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Joel J. Sprayregen
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November 14, 2014
Should Obama Apologize for His Failed Foreign Policy?The defining moment when many Americans decided that President Obama couldn’t be trusted to protect our national security came last August. Obama had just announced on television the beheading of American journalist James Foley, a former ...
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May 24, 2013
Talking Turkey about ObamaPresident Obama welcomed Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to the White House last week with warmth appropriate for the leader of a strategically located ally which is NATO's only Muslim member, enjoys a booming economy, and holds elections which appear...
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September 16, 2012
Death to America: The Ghost of Jimmy Carter Haunts the White HouseJustice Holmes taught that, in understanding complex problems, "[a] page of history is worth a volume of logic." In early 1979, President Jimmy Carter facilitated the overthrow of Iran's shah by Islamic radicals. The shah was no Thomas Je...
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August 13, 2012
Even The N.Y. Times Admits It: 'Obama AWOL In Syria'When the venerable New York Times -- the elite force of the mainstream media campaign to re-elect Obama--trumpets so pithy a headline, we can suspect that something is rotten, not in Denmark but in Obama's foreign policy. The headline "Obama AW...
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April 24, 2012
Meet The Tarnished Bureaucrat Who Is Running Our Negotiations With IranYou may be shocked when you discover who is in charge of our "negotiations" with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. British Baroness Catherine Ashton, so-called foreign minister of the European Union, has emerged as spoke...
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March 12, 2012
Holding International Security Hostage to the Election CalendarListen to our president. On May 18, 2009, Obama said about his demand that Iran not develop nuclear weapons: "I don't want to set an artificial deadline. We should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to wheth...
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January 15, 2012
Americans, Lend Me Your EyesShakespeare's Mark Antony beseeched his countrymen to "lend me your ears." Is it time to ask Americans to lend their eyes to see how President Obama's foreign policies have endangered our country? A November Gallup poll indicates that 67% of ...
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September 11, 2011
Ten Years On From 9/11 Why Is NYPD Still Being Attacked?The red-white-blue line of heroism -- arching from Valley Forge to the Alamo to Iwo Jima to New York police and firemen on 9/11 -- will be honored as long as our country exists. So how can it be that less than ten years after 9/11, the NYPD is under ...
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September 11, 2010
If You Can Blackmail Yale, Why Not Blackmail New York City?Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf unashamedly told CNN that relocating the Ground Zero Mosque will proximately cause havoc: "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. But if you don't do this right, anger will explode in the Mus...
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August 9, 2010
Coping with Turkey's Islamist LurchAs Congress wakes up to Turkey's terrorist alliances, Britain's new Prime Minister made a fool of himself in Ankara. David Cameron, on his maiden official visit to the Middle East last week, proved himself to be a brazen liar or a clueless fool -- or...
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June 24, 2010
The Mussolini of the Middle East Stabs America in the BackThe Middle East has its Hitler wannabe in Iranian President Ahmadinejad. His nuclear weaponization program has accelerated over eighteen months while Obama's "engagement" is being rebuffed with contemptuous defiance from Tehran. L...
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May 30, 2010
Only pretending to be a serious newspaperOn May 25, the Los Angeles Times published an Op-Ed piece under the by-line of Saad Hariri, Lebanon's Prime Minister. Hariri called for submission of the Arab-Israeli dispute to binding arbitration by either the U.N. Security Council or by the so-cal...
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May 24, 2010
The Istanbul-Moscow Axis of EvilI logged over 15,000 air miles in the past three weeks, my ports of call including Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, and London. I enjoyed opportunities to exchange views with informed leaders of government, business, and think-tanks. Changes -- many repugnant...
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March 9, 2010
Obama's Iran Policy Collapses to the Accompaniment of Mockery Around the GlobeBarack Obama, in his first press conference after his election, called Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons "unacceptable." He repetitively offered Iran "engagement." He set a deadline of year-end 2009 for Iranian compliance, now uni...
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January 31, 2010
Obama Talks, Ahmadinejad LaughsIranian President Ahmadinejad must have had a good laugh when he read the scant foreign policy section of President Obama's State of the Union speech. How did Obama face Iranian efforts to produce nuclear weapons? Referring to negotiations seeking to...
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January 11, 2010
Merry Christmas from the World of IslamWith attention focused on the flagrant security breaches around Flight 253 on Christmas Day, too little has been made of the timing of the attack. Most readers will be surprised to learn that this was not the only Christmas attack on Christians. Here...
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January 2, 2010
Expedite Nobel Peace Prize to Save a Judge's LifeThe Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 should be shared by an Iranian doctor and a Venezuelan judge. The doctor has already been murdered. The judge's life is in danger. Expediting the awards might save her life.On December 10, Venezuelan Judge Maria Lourdes...
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November 29, 2009
Why the ADL Became a Partisan MouthpieceThe realization that political debate in a free society is often raucous accompanied my journey from work as an ACLU staff attorney to becoming National Vice-Chair of the then-respected Anti-Defamation League. This journey was inspired in significant...
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October 3, 2009
Obama in Afghanistan: Will he flee?As the burlesque of the U.N. General Assembly and the likely futility of "negotiating" with defiant theocratic Iran recede into the dustbin of history, two challenges are coming to a head that will define the Obama legacy on the world stage...
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July 30, 2009
The President's Warped Foreign PolicyEscalating fallout from President Obama's castigation of a Massachusetts police officer could damage the credibility of a leader who speaks boldly about complex foreign policy matters without showing comprehension of ...
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June 13, 2009
Talking Turkey: My Own Speech in a Muslim CountryLast week, I gave my own provocative speech in a Muslim country. The occasion was a conference of the Turkish think tank ARI (Movement for Civil Society) in Istanbul, that fabulous city straddling two continents plus countless centuries. Th...
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May 25, 2009
The Axis of Evil Tortures ObamaThe remnant of the Axis of Evil delights in torturing our President . Not just with words -- but with carefully timed "3 a.m." nuclear detonations and launches of inter-c...
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April 16, 2009
Obama Flunks the 3 A.M. TestWhile President Obama was speaking in Prague about nuclear disarmament, North Korea delivered the most tellingly timed comment on The Trip. The Pyongyang rogue regime -- proprietor of a nuclear arsenal -- defiantly launched an intercontinental multi-...
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February 8, 2009
Turkey's Prime Minister Leads His Country Down a Destructive PathIt is dismaying to see a country I have admired and worked for propelling itself outside the mainstream of western civilization. Epic statesman Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish republic, replaced religiously ordered O...
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January 27, 2009
The inside story of Operation Cast LeadThe tactical successes of Israel's recent Gaza operation, based on superb intelligence, began with air attacks on terrorist targets, which were extremely accurate and caused Hamas to go underground. The second phase, the ground attack, was a well-coo...
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January 14, 2009
Even Arabs Will Benefit if Israel Finishes the Job in GazaIt is in everyone's interest -- including the Arabs -- to let Israel finish the job in Gaza. The U.N. Security Council decreed that the arsonist should remain free to pile incendiaries next to his neighbor's house. ...
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December 5, 2008
The 'Islamophobia' canard after MumbaiSaudi King Abdullah has been urging the United Nations to pass a universal law prescribing imprisonment for criticizing Islam. Some skeptics, including myself (notwithstanding that I twice enjoyed the King's generous hospitality in Riyadh), hav...
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November 2, 2008
An Afternoon with Israel's Iron GeneralJERUSALEM - I am fortunate while in Israel to spend an afternoon with my friend Gen. Matan Vilnai. He is not called "Iron Man" because -- as Deputy Defense Minister -- he coordinates defense against Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas....
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October 2, 2008
Russia Suffers a Bloody Nose in GeorgiaTBILISI, GEORGIA Viewed from Georgia, Russia suffered a significant bloody nose in its August invasion. Russia dislodged Georgian soldiers and ethnically cleansed South Ossetia and Abkhazia, setting up puppet regimes in both breakaway reg...
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September 17, 2008
Khrushchev's Shoe Returns to Russian DiplomacyISTANBUL, TURKEY -- By the shores of the Bosporus, I listen to a high Russian official utter bellicose threats, unprecedented since the demise of Communism. The occasion was an annual Istanbul conference on regional security sponsor...
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August 31, 2008
The Tanks of AugustThree events in the first decade of the 21st century will be remembered as epic turning points in world geopolitics: 9/11; the Iraq War and the Russian invasion of Georgia in August, 2008. However convulsive the consequences of the first ...
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August 19, 2008
Sec. Rice Brokers Another DisasterCondoleezza Rice -- supposedly an expert on Russia -- rushed to Tbilisi last week, persuading reluctant Georgian President Saakahsvili to sign a cease-fire containing enough loopholes for a Russian tank battalion to drive through. Rice said she ...
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August 5, 2008
What Would President Obama's Foreign Policy Look Like?Samantha Power, the glamorous Irish-born Harvard professor, was booted from her formal position as senior foreign policy adviser to Obama for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." The candidate claims to have more than 300 foreign polic...
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July 24, 2008
A Murderer Acclaimed as a HeroIs there any place other than in the psychopathology of the Arab world that a Kuntar--freed by Israel last week in exchange for mutilated corpses of two abducted soldiers -- could be acclaimed a "hero"? The Beirut Daily Star (or...
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July 17, 2008
The New York Times and the al-Dura HoaxWhy won't the New York Times accept responsibility for repeatedly publishing a falsehood which caused many deaths? Mohammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, became an icon in 2000 when French State television ("France 2") ran agonizi...
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June 17, 2008
'It Will Almost Certainly Cause More Americans to Be Killed'The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling last week means that terrorism detainees captured overseas have the same rights as U.S. citizens facing shoplifting trials at home. This unprecedented expansion of habeas was not a victory, as liberal media smirke...
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May 29, 2008
Barack Obama in the Carpet BazaarFor over five years, European powers have been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. The result is painfully clear: Iran is five years closer to possessing nuclear weapons. This is the context in which debate about negotia...
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April 24, 2008
Jimmy Carter Disgraced For Many ReasonsWhen it came time to judge Jimmy Carter's presidency, Americans voters thundered: Carter, receiving 40% of the popular vote, carrying six states. With sound reasons: The prime rate had soared to 20%, inflation to 12.5% and unemp...