Robert W Tracinski

The American press seems to have contracted Black Hawk Down Syndrome, a malady in which reporters and editorialists, whose military experience consists largely of watching Hollywood war movies, project a hand-wringing fear of American military failure. These reactions...

A “little Caesar,” before it referred to a pizza delivery mascot, used to refer to a petty official — or gangster — with delusions of grandeur, the type who seeks power for the pleasure of abusing it. The Enron investigation is making it clear...

The events of the past few weeks in Israel have offered a timeless lesson on the real cause of terrorism and the real meaning of the “peace process.” The pattern of these events is crystal clear: Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have escalated...

A few weeks ago, many liberals were crowing that the War on Terrorism had forced the Bush administration to abandon “isolationism” and embrace “globalism” by seeking out an international coalition. This is part of an effort to make independent,...

America’s war policy faces a deadly roadblock. The problem is partly the recalcitrance of our so-called allies, from the quavering Europeans to the increasingly hostile Saudis. Most of our “coalition” wants us to declare victory in Afghanistan and go...

Over the coming weeks, eight congressional subcommittees will hold at least 10 hearings on the collapse of Enron. Rarely has there been such a profligate and irresponsible distortion of congressional priorities during a time of national crisis. Even in peacetime,...

Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett’s famous fictional detective, tells a story about one of his early cases: An accountant, he says, was walking down the street when a steel beam fell from a construction site and smashed into the ground, narrowly missing him. After his...

While the world’s attention has been focused on the Middle East, South America has been headed toward chaos and collapse. And worse, it is not merely an economic collapse, but a collapse into a disastrous intellectual confusion that threatens to make recovery...

When Yasser Arafat unleashed his intifada against Israel last year, I named it the “ Peace Process War. ” I wanted to capture the irony of mob violence and bombings as the culmination of seven years of an alleged “peace process.” I did not...

Memo to the world: Reality cannot be cheated. Politicians and diplomats like to pretend that you can cheat the laws of logic, that there is no need to commit to absolutes, and that there is something to be achieved by “constructive ambiguity.” The past...

There has been much talk recently about using lawsuits or congressional hearings to challenge the expansion of presidential power since Sept. 11. Immediate congressional action on this issue is crucially important — not to revoke these powers, which are mostly...

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” So declared Winston Churchill after an early allied victory in World War II. It was a reminder to his nation that the war would require many more...

According to a breathless report in the morning news, American jets over the Taliban’s front lines have engaged in “one of the fiercest bombardments yet, unleashing more than 15 bombs in the space of hours.” Get that? A whole 15 bombs. Within hours....

They condemn us for the “arrogant imperialism” of our foreign policy. They claim America is motivated by a predatory greed to plunder the world’s natural resources. They say that we are the real terrorists and that we deserved Black Tuesday’s...

Now that we have officially more or less committed ourselves to war, many will now object that this mission poses too many strategic pitfalls — that the Middle East is a vast quagmire, that the enemy is too elusive, that this will be “another...

Everyone acknowledges that Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were acts of war. But, liberal commentators have been quick to object, we do not know whom to attack, how to attack, or how to escape a so-called “cycle of violence.”...