Columnist.
WASHINGTON -- When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York next week to address the United Nations General Assembly, he will present himself as a great "humanitarian." Many of the America haters at the U.N. will shower him with accolades and commend his "untiring efforts" to gain the release of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, two Americans jailed in Tehran since they were detained on the Iraq-Afghanistan border in 2009. And seeing as past is prologue at the annual UNGA soiree, the participants will then get down to the work at hand: bashing the United States and Israel, demanding recognition of "Palestinian independence" and ignoring the most serious threat to world peace, Iran's nuclear weapons program.
WASHINGTON -- Everyone older than 20 remembers whom he was with, what he was doing and how he learned we were at war that beautiful Tuesday morning a decade ago. Most of us recall a gorgeous late-summer morning with blue skies -- "shirt-sleeve weather" -- and then the horror: two of the world's tallest buildings collapsing into piles of rubble, the west wall of the Pentagon in flames and a fire-bathed crater in the soil of Somerset County, Pa. Like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the assault on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, was a complete surprise. Politicians, pundits and quasi-historians have tried to find similarities in the two events, but there are few other real parallels.
WASHINGTON -- Some have described Hurricane Irene as "the most over-hyped event in history." Americans in the Northeast who were flooded out of their homes and businesses and those without electricity, fuel or water don't agree. But a U.S. official I spoke with this week told me, "The next storm coming from down south is already deadlier than Irene, and nobody is paying attention." My source wants to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to talk about these matters with the media. He doesn't work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the National Weather Service -- and he isn't talking about Hurricane Katia, now approaching the U.S. mainland from the Atlantic Ocean. He works for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and he says, "Our government has helped to create the 'perfect deadly storm.'" Sadly, his forecast is likelier to be right than anything from our weather guessers.
WASHINGTON -- For most of the year, irrational behavior is a natural state in our nation's capital. This is a place where potentates and politicians, lobbyists and legislators and the elite and the lowly routinely say and do completely irrational things. We also have come to expect that irrational behavior takes a brief hiatus when Congress goes home on recess and the president of the United States heads out of town on vacation. This year is the exception that proves the rule. POTUS may be playing golf on Martha's Vineyard and Congress may be out of town, but this week, irrational behavior disorder -- "IBD" for short -- went viral, here and around the globe.
WASHINGTON -- Having completed his three-state "Midwest listening tour," President Barack Obama is now on vacation on Martha's Vineyard. According to his handlers, in between golf outings and cocktail parties, our president also is working on yet another speech on how he will balance our government's books and put Americans back to work. Those who believe that ought to recall his remarks March 22, five days after U.S. and allied military operations began in Libya: "I said at the outset that this was going to be a matter of days and not weeks."
WASHINGTON -- Sixty-six years ago, Aug. 14, 1945, the bloodiest war in human history finally ended with a radio broadcast by President Harry S. Truman. Even before the instrument of surrender was formally signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, plans to demobilize the 16 million American men and women in uniform were being carried out. Though the conflict claimed nearly 50 million lives -- including more than 400,000 American dead and another 670,000 wounded -- it was the beginning of an era of great expectations for our "Greatest Generation" and its progeny.
The potentates on the Potomac claim that President Barack Obama's signature on the "debt deal" solves the immediate problems created by Washington's spendthrift fiscal madness while "protecting America's future." Truth be told, it does neither. Here's why. The arcane legislation cobbled together by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the Obama White House doesn't increase our taxes, but it does raise the U.S. government's debt limit by a staggering $2 trillion in order to "preserve our AAA credit rating." The agreement says our government will somehow reduce spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. It also creates a special 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- composed of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, six from each house of Congress -- to propose ways to reduce our federal deficit by $1.5 trillion. This joint committee is to present its deficit reduction plan by Thanksgiving, and Congress must pass it by Christmas. Sound complicated? It is. And worse, the whole agreement is chock-full of dirty little secrets.
Collectively, Washington has the attention span of a fruit fly. That's why all we have heard about lately are the consequences of failing to raise the federal debt limit -- action that has prompted no fewer than two dozen dueling news conferences, presidential addresses and Republican "responses" in the past 10 days. Our political leaders and the mainstream media are totally focused on how this theoretical "potential catastrophe" can be ameliorated, while existential threats to our national security and very way of life are being ignored in Washington.
GEORGETOWN COUNTY, S.C. -- "Will your Boykin hunt?" asked the young man, admiring the little red spaniel at my side. "Casey" wagged her tail and sat, patiently waiting for me to check out of the local farmers market with a basket of fresh peaches, corn and tomatoes. "She's not yet a year old, but she already works well into the wind, can kick up a bird and if I shoot right and retrieves to hand," I replied with no small amount of hubris. The conversation abruptly shifted to international politics -- but not in the direction I expected. "What are you going to do with her once 'The Empire' bans your shotguns?" he asked.
WASHINGTON -- Few of us ever will meet a Medal of Honor recipient. Fewer still ever will have the opportunity to be of assistance to one. In part, that's because "The Medal" -- our nation's highest military decoration, awarded for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty" -- is worn by just 85 living Americans. Since we were attacked on 9/11, the Medal of Honor has been awarded only nine times to the more than 2 million Americans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith, Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, Navy SEALs Lt. Michael Murphy and Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, Army Spc. Ross McGinnis, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti and Army Staff Sgt. Robert Miller all received the recognition posthumously.
WASHINGTON -- First the good news. The war in Afghanistan is being won. As our Fox News team saw on our most recent trip through the length and breadth of the country, the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies are being defeated at nearly every turn. Though military operations and police actions are being conducted at their highest pace since the war began a decade ago, coalition, Afghan and civilian casualties continue to decline -- even in the midst of "fighting season." According to U.S. and allied military officers with whom we spoke, Taliban fighters are defecting in greater numbers than ever before. Though our political leaders in Washington won't use the word, "victory" is within reach.
CAMP HANSEN, Afghanistan -- This austere U.S. Marine base in the Marjah district of Helmand province is headquarters for 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment -- famous for action during World War II on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. Dubbed "America's Battalion," the unit has adopted a new slogan in Afghanistan: "Front Toward Enemy" -- the label placed on devices such as claymore mines and anti-tank rockets. It's appropriate here in the southern Helmand River valley. Lt. Col. J.D. Harrill, the 2/8 battalion commander, is a hero in his own right -- and so are his Marines and Navy corpsmen. He was awarded the Silver Star, our nation's third-highest award for valor, during the battle for Ramadi, Iraq. Back then, the capital of Anbar province was the bloodiest place on earth. When he and his Marines arrived here in January, more than half were already veterans of gunfights along the Euphrates River and in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. When they moved into this canal-laced heartland of the Taliban, they had to fight their way in.
CAMP EGGERS, Afghanistan -- Here on this NATO base -- named in honor of Daniel W. Eggers, a U.S. Army special forces captain killed near Kandahar on May 29, 2004 -- President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year is getting mixed reviews. Reactions from scores of U.S. and NATO personnel and Afghan soldiers and police officers with whom my Fox News' "War Stories" team has spoken run the gamut from "It's a deeper, faster cut than I expected" to "I guess we all knew this day was coming." However, there is one opinion that is nearly universal: "We'd better not lose this war." Obama says we won't. He insists that we can safely "remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year" and "bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer," because "in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance." He describes his date-driven withdrawal plan as a way to bring the war here "to a responsible end."
WASHINGTON -- This week, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved an amendment to the fiscal year 2012 Defense Department appropriations bill, which would set up an independent, nonpartisan Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group to provide recommendations for future U.S. military missions in the region. The measure, proposed by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., would establish a panel modeled on the 2006 Iraq Study Group, chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. It's something the Obama administration should have done -- as President George W. Bush did by executive order -- a long time ago. Let's hope it's not too late, because the U.S. "drawdown" from Afghanistan already has begun.
PATRIOTS POINT, S.C. -- Sixty-seven years ago this week, more than 155,000 U.S., British and Canadian troops assaulted German defenses in Normandy, France, during Operation Overlord. The USS Laffey, the most decorated World War II destroyer in existence -- normally an exhibit at this magnificent museum but now undergoing repairs -- was there on D-Day. During the first 24 hours of the invasion, nearly 2,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen were declared "MIA" -- missing in action. Many of the paratroopers, Army Rangers, "straight-leg infantrymen" and small-boat crewmen who were listed as "unaccounted for" in the first 48 hours of the invasion were eventually identified posthumously by graves registration personnel. Those captured by the Germans were re-listed as POWs -- prisoners of war. Some were never found and remain among the 74,000 World War II "open case files" at the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command. Today, in the 10th year of the global war on terror, it's the political elite in Washington and the so-called mainstream media who are MIA.
ABOARD USS YORKTOWN -- There has been much said and written of late regarding "high-risk decision-making" and "courageous leadership" in Washington. The so-called mainstream media, politicians and pundits are all a-twitter -- literally -- about a congressman's underwear, the damage done by WikiLeaks and how the death of Osama bin Laden and the "Arab Spring" are changing the course of history. For those having difficulty discerning what qualifies as "decisiveness under duress" or a "gutsy call," the first week of June offers some excellent examples from living history that put current events into a more reasonable perspective.
QUANTICO NATIONAL CEMETERY -- When I was a kid, we called May 30 "Decoration Day." It was an occasion for Boy Scouts to be up before dawn and report, in uniform, to the American Legion hall. There, Cub Scouts would be paired with older Boy Scouts, organized into detachments of a dozen or so and issued bags of small American flags. The groups then "deployed" in station wagons and pickup trucks to local cemeteries and churchyards, where we placed Old Glory on every veteran's grave. Later in the morning, there was a parade down Main Street, led by a color guard, the high-school band and ranks of veterans from World War I, World War II and the war of the moment, Korea. The Veterans of Foreign Wars sold red poppies to raise funds for the disabled. Politicians made speeches, and citizens prayed in public. It was a solemn annual event that taught us reverence for those who served and sacrificed for our country. It's no longer so.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On Thursday, Barack Obama went to the State Department to "mark a new chapter in American diplomacy." The president's handlers boldly billed his lengthy address "A Moment of Opportunity" for the Middle East. It was neither. Instead, he delivered a naive, revisionist lecture that was sufficiently utopian and self-centered to have been drafted by Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, he also demanded major concessions from the only democracy in the Middle East and America's most steadfast ally in the region, Israel.
QUANTICO, Va. -- Here at this sprawling Marine Corps base south of our nation's capital, nothing has changed since Osama bin Laden met his demise in Pakistan. Thousands of Marines here at the "Crossroads of the Corps" are still waking up at "Oh-Dark-Thirty," going about their duties, running for miles, lifting weights and tossing each other about in hand-to-hand-combat drills. Apparently these American heroes are unaware that Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass; Carl Levin, D-Mich.; and even Dick Lugar, R-Ind., and a host of others up the road in Washington, D.C., have decided that bin Laden's death means the war in Afghanistan has been won and most of our troops need to come home ASAP.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It took nine years, seven months and 21 days to pinpoint the man who plotted, paid for and perpetrated the terror attacks of 9-11-01. When a U.S. Navy SEAL team finally found Osama bin Laden in the third-floor bedroom of a comfortable house in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan, they killed him. Last Sunday's complex and highly successful operation validates Ronald Reagan's maxim for terrorists after U.S. Navy SEALs captured the murderous hijackers of the Achille Lauro in October 1985: "You can run, but you can't hide." Afterward, one of the participants penned a corollary: "Don't bother to run -- you will only die tired."
