The Washington Times

Here’s a question that’s not especially pleasant to think about: Where should the new Department of Homeland Security be located? And no, I’m not asking whether it should be off Independence Avenue or off Constitution Avenue, but rather, whether it should be in Washington at all.

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The Washington Times

Last week in this space, I wrote about President Bush’s remarkable June 2 speech at West Point, in which he laid out, in effect, a liberty doctrine according to which the United States will no longer be satisfied to stand as a symbol of freedom and the success that flows from it, but instead will seek to protect and promote liberty in all parts of the world as the “single . . . model of human progress.”

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The Washington Times

In a speech at West Point in June, President Bush gave his richest account yet of what we are fighting for. He in effect proclaimed what my Hoover Institution colleague Michael McFaul has called a liberty doctrine, wherein American power has been harnessed, not just for the purpose of the protection of the United States but also for the protection and spread of liberty across the globe.

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The Washington Times

At West Point on Saturday, President Bush gave his richest account yet of what we are fighting for. He in effect proclaimed what my Hoover Institution colleague Michael McFaul has called a liberty doctrine, wherein American power has been harnessed not just for the purpose of the protection of the United States, but also to the protection and spread of liberty across the globe.

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The Washington Times

Dear Department of Motor Vehicles Adjudication Services: It was so nice to hear from you after all this time. We had about given up. After all, it was Feb. 12 when we wrote in response to the “Notice of Infraction” we received from your friends at Automated Traffic Enforcement about going 36 miles an hour in a 25 mile-an-hour zone.

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The Washington Times

The Israeli military action in the West Bank, so it was widely said as events unfolded, led to huge upswings in the popularity both of Ariel Sharon among Israelis and of Yasser Arafat among Palestinians. In making their respective judgments, the two populations had spoken, vindicating the contending hard-line approaches favored by each of the two leaders. Or so it was said.

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The Washington Times

Many American commentators, myself included, have praised George W. Bush for the “moral clarity” of his vision of the long-term struggle against terrorism. More recently, however, analysis of the administration has focused on the ways in which reality first impinges and then imposes itself, obliterating along the way the reassurance the false and artificial “moral clarity” was providing.

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The Washington Times

Democrats and Republicans alike like to think that they are playing for all the marbles. The Holy Grail in American politics looks something like this: Your party controls the White House, has a majority in the House of Representatives, and a big enough majority in the Senate to ensure that you can confirm any judge acceptable to your own party, thus extending your political reach in the nominally apolitical judiciary branch over time.

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The Washington Times

In the Middle East, the temptation is to ignore the first rule of politics: You begin where you are. This is not Lebanon in 1982, Ariel Sharon versus Yasser Arafat, all over again. Nor is it 1967, 1948 – nor, for that matter, 715, when the al Aksa mosque was completed in Jerusalem, nor 561 B.C., when the Second Temple was erected. Trying to tease out the meaning of the current violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from thousands of years of strife may be an interesting exercise, but it is not going to get anybody anywhere.

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The Washington Times

I had a chance to take the temperature of the trans-Atlantic relationship at a non-governmental meeting here of a group of 50 or so mid-career Europeans and Americans, who are heavily engaged in one way or another in foreign affairs in their respective homes. It is, generally speaking, a very Atlanticist group, one committed to making U.S.-European relations work. If you’re looking for European anti-American sentiment, which has indeed been an increasing amount in certain elite circles, this is not your crowd.

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