Oliver North from Creators Syndicate

Memorial Day 2012 for 05/25/2012

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — As a crowd of high-school students offloaded from the tour bus for a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial aka "The Wall," he yelled, "There are no good wars!" Hemmed in on the crowded sidewalk, I tried to ignore his rant and noted the bus had a Pennsylvania license. The shouter was far too young to have fought in Vietnam, and he was wearing a dirty T-shi ...

Updated: Fri May 25, 2012

Welcome Home, Finally for 05/18/2012

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — Forty-three years ago this week, the fabled 101st Airborne Division launched Operation Apache Snow — a major ground offensive against North Vietnamese army invaders in the treacherous A Shau Valley. Though fighting raged over hundreds of square miles of triple-canopied jungle, the focus soon became a single terrain feature, a mountain, with peaks as high as 3,000 feet, ...

Updated: Fri May 18, 2012

Institutional Arrogance for 05/11/2012

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — Last week, this column described a deadly suicide attack by the Haqqani network on a secure compound outside Kabul, Afghanistan, and the failure of NATO officials to heed human intelligence that might have saved lives. I wrote, "The intel provided included information on how to precisely locate the terrorists. When I asked why the attack wasn't prevented, I was told: 'It ...

Updated: Fri May 11, 2012

Theater of War for 05/04/2012

Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — My old American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "theater," inter alia, as "a large geographic area in which military operations are coordinated." Throughout World War II, official dispatches and press reports described military action and events in the European, Pacific and China-Burma-India "theaters of war." We now have a new def ...

Updated: Fri May 04, 2012

Victory Parades for 04/27/2012

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — Sixty-seven years ago this week, U.S. and Allied forces were racing across Germany and uncovering the deepest horrors of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Liberated death camps and extermination centers where millions perished were evidence of a brutal Holocaust perpetrated in the Führer's "Final Solution." On April 28, 1945, Hitler's erstwhile ally, Benito Mus ...

Updated: Fri Apr 27, 2012

What Were You Thinking? for 04/20/2012

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — My dear friend and fellow Marine Joe Foss — a Medal of Honor recipient — would ask me occasionally, "What were you thinking?" The question usually was prompted by my missed shot on a hunt or when he heard me make a confusing comment on radio or television. Given the recent revelations of bad behavior, incompetence, corruption, waste and fraud — and ...

Updated: Fri Apr 20, 2012

What Goes Around... for 04/13/2012

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — Nine years ago this week, our Fox News team accompanied U.S. Marines as they swept into Baghdad and then north up the Tigris River to seize Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. It took less than three weeks to drive the tyrant from power in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it appeared then that the force of American arms could ensure a new era of tranquility in a part of the worl ...

Updated: Fri Apr 13, 2012

The Passover-Easter Sellout for 04/06/2012

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — Passover and Easter — intrinsically linked in the Jewish and Christian traditions — are being celebrated this weekend. For observant Jews, Passover commemorates the Hebrews' liberation from slavery under Egypt's Pharaoh. For faithful Christians, Easter is a celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the grave and the fulfillment of a new covenant between God and man. ...

Updated: Fri Apr 06, 2012

Diplomatic Duplicity for 03/30/2012

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — In the summer of 1987, just before my "television debut," a true friend instructed me in a congressional hearing, "Remember, the microphone is always on — even when it's not!" It's a lesson I never have forgotten. Apparently, Barack Obama doesn't have any friends to give him similar advice, or he doesn't learn well. Either way, an open mic during thi ...

Updated: Fri Mar 30, 2012

Barack Obama's Mideast Madness for 03/23/2012

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — Nine years ago this week, President George W. Bush ordered more than 250,000 troops in a U.S.-led coalition to cross the "berm" on the border of Kuwait and head into Iraq. Weeks later, Saddam Hussein's brutal regime was finished, and the despot was in hiding. It was a stunning victory for the force of American arms and leadership. Though it took until Dec. 13 to fin ...

Updated: Fri Mar 23, 2012

Afghan Ambivalence for 03/16/2012

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

WASHINGTON — Four years ago, when then-Sen. Barack Obama was campaigning for president, he said of Afghanistan: This is "a war that we have to win." He also claimed, "The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared." But after three years of Obama's being commander in chief, ...

Updated: Fri Mar 16, 2012

Gas Pains for 03/09/2012

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — One year ago this week, I wrote a column titled "Crude Cruelty," which covered a jump in the cost of motor fuel and a corresponding spike in prices for food and rising unemployment. Government "experts" attributed the bad news to "supply disruptions" and "uncertainty" caused by unrest in Libya. Today Moammar Gadhafi is gone, but the ave ...

Updated: Fri Mar 09, 2012

Another Apology -- Another Disaster for 03/02/2012

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — On Feb. 20, a NATO-Afghan security team at the Parwan Detention Center — adjacent to the U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul — began destroying files, books and documents from the detention facility library. The printed material was being burned because it contained handwritten coded messages being passed among Taliban and al-Qaida detainees. Afghan security ...

Updated: Fri Mar 02, 2012

Suffrage in Somalia for 02/24/2012

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

First in a series

MOGADISHU, Somalia — There are few success stories here in this tortured country on the eastern coast of Africa. For nearly two decades, this drought-ravaged land and the long-suffering Somali people have been "off the radar" for most Americans. It might still be so if it were not for radical Islamist Somali terrorists — al-Shabab — and their ...

Updated: Fri Feb 24, 2012

Shocked and Surprised for 02/17/2012

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Twenty-three years ago this week, Iran's self-appointed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, broadcast a religious edict declaring that author Salman Rushdie and his publishers were "hereby sentenced to death." The fatwa also called for "all the intrepid Muslims in the world" to "execute them quickly, wherever they find them." The U.S. St ...

Updated: Fri Feb 17, 2012

Freedom From Religion for 02/10/2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — "We don't need you, so shut up!" That's the message the Obama administration has sent loud and clear to America's Roman Catholics. And it's a message now being sent to U.S. military chaplains — to the detriment of our armed forces.

During World War II, the War Department and the Department of the Navy urged — the operative word is "urged,&quo ...

Updated: Fri Feb 10, 2012

Blacklist for 02/03/2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Co-written by Tom Kilgannon

blacklist (n.): a list of persons who are disapproved of or are to be punished or boycotted.

The definition above, from an old Webster's dictionary, was common parlance in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee investigated subversive activity, Soviet espionage and pro-communist propaganda. The committee uneart ...

Updated: Fri Feb 03, 2012

SOTU Surrender for 01/27/2012

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — It's an unwritten law of modern America that a political campaign speech should last no more than 30 minutes. The lecture candidate Barack Obama delivered on the evening of Jan. 24 in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol came in at just longer than one hour and six minutes. It was full of rhetoric we should expect to hear reiterated from now until Nov. 6. The president's sup ...

Updated: Fri Jan 27, 2012

Red Lines for 01/20/2012

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped fr ...

Updated: Fri Jan 20, 2012

Missing the Mark -- Again for 01/13/2012

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

WASHINGTON — Our so-called mainstream media have launched a new anti-military feeding frenzy. The furor is over a crude 39-second video showing four Marines apparently urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban combatants. In hysteric rhetoric akin to "news reports" on the 2004 Abu Ghraib photos, hordes of print and broadcast "correspondents" rushed to describe the ...

Updated: Fri Jan 13, 2012