaeda poses to the nation's stability has been inconsistent in the past, but our recent intensive engagement appears to have had positive results."

That was the State Department's assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey D. Feltman, at congressional hearings on Yemen earlier this month. He repeatedly assured the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he was "encouraged" by Yemen's new attitude.

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