"I face difficulties," admits Shahidullah Ahmadi, an illiterate recruited into the logistics section of the Afghan National Army. "If someone calls me and tells to go somewhere, I can't read the street signs." Ahmadi is not the only one. According to a new report, 90 percent of the Afghan army Publication: The American Conservative

WRITING A WEEK after the 2008 presidential election, New York Times columnist David Brooks tried to handicap the "fight over the future of conservatism." It would be a battle between "traditionalists," who want to "Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration," and "reformers," who agree with an Publication: The American Conservative

A YEAR INTO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, American foreign policy has yet to experience the change for which many progressives--and some conservatives--hoped. Even as U.S. forces remain mired in Iraq, the president has committed more troops to Afghanistan and escalated incursions into Pakistan. He Publication: The American Conservative

JIM LINK was paying his way through Texas A&M tending bar. Darker than Kathy Kessler and two inches taller, he was serving drinks on the patio of a student pub. She thought him a goofball and younger than she, though he was seven months older. He thought her distant and dazzling. They married three Publication: The American Conservative

David Bromwich Two stories by Elizabeth Bowen about wartime London have stayed with me since I read them 25 years ago. "Mysterious Kor" begins with a soldier, Arthur, and his girlfriend, Pepita, walking the streets: "Full moonlight drenched the city and searched it; there was not a niche left to Publication: The American Conservative

The Obama Administration recently appointed a police chief – who believes in illegal alien sanctuary city policies – to command an immigration enforcement program that entails federal agents working with local police departments on cases involving illegal aliens. As part of the Homeland Security Department’s anti-terrorism mission, the new director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of State and Local Coordination is now Harold Hurtt, an [...]

Words Matter             This one is not going to win me many friends, but it needs to be said…..and repeated….. over and over.                 In order to try to fool Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf dressed up in Grandma’s clothes.  A “wolf in sheep’s clothing” is another time-tested wise old saying that comes to [...]

The Bush Administration’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace,  warned members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that members of radical Islamic groups were active in South America recruiting and training terrorists. Yet, the Democrat-controlled Senate ignored Gen. Pace’s warning. Three suspected al-Qaeda associates who were apprehended in West Africa by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents during [...]

A leftist, by definition, cannot be a constitutional originalist. And even a cursory examination of Kagan’s past clearly identifies her as an extreme leftist. Therefore, the question of her fitness for a seat on the nation’s highest court was answered in absolute finality before she ever uttered a single word in the Senate hearing.

During an interview on ABC television’s Sunday news show “This Week,” Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta explained a $100-million contract with the controversial firm formerly named Blackwater Worldwide to provide security services in Afghanistan. When the contract was first announced, several lawmakers voiced outrage by the Obama government’s dealings with Xe Services, the new corporate name for Blackwater. Opponents of [...]

[Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, Christopher Buckley, Twelve, 272 pages] I HAVE NEVER MET Christopher Buckley, nor, I think, his attractive socialite mother, Pat, but have a dim and distant memory of his father, William F. Buckley Jr., from when he came to visit my parents in England. It was a long Publication: The American Conservative

THE WORD "environmentalist" usually conjures images of dreadlocked campaigners in tie-dyed T-shirts who eat only organic muesli and never travel by car. Or of that painfully PC couple from Park Slope who carry their kids marsupial-style and make monthly donations to NPR. Or of earnest Greenpeace Publication: The American Conservative