By CLIFFORD D. MAY, Scripps Howard News Service
May: New book puts Israel at center of West's safety
Bill Gates famously called George Gilder "very stimulating even when I disagree with him, and most of the time I agree with him." The issues on which Gilder has staked out stimulating positions over more than 30 years as a writer and public intellectual are wide-ranging.
May: Ease up on Nazi rhetoric and focus on reality
In the heat of America's many debates, "Nazi" and "fascist" are among the epithets too often hurled. Last week, for example, Rush Limbaugh compared Adolf Hitler to President Barack Obama, saying each "ruled by dictate" and claimed to represent "the will of his people."
May: How to treat friends and foes
Historian Bernard Lewis has observed that a nation can make few mistakes worse than this: to be "harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend." Is that a fair characterization of American foreign policy under the Obama administration?
May: U.S. is losing the long war
In 1993, R. James Woolsey, about to become President Bill Clinton's first director of Central Intelligence, remarked to a Senate committee on the defeat of international communism: "We have slain a large dragon" He then added: "But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways, the dragon was easier to keep track of."
May: On genocide, talk is not enough
After speaking to the world's Muslims from Cairo last week, President Obama moved on to Buchenwald, site of a Nazi death camp.
May: We need more boots on the ground
KABUL, Afghanistan -- American troops in Afghanistan are fighting what will soon become Barack Obama's war -- not just because he will inherit it, but also because he has claimed it. This is "the right battlefield," Obama has said. The war in Afghanistan "has to be won."
Inviting Iran president Ahmadinejad to dinner is foolish
Among the lessons to be learned from the meltdown on Wall Street: Change is not always for the better. And even institutions that appear big, strong and permanent can collapse in a New York minute.
Islamists are attacking freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is under attack. Let us count the ways.The first and most obvious: Those who criticize militant Islamists -- from novelist Salman Rushdie to Danish cartoonists to memoirist Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- are routinely threatened with deadly violence. It would be black humor to say this is having a chilling effect.
The long war
Five years ago this month, American troops liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Then came the hard part.
