<![CDATA[ - Articles - RealClearPolitics]]> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/rss/archive/15895.xml Author <![CDATA[Obama's Legacy of War and Chaos]]> Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0500 People blame the new horrors in Iraq on the American-led invasion in 2003. But the exact reason why the country is in civil war today is because the Americans are not there. If US troops were still present, the fanatical ISIS, the “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham”, would not have swept through the north of the country and now be threatening Baghdad.

]]> <![CDATA[The Game Is Up for Climate Change Believers]]> Mon, 07 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0500 Most of us pay some attention to the weather forecast. If it says it will rain in your area tomorrow, it probably will. But if it says the same for a month, let alone a year, later, it is much less likely to be right. There are too many imponderables.

]]> <![CDATA[Obama: Global Preacher With Shrinking Flock]]> Sat, 14 Dec 2013 00:00:00 -0600 In his oration at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service on Tuesday, Barack Obama asked himself “how well have I applied his lessons in my own life?”, and invited all of us to ask the same question of ourselves.

In his own case, President Obama offered no answer. But it was the fairly clear implication of his words that he didn’t think he was shaping up too badly. Madiba, he said, had been “the last great liberator of the 20th century”. Guess who looks like being the first great liberator of the 21st.

]]> <![CDATA[Blair: West Asleep About Islamist Extremism]]> Wed, 25 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0500 Tony Blair is vigorous proof of life after political death. He is back in London, looking well, smartly dressed in the combination of blue suit and brown shoes that, traditionally, is the mark of being not quite a gentleman. “I’ve put my tie on for The Daily Telegraph,” he says. He will be at the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday.

But today , he has a different purpose. The Westminster Faith Debates, chaired by his former home secretary Charles Clarke, will close with a conversation tonight between Mr Blair, the Archbishop of Canterbury and me. The subject is religion and society.

]]> <![CDATA[What Thatcher Knew About Capitalism]]> Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Friends of Lady Thatcher tend to deplore The Iron Lady, the new film about her starring Meryl Streep. They do so because they are upset at the portrayal of a still living person as suffering from dementia. Their feelings do them credit as friends. As someone who knows her himself, I find bits of the film, which I have just seen, distressing.

But friends are often the last people to understand how things look in a wider setting. When the general public (who, for some reason, will not be allowed to see the film until January) walk into the cinema and watch the Streep version of Thatcher, I am convinced that they will be moved by the...]]> <![CDATA[The Invincible Margaret Thatcher]]> Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0600 Not long after she resigned as prime minister, in 1990, Margaret Thatcher began to write her memoirs. I met her at a dinner party and asked her what she would call them. The famous blue eyes flashed at me: “Undefeated!” she declared. This expressed a sober arithmetical fact. Uniquely at that time in British politics, Margaret Thatcher had won three general elections in a row as party leader and had never lost any.

Before she had the chance to contest her fourth, she was deposed by members of Parliament from her own party in a coup. Yet, even in that contest, the pure numbers were on her side. In 1990, when the Conservative Party staged a challenge to her leadership, she...]]> <![CDATA[Europe Needs Democrats - Not Technocrats]]> Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0600

'The moment of truth is approaching,” said David Cameron on Thursday. But what is the truth?

In the view of those who run Europe, the truth is that its single currency must be saved. In very ancient Greece, Homer tells us, the giants tried to scale Heaven by piling Mount Ossa on top of Mount Olympus, and then adding “wooded Pelion”, another mountain in those parts, on top of that. They failed, of course, and “piling Pelion on Ossa” became a by-word for reinforcing failure.

]]> <![CDATA[Euro Integration Screeches to a Halt]]> Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Once upon a time, we were taught that visitors came humbly to Europe to wonder at the magnificence of the white man’s civilisation. Now, the caricature is reversed. This week, three leading non-Europeans, one black, one brown and one yellow-skinned, arrived in Cannes. The President of the United States, the Prime Minister of India and the Premier of China certainly looked puzzled by what they found, but whatever they were lost in, it was not admiration.

In the dim, distant days of last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy must have felt happy that he would be the host of the G20 summit just as he was gearing up for his re-election...]]> <![CDATA[How Britain Can Restore Law and Order]]> Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500 Yes, yes, I blame the parents. Yes, and the slack teachers. And the greedy bankers, pop videos, mass immigration, social media, celebrity culture, MPs’ expenses, hamburgers, and no doubt lots of other nasty things, if you will give me a moment to think of them.

But although it may be therapeutic to work off one’s feelings in this way, I wonder if it is the best use of valuable time just now. There are many things in our society which – on the whole, luckily – politicians cannot do much about.

]]> <![CDATA[If Banks Face No Risk, We Shall All Go Down]]> Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0600 Governors of the Bank of England are, rightly, cautious people. Their remarks can move markets. They must steer the way between exuberance and gloom. So they tend not to say very much. Historically, the Governor's most important organ was not his tongue but his eyebrows. If he raised them quizzically, the bankers of the City of London got the message.

]]> <![CDATA[What Happens After the Revolutions?]]> Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600 In Israel this week, I flew to the northern border with Lebanon. From a military outpost, I looked over the barbed wire which separates the two countries, and surveyed the attractive, rocky country beyond. In the far distance, Mount Hermon rose, snow-capped and remote.

A thin, shy, clever officer from Israeli military intelligence explained to us what we could see. There, in the middle of a village, was a large white house.

]]> <![CDATA[Cameron: End Accommodation of Extremism]]> Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

Television plays a strange role in this great unfolding drama in the Middle East. On the one hand, it drives everything. It turns a few streets and squares in Cairo into the world stage, and then incites local actors to perform there. (I am not sure, by the way, that it has managed to rustle up quite as many extras as it would like: the struggle looks somewhat inconclusive.) Personally, I am getting a bit sick of being told what to think by the famous presenters – Jon Snow, John Simpson, George Alagiah – who are “big-footing” their local colleagues. They call supporters of President Mubarak...]]> <![CDATA[BBC on the Errors of Environmentalism]]> Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this programme is that it was made at all. It shows how the Green monolith has cracked. For many years, Channel 4 would not have dared devote an hour to the errors of environmentalism; or, if it had done so, it would have wrapped it in the cordon sanitaire always put round anything considered Right-wing, stating that this was a "provocative" and "personal" view.

This was no such programme. Instead, it was a platform for every sinner that repenteth. Former hippy Greens, directors of Greenpeace, the chairmen of the Copenhagen Climate Council and the like, queued up to admit error. Their reasons for doing so...]]> <![CDATA[An Exceptional Woman's Rejection of Islam]]> Mon, 31 May 2010 00:00:00 -0500 In a way, this book is the opposite of Barack Obama's famous memoir Dreams from My Father. The future President of the United States wrote of how he had tried to understand all of the non-American bits of his background, especially the Kenyan family of his father. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, on the other hand, is an African brought up in Africa. She comes from Somalia, and has also lived in Ethiopia and Kenya. Her fame derives from the fact that she boldly and absolutely rejected the Muslim faith in which she grew up. She sought asylum in Holland and became, for a time, a politician there. She collaborated with Theo Van Gogh, who was later murdered by an Islamist fanatic, on a film called...]]> <![CDATA[Our Human Rights Culture is Now a Tyranny]]> Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Accessibility links

Digital Publisher of the Year | Saturday 19 December 2009 | Charles Moore feed

Advertisement Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. Enhanced by Google Home News Sport Finance Lifestyle Comment Travel Culture Technology Fashion Jobs Dating Games  Offers Columnists Personal...]]> <![CDATA['Saving' the Planet Will Be the Real Disaster]]> Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Accessibility links

Digital Publisher of the Year | Thursday 03 December 2009 | Charles Moore feed

Advertisement Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. Enhanced by...]]> <![CDATA[Obama, the Right Man at the Wrong Time?]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Christmas Lessons From Charles Dickens]]> Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 <![CDATA[Mumbai Attacks Are Warning to Britain]]> Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 <![CDATA[Rebuild the Respectable Society]]> Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[Obama's Trans-Atlantic Appeal]]> Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[China is in the Games to Win]]> Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[The European Constitution is Dead]]> Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0500 <![CDATA[It's Time For Realism in Afghanistan]]> Sat, 31 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500