It’s really nice that everybody is all worried about Syria now, at least for the next five minutes, because Bashar Assad decided to take a break from killing his people in other ghastly ways and decided to gas them. It’s all very shocking—if you haven’t been paying any attention to Syria for the past six […]
Tag Archives | al-Qaeda
The Poe Horizon
You have probably seen by now the viral Internet post about a fictional conversation between an Islamic terrorist and a Western “progressive.” I’ve received it a number of times in my e-mail and on social media, and I only just recently tracked down what seems to be its origin. It came from a Facebook post […]
Know Your Tropes for the Political Exploitation of Terrorism
On Sunday, President Obama gave us another dull, rote speech on terrorism in which he promised to stay the course on whatever it is he thinks he’s doing about ISIS. And then lectured us about our intolerance. It was notable for only one thing: the presidential adoption of the Exactly What ISIS Wants trope. You […]
Europe, Welcome to the ISIS Era
The “cartoon jihad” has returned, and this time around it has claimed four French cartoonists. This morning, the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French newsmagazine, were attacked by gunmen who shouted the usual “Allahu akbar,” but also: “We have avenged the prophet.” Among the killed were four of France’s most famous political cartoonists: […]
The Wish-Fulfilling Prophecy
Top Stories of the Year: #2 Some of us have been warning for years that President Obama is undermining all the pillars of US foreign policy, which would lead to disaster. This second biggest story of this year is that the disaster has arrived. America’s foreign policy collapsed in many small ways, and in two […]
We Ordered the Code Red
I thought we already knew that we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But apparently Senate Democrats thought we needed to spend $40 million to compile a massive report to tell us this news, and also to tell us that we did various nasty things to some other al-Qaeda linked detainees. Which leaves me wondering: so what […]
Wish-Fulfilling Prophecy
Democrats predicted that the war in Iraq was unwinnable, Harry Reid said it was already lost, and Senator Obama declared that President Bush’s “surge” wouldn’t work. And now here we are in 2014, and by golly it looks as if they were right: Iraq is a total disaster. An al-Qaeda splinter group, the Islamic State […]
The Year of ‘We Told You So’
This is going to be the year of “we told you so.” It is the year in which all the disasters predicted by President Obama’s critics come true. It is the year in which the consequences of the president’s policies, which were staved off just long enough to permit his re-election, come crashing down on […]
The Muslim Civil War in Egypt
Here’s a good symbol of the recent turn of events in the Middle East: troops from Mali marching in a Bastille Day parade in Paris, in gratitude to the French for helping to defeat Islamists in Mali’s north. Yes, I know, Mali is not in the “Middle East.” It’s in Sub-Saharan Africa, or maybe just […]
Free 30-Day Trial
Subscribe or Renew
A Reader’s Guide to Atlas Shrugged
- Salon of the Refused, Episode 16 December 11, 2019
- What If the World Isn’t Ending? December 9, 2019
- The Call Is Coming from Inside the House December 4, 2019
- Ayn Rand Is for Adolescents November 30, 2019
- The Triumph of the Will November 26, 2019
- The Parasite That Kills Its Hostess November 18, 2012
- Radical New York City Democrats December 31, 2013
- Confessions of a Reluctant Culture Warrior December 20, 2014
- Pathological Altruism July 3, 2013
- The 25 Craziest Things Said at the Democratic Debate October 14, 2015
World News Roundup
American politics is more of a circus than usual these days, and aside from distracting us from the really important domestic issues–the growing economy, but also this administration’s total failure to rein in government spending and debt–it also distracts us from what is going on in the rest of the world. So I decided it […]