Gang and government lawlessness plague Mexico. On Sept. 26, a violent gang and a criminal government combined to massacre 43 students near the Guerrero state town of Iguala. A perceived attitude of elite indifference by Guerrero state and federal government officials has fanned national outrage. Now, as demonstrators block the runways of Acapulco’s airport and […]
Austin Bay
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Austin Bay: Unified Germany celebrates Berlin Wall’s fall
Sunday, Nov. 9, marks the 25th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall cracked and Communist East Germany and its Kremlin overseers silently acknowledged Cold War defeat. Unified Germany will be commemorating the day the Wall fell. As East and West Berliners began tearing it to pieces, they began the dicey process of post-World War […]
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Austin Bay: Democratic change may come to Tunisia
Tunisia continues to demonstrate that Arab Spring 2011’s revolts can indeed seed democratic change. On Oct. 26, Tunisia’s secularist party, Tunisian Call (Nidaa Tounes), won a parliamentary plurality. By winning at least 35 percent of parliament’s seats, Tunisian Call now has the opportunity to form a new coalition government. The Islamist Ennahda Party, which leads […]
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Austin Bay: Islamic State faces losses in Khobane
The battle for the Syrian Kurd town of Khobane has emerged as an opportunity to deal the Islamic State a military and political defeat. Maximizing the opportunity, however, requires what has been most grievously missing from the struggle against the terrorists and their so-called caliphate: persuasive, coherent and steadfast American leadership. On Sept. 16, IS […]
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Austin Bay: History provides counterpoint to today’s worries
According to former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a frustrated President Barack Obama has given up on leading. World events refuse to break his way. Commentator Dan Balz opined on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program that the Ebola epidemic reflects “this notion that global events are spinning out of control.” Yeats, in his post-WWI poem “The […]
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Austin Bay: Obama not facing the reality of war against terrorism
In a recent column assessing President Barack Obama’s judgment (after six years in office), the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens asked, “What does Obama Know?” Stephens brutally concluded that among U.S. presidents, Barack Obama “stands apart is in his combination of ideological rigidity and fathomless ignorance. What does the president know? The simple answer, and […]
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Austin Bay: Conditions stalk Obama’s uncertain coalition
President Barack Obama has declared, repeatedly, that U.S. ground troops will not have a combat mission in his war against the Islamic State. Last week, Obama ardently pledged that he would not be “dragged” into another Iraq ground war. The president certainly sounded decisive. This week (Monday Sept. 15), White House press secretary Josh Earnest […]
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Austin Bay: Obama’s revived war on terror
President Barack Obama has a knack for repeatedly declaring peace. Now he is taking America to war against the Islamic State and its barbarian army of Islamist terrorists. The focal battlefield for President Obama’s war on terrorists is, of all places, Iraq. In 2011, as he oversaw the withdrawal of U.S. forces, Obama touted Iraq’s […]
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Austin Bay: Putin has a definitive strategic goal
Events in Ukraine since mid-August demonstrate that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin knows how to create operational and tactical options in order to achieve long-range, history-shaping strategic goals. Russian tanks “flattening” the tiny Ukrainian border town of Novosvitlivka (on Aug. 30) is the most demonstrative operation. As for the tank troops’ tactics, Ukrainian defense ministry spokesman, […]
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Austin Bay: Vladimir Putin: The return of the CommuNazi
In August 1939 — 75 years ago this week — Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In the wake of the Russo-German alliance, newspaper wits coined the term “ComunNazi.” Communist-Nazi. Yes, “red” and “brown” entwined as the dictatorships they are. The two dictators’ legions of liars hailed the deal as a peace […]