Articles filed under Commentary

• Obama sails a dangerous strait May 6, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Donna Brazile: Syrian President Bashar Assad's air force has bombed citizens waiting for bread outside bakeries. His army's snipers have picked off children. And Syria may be a portend of things to come: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres recently told a Washington, D.C., audience: "We are unprepared for what is to come. ... The international community has lost its ability to stop conflict. ... The very nature of human conflict is changing."
  

   

• The stakes of being too late May 5, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: On Syria, President Obama has sometimes seemed isolated within his own administration. As the atrocities have escalated — from the shelling of neighborhoods, to airstrikes on bread lines, to the use of Scud missiles against civilians, to the likely incremental introduction of chemical weapons — the Assad regime's strategy has become alarmingly clear. Unable to retake rebel-held areas, it seeks to depopulate them, producing mass casualties, refugee flows and sectarian conflict. During the last two years, it has been reported that many of Obama's top foreign policy advisers, including David Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and Ben Rhodes, have urged more robust action to arrest Syria's downward spiral.
  

   

• How politics has changed May 3, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Lee Hamilton: It's not just the sheer proliferation and aggressiveness of the media that have ratcheted up the intensity of political life. Almost every facet of politics is more complicated and hard-edged. Voters want instant results. Consultants are everywhere. Lobbyists have multiplied and become immeasurably sophisticated at finding ways to get what they want.
  

   

• Nate Bell doesn’t know Boston May 2, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Gene Lyons: For President Obama, black's an ethnicity people make it hard to resign from. Even so, all demands for racial and ethnic groupthink are inherently crippling. All racial arguments are reactionary — signs not of strength, but weakness. It's not merely possible to honor one's heritage without denigrating anybody else's; to me, it's the essence of Americanism.
  

   

• As pension debate heats up more, forum was timely start May 2, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Jim Slusher:The panelists and the audience at our recent forum on pensions proved it is possible to have a civil and engaging conversation about the topic. In any well-functioning democracy, that's a start.
  

   

• Tequila, with love May 2, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr.: For Cinco de Mayo this year, I recommend a tequila that lets you savor a son's love for his father. The liquor will fill your glass. But the story behind it will fill your soul.
  

   

• Red lines as red herrings over Syria May 1, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Richard Cohen: President Obama is a latter-day Zeus. He throws these thunderbolts of diplomatic cease-and-desist orders with some regularity. He has called the use of chemical weapons by Syria a "red line," which is diplotalk for you'd better not. He said that if Damascus did use such weapons, it "would change (his) calculus." Months later, he calculated that Syria might not know what his calculus was, so he said WMD would be "totally unacceptable" and there would be, under such circumstances, "consequences."
  

   

• For GOP, obstruction’s risk May 1, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: At the end of eight years, Americans will probably be tired of President Obama and perhaps of liberalism. The GOP will get another look.
  

   

• The Bush I knew Apr 30, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Kathleen Parker: Everyone is familiar with Bush's history and performance. What I offer is an anecdote or two that I think reveal what the cameras and critics could not. These recollections are simply recorded for the sake of biography in the interest of rounding out a more complete picture of a two-term, transformational president who changed our world in ways that won't be fully understood or judged in our lifetimes.
  

   

• We’re in danger Apr 29, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Donna Brazile: In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, lawmakers are demanding answers from the FBI
  

   

• Supreme Court saves our privacy; media sleeps Apr 29, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Nat Hentoff: I'd feared that the Fourth Amendment's protection of our personal privacy had nearly vanished. But on April 17, a majority of the Supreme Court, ruling in Missouri v. McNeely, remembered a fundamental liberty
  

   

• A principled president Apr 28, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum here has been an occasion for both friends and critics of the former president to press their case.
  

   

• The terror of not knowing Apr 26, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Kathleen Parker: Though it is tempting to declare the surviving Boston bomber an "enemy combatant," as suggested by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., it is essentially a means to deny rights accorded any other American citizen who commits a crime. The only justification now would be that the Boston bomber is believed to be Muslim, which isn't a crime, or that he and his brother may have found inspiration among others of like intent.
  

   
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  Obama negotiates with himself again Apr 26, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Gene Lyons: The great mystery of Barack Obama remains the extent to which he has ever believed his own rhetoric about a transformative, post-partisan presidency. Was it really possible, I asked early last year, "that Obama had mistaken the U.S. government for the Harvard Law Review, where the emollient balm of his personality persuaded rival factions to reason together?"
  

   

• Ideological impairment over Islam Apr 24, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: In 2009, Ruslan Tsarni and his nephew Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a bitter argument over the implications of their faith. Tsarnaev announced he had chosen "God's business" over work or school. "I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God," says Tsarni. "There is someone who brainwashed him, some new convert to Islam."
  

   

• The serenity of George W. Bush Apr 24, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Richard Cohen: Maybe WMD will emerge from the Iraqi desert. Maybe all the economic data were wrong. In the meantime, George W. Bush is at ease with himself — always his gauge for right or wrong, smart or stupid. Among the many things he lacks is self-doubt. It is a gift.
  

   
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  Time to make history again Apr 23, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnists Steve and Cokie Roberts: When Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama in 2008, they were both aiming to become the first nonwhite male to run the country. But only one could succeed. Now it's time for the other barrier to fall.
  

   
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  Immigrants have helped nation thrive Apr 23, 2013 12:00 AM
  Guest Columnist Raja Krishnamoorthi: Americans are rallying in support of immigration reform, in part, because they know it spurs innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth. Seventy-six percent of patents from the top 10 patent-producing U.S. universities in 2011 had an immigrant inventor, and immigrants or their children founded 40 percent of America's Fortune 500 companies.
  

   

• The governor, the soul mate and ... The End Apr 23, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Kathleen Parker: Mark Sanford's lack of empathy for his family, not to mention his impeachable judgment, should disqualify him from further public service, an opinion apparently shared by the Republican National Committee, which recently withdrew support for his candidacy. Where the wife goes, so go the people.
  

   
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  New data on border crossings could change immigration debate Apr 22, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Byron York: There’s a confrontation coming between the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress over the most basic question of immigration reform: How secure is the U.S. border with Mexico?