Jesse Jackson is right. In response to the faceoff in Arizona between President Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week, Mr. Jackson said, "Even George Wallace did not put his finger in Dr. King's face." It's true; he didn't. Similarly, not even Joseph Stalin wrote two autobiographies the way Mr. Obama has. And even Genghis Khan didn't have a Swiss bank account the way Mitt Romney did.
Lawrence Sheets is a foreign correspondent whose bravery exceeds one's comprehension. For two decades, he risked death covering the violent chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The multiple "wars" he covered were not set-piece battles but disorganized carnage by guerrillas and remnants of national armies that smashed cities throughout the old USSR and slaughtered uncountable thousands of people. He survived. And he has produced some of the most gripping war correspondence I have ever read.
Back in prehistory, during the Cold War, students of Kremlinology - the arcane science and art of trying to unravel what Winston Churchill called "a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma" - identified a dangerous heresy. "Mirror-imaging," it was called, defined as attributing to Moscow our own motivations, rather than understanding a Soviet communist leadership who lived in a completely different world and dreamed different dreams.
Sen. John McCain says the world is better off now that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died, and predicted the dictator would join the likes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin "in a warm corner in hell."
On April 8, 2003, U.S. Marine Lt. Brian Chontosh charged an ambush on the way to Baghdad, wiping out a trench full of enemy soldiers. His heroics were replicated by other Americans hundreds of times in the succeeding years as the United States fought its way, by trial and error, to ultimate victory in 2008. Taking Baghdad quickly in 2003, America was hit with the double ignition of the Sunni and Shiite conflicts in 2004. Al Qaeda swarmed into Fallujah to complicate the U.S. challenge. Muqtada al-Sadr, the extremist Shiite cleric with ties to Iran, threw the Mahdi Army at every outpost of the fragile democratic government America was incubating.
Despite our current perilous times, Americans still have boundless reasons for giving thanks. True, our economy continues to falter, we face yet another national credit downgrade, and families suffer with high unemployment. The nation teeters precariously between free-market capitalism and European-style socialism. But fortunately, we have guidance from those brave Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower who, nearly four centuries ago, faced a choice similar to ours.
The seven-year prison term handed down to Ukraine's former prime minister this month highlights the stark choice faced by President Viktor Yanukovych: Does he turn the country east or west?
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday was found guilty of abuse of office and sentenced to seven years in jail, in a trial widely condemned in the West as politically motivated.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday was found guilty of abuse of office and sentenced to seven years in jail, in a trial widely condemned in the West as politically motivated.
