Americans like to style their nation as the land of the free. Yet the government is engaged in a war on its own people. The misnamed Drug War.

As Prof. Douglas Husak of Rutgers pointed out: "The war, after all, cannot really be a war on drugs, since drugs cannot...

It took the greatest military alliance in history five months to push the Libyan rebels across the finish line. Nevertheless, Western politicians are claiming victory.

Yet the ultimate consequences of allied intervention remain uncertain. While few mourn the demise of "the Colonel," liberal democracy may not result in Libya.

Libya...

The U.S. is supposed to be leaving Iraq. But the Obama administration is desperately lobbying Baghdad to keep American troops in place, which would turn Iraq into yet another costly U.S. military dependent.

Advocates of promiscuous military intervention angrily reject the claim that America is an "empire." Granted, the U.S....

Sen. John McCain has exhibited personal courage, but his geopolitical judgment is uniformly awful. Over the last 30 years there has been no war or potential war that he has opposed.

In 2008 he wanted to confront nuclear-armed Russia over its neighbor Georgia, which started their short and sharp...

War is in the air. These days it doesn't seem natural if America isn't involved in at least two conflicts at once. For President Barack Obama it is three, though U.S. involvement in combat in Iraq has largely run its course. Still, these days one almost yearns for the Cold...

Another Memorial Day, another holiday filled with rhapsodies by politicians and citizens alike about the sacrifices of American military personnel. But if these summer patriots really cared about their neighbors in uniform, they would stop putting servicemen and women at risk for frivolous reasons.

America was born in war. The...

President Barack Obama has gone to war in Libya without requesting a declaration of war from Congress. But he said he would abide by the War Powers Resolution. However, his 60 day grace period for bombing ended on Friday.

No worries, the president decided that the war was so small,...

After making Osama bin Laden U.S. Enemy Number One President George W. Bush botched the job. Yet officials from his administration are claiming credit for getting bin Laden. Torture maven John Yoo wrote that the recent raid "vindicates the Bush administration, whose intelligence architecture marked the path to...

Washington and its NATO allies have bungled the Libya crisis. Unless they change course, they face endless entanglement in an interminable civil war in North Africa. The only worse option would be to double down and escalate.

Allied intervention in Libya makes no sense. No security issues of...

President Barack Obama's poll ratings for national security are falling. As they should. The war in Libya increasingly looks like America's next geopolitical train wreck.

Hope for a quick rebel victory is now a distant dream. Western officials are talking about a military stalemate with no political solution in sight....

Candidate Barack Obama ran for president on a platform of change. Many policies deserved reform, none more than President George W. Bush's propensity to initiate unnecessary wars of choice. Iraq was a debacle from the start; the shift from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency in Afghanistan turned that conflict into a second...

Religious liberty is the first freedom. If governments will not protect this most basic liberty of conscience, they are unlikely to protect political or civil freedoms.

Promoting human rights long has been an important U.S. government priority. America obviously has done so only imperfectly -- witness persistent support for authoritarian...

Venezuela's close relationship with Iran and plans to build nuclear facilities with Russian help are raising fears in Washington of another nuclear crisis. The incoming Republican House majority may place increased pressure on the Obama administration to confront Caracas.

Washington need not panic. A 'Chávez bomb" is but a distant...

By the time 2010 came to a close 1370 Americans had died in the Afghan theater. Of those, 1309 were killed in Afghanistan, 15 in Pakistan, and one in Uzbekistan, and 45 others died elsewhere of their wounds. Nearly 500 died last year alone.

For what did they die?

Until...

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is nothing if not an expert in chutzpah. He wants Washington to release Jonathan Pollard, arrested a quarter century ago on the steps of the Israeli embassy after spying for Israel, in exchange for a freeze on West Bank settlements. Even stranger is the fact...

Religion stirs our deepest passions. That helps explain the furor over the planned construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero. Why else would Americans, who normally glory in their right to practice their chosen faiths, be debating whether people can build a house of worship in the...

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele recently said the unthinkable: Afghanistan is "a war of Obama's choosing." Steele's remarks triggered a verbal slugfest between neocon proponents of endless war, such as William Kristol, and Iraq hawks turned Afghanistan doves, such as Ann Coulter.

Michael Steele was right. President...

The U.S. government long has promoted human rights. However, religious liberty has typically received minimal attention. And Washington's advocacy always has been constrained by other American objectives, such as confronting communism and terrorism.

More than a decade ago Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). The legislation provided for...

The horrid attacks of 9/11 led to the cry: Why do they hate us? Most Americans seemed to believe that it was because we are such nice people. But the Times Square bomber reminds us that terrorism is mostly a response to U.S. government policies.

After 9/11 President George...

Nobel laureate and Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi turned 65 today. She has spent 15 of the last 21 years in prison or under house arrest. There is no end to her, or her nation's, agony in sight.

Burma, renamed Myanmar by the junta, won its independence after...