From the Right
/Politics
Trump's canny diplomatic and psychological feints on the international stage
Three years ago, Donald Trump began a rhetorical offensive targeting the governments of NATO nations that chronically failed to meet their allied defense financial commitments. With bombastic huff, Trump intimated that allies pay their share or America might walk.
It's 2019. Few NATO members currently meet the 2% GDP defense commitment. However...Read more
Hong Kong's ballots challenge Chairman Mao's gun barrels
The Hong Kong pro-democracy movement's overwhelming Nov. 24 election victory demonstrates that the city's brave citizens disdain Mao Zedong's political ditties almost as much as they scorn the crooked Chinese Communist Party tyranny the mass-murdering former chairman created.
Mao, who fancied himself a poet and philosopher, declared that ...Read more
America's home front is a complex war zone
The U.S. home front has become a war zone under persistent attack by adversaries who employ an array of weapons and execute operations exploiting stealth, ambush, naivete and, in many cases, utter stupidity.
I'll use the terror threat to make a general point.
"War on the home front" brings to American minds violent terror attack -- and after 9...Read more
Hong Kong in history's lens
How will historians in 2060 frame the 2019 Hong Kong crisis?
"The first battle of the Second Cold War" is one possibility, though Russia's 2014 Crimean invasion deserves that cruel award.
Perhaps the first Cold War isn't over. The USSR's communist dictatorship collapsed in 1991. China's party tyranny didn't. In 1989, the Kremlin didn't order ...Read more
Pence remembers the Fort Hood terror attack as the bitter history it is
Vice President Mike Pence deserves praise for not only remembering the national horror but also personally showing up and speaking out at Fort Hood, Texas, the scene of the Nov. 5, 2009, terrorist massacre that killed 13 American soldiers and citizens.
It has been a decade since that terrorist attack on U.S. soil by a self-identified Islamic ...Read more
Al-Baghdadi's death as counterterror information warfare
What a shame Washington political and media elites couldn't briefly halt their uncivil domestic political brawl to applaud a victory over the world's most vicious international terrorist organization, the Islamic State group of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.
A more unified and strategically thoughtful reaction to ISIS commander, mass rapist, savage ...Read more
America's individual-sanctions weapon: Economic and diplomatic warfare power with an information edge
With the goals of halting human rights abuse and deterring corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department and State Department now routinely impose assorted financial, travel and legal sanctions that target specific "perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption" -- individual bad actors and organizations (entities) the thugs and scumbags ...Read more
Algeria's 'smile revolution' boils below the radar
Algeria's first nationwide protest occurred Friday, Feb. 22, some 16 days after then-President (for life) Abdelaziz Bouteflika's National Liberation Front (FNL) caregivers published a letter announcing the hospitalized stroke victim would run for a fifth term in 2019.
By mid-March, even the FNL's hardened, corrupt old guard realized "the Friday...Read more
Hong Kong's protests shame red China's parade -- does this mean war?
On Oct. 1, the Chinese Communist Party threw itself a celebratory propaganda jubilee trumpeting the 70th anniversary Mao Zedong's civil war victory and his clique's seizure of power on the mainland.
The centerpiece of the CCP National Day self-glorification festival was a grandiose parade featuring high-stepping People's Liberation Army troops;...Read more
Invoking the Rio Treaty Diplomatically Attacks Venezuela's Dictatorship
In 2018, the BBC reported U.N. officials were comparing the Venezuelan refugee problem to the "Mediterranean crisis" spurred by the civil wars in Syria and Libya.
The comparison still has unfortunate merit. Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his regime wage what amounts to a slow war of oppression and starvation on their own people. ...Read more
Proxies and Proximity: Iranian Drone Attacks on Saudi Oil
Two previous Iranian-proxy drone attacks on Saudi Arabian petro-targets look suspiciously like rehearsals for the Sept. 14 attacks on the Abqaiq oil production complex and Khurais oil field.
The attacks, on May 14 and Aug. 17, 2019, would have provided Iran with intelligence regarding Saudi air surveillance operations while combat-testing the...Read more