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Can’t stop war but can help community

While President Donald Trump initiated war against Iran last weekend, my family was out volunteering at our local community garden. Another war weighs heavy on me, but I know I do not control military orders. I cannot make Trump adhere to the Constitution and get a proper declaration of war from Congress. Nor can I control how Congress responds, or in this case, chooses not to respond. But I can pick up a rake and help my community prepare a garden for spring and feed our neighbors. Trump, with the help of a GOP-dominated Congress, has stripped billions of dollars from ...

Iran’s last hope is American division

The United States is winning. Anyone telling you otherwise is either mistaken — or rooting for a different outcome. That may sound blunt. But it happens to be true. The Iranian regime's best remaining strategy is not military. It is political. Tehran is not counting on its air defenses, which are being shredded. It is not counting on its ballistic missile program, which has been systematically dismantled. It is not counting on its nuclear infrastructure, which is being methodically degraded. It is counting on Americans. More specifically, it is counting ...

What history demands we remember

These are no longer theoretical debates confined to policy forums. The conflict is widening. American servicemen have now been lost. Regional nations are absorbing casualties. Retaliation cycles are accelerating. What once appeared contained now carries the unmistakable risk of broader regional war. Here is the reality: Iran has long advanced its nuclear program, and the international community has repeatedly warned that enrichment capability could move beyond peaceful energy into weapons potential. International inspectors have acknowledged they cannot fully verify all aspects ...

Trump needs to get ready for blowback

It is a special kind of folly to make long-term predictions amid the fog of war. Nobody knows how Operation Epic Fury will end. But there are already a few things we can celebrate and condemn. On the celebration side: The professionalism and courage of the American military stand out. So does the just demise of Ayatollah Khamenei, amid scores of his murderous henchmen. Other things worth celebrating are merely possibilities at this point. If the nearly half-century of Iranian repression at home and terrorism abroad is poised to end, along with Iran's nuclear ambitions, that would be ...

Missile defense should have bipartisan consensus

We officially live in the age of missile defense. The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has been the showcase for missile-defense systems — interceptors, radars, and complex command and control — that are extremely robust and have largely defanged Iran's foremost military threat to Israel, U.S. forces and other countries around the region. If it weren't for these defensive systems, the U.S. and Israel probably wouldn't have dared launch this military campaign, or at the very least would have done it knowing Iran could exact an enormous cost on the Israeli population and U.S. ...

Don’t let Congress ruin college sports

Should the revenues made by big-time college athletics be "shared" by all the schools? Do we want "revenue-sharing" socialism to come to college football and basketball? Many in Congress are answering yes to that question. The NCAA isn't the massive moneymaker the NFL and NBA are, but in many ways the product is more exciting than the boring professional leagues. That's especially true in this month of March, when the hoops madness begins. Even with the new "pay-to-play" rules that have turned college football and basketball into semipro leagues, with some of the star ...