What FDR Can Teach Obama About American Leadership

Posted on

The poll numbers are undeniable. Disillusioned by Afghanistan and Iraq, focused on domestic concerns, Americans increasingly want their nation to reduce its global footprint and stop trying to solve the problems of others. A cautious, poll-driven President Obama responds predictably, defining America’s global interests more narrowly and eschewing calls to address humanitarian horror, protect human …

Continue reading “What FDR Can Teach Obama About American Leadership”

Don’t Be Fooled by the Hamas-Fatah Union

Posted on

The new Palestinian unity government of Fatah and Hamas puts the lie to fundamental assumptions on which the U.S. approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace have long rested, most prominently within the Obama administration. Washington has long assumed that a two-state solution is attainable, that “land for peace” is the formula for success, that the key remaining …

Continue reading “Don’t Be Fooled by the Hamas-Fatah Union”

Red Line Redux

Posted on

The future path of U.S.-led nuclear negotiations with Iran, which have now reached a crucial stage, may be foreshadowed in the U.S. agreement with Syria to dismantle its chemical weapons program. Any U.S.-Iranian deal-making that follows the Syrian model, however, would prove nothing more than a pyrrhic victory, leaving the Middle East more dangerous and, …

Continue reading “Red Line Redux”

One-sided tactics show contempt for Israel

Posted on

WASHINGTON – Recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks raise questions as to why Washington invested so much in such a misbegotten venture, but they brought one salutary result – they laid bare the Obama Administration’s hostility to the Jewish state. Evidence of anti-Israel one-sidedness mounted as the talks predictably went nowhere and President Obama and Secretary of …

Continue reading “One-sided tactics show contempt for Israel”

No, Mr. President, your critics aren’t just neoconservatives

Posted on

WASHINGTON — “My job as commander in chief,” an exasperated President Obama told critics this week, “is to deploy military force as a last resort, and to deploy it wisely. And, frankly, most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American …

Continue reading “No, Mr. President, your critics aren’t just neoconservatives”

Open Letter To Brandeis University President

Posted on

In the matter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali Frederick Lawrence President Brandeis University Dear President Lawrence: I know that many critics have expressed outrage that you rescinded your invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a courageous women’s rights crusader and critic of Islam, to receive an honorary degree at Brandeis University’s graduation this spring. I won’t badger …

Continue reading “Open Letter To Brandeis University President”

Boycott of Israeli institutions is academically dishonest

Posted on

U.S. scholars’ mounting boycotts of Israeli academic and cultural institutions are ironic indeed, for they contradict everything that higher education is supposed to stand for – they are wholly ignorant and profoundly narrow-minded. That Israel is a perennial target on America’s college campuses is hardly breaking news. The Jewish state has long suffered from the …

Continue reading “Boycott of Israeli institutions is academically dishonest”