The Islamic democracy project is nothing if not beguiling. From Clinton’s Orwellian “peace process” through Bush’s cloying “freedom agenda” to Obama’s contortion of an Islamist ascendancy into “the Arab Spring,” the dream teems with self-congratulation, so much so that its debilitating downsides go unseen and unaddressed.

From The Heritage Foundation: The long-awaited White House Review on Afghanistan demonstrates that General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy is beginning to pay dividends. The additional U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan have helped the U.S. and coalition forces begin to uproot the Taliban from some of their traditional strongholds in southern Afghanistan. The most important task now [...]

From Telegraph.co.uk: The United States’ president flew 13 hours across the world only to be unable to meet the Afghan president face-to-face on his three hour visit because helicopters were grounded by high winds and low cloud. Mr Obama instead staged a video conference with Mr Karzai just hours after leaked cables suggested American diplomats [...]

From Telegraph.co.uk: The timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq was set out in the Status of Forces Agreement signed by American and Iraqi officials in November 2008, and endorsed by Iraq’s parliament later that month. It envisaged the departure of all US military forces by the end of 2011. President Obama, who opposed the [...]

From CNSNews.com: As of July 31, almost half of all U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan have happened on President Barack Obama’s watch. Since Obama took office in January 2009, 558 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, out of 1,127 since the war began nine years ago, according to CNSNews.com’s tally. And the violence is escalating. July 2010 [...]

From NewsMax.com: President Barack Obama’s weak leadership on the Afghanistan war, Guantanamo, and the Gulf oil spill has Democrats backing away from him in droves, political analyst Dick Morris tells Newsmax.TV. “Obama is down to a new low of 43 percent job approval,” Morris says, citing a recent Rasmussen Reports poll. “It’s Democrats he’s losing. [...]

From American Thinker: There is no evidence that Barack Obama willfully precipitated the Nashville floods, but almost all of the other gloomy, intractable quagmires that feed the country’s pessimism are of his creation. But unlike crises of past administrations that seemed to get resolved in some fashion, his simply fester. Every day we read the [...]

From Telegraph.co.uk: The 13-minute audio message, in English, comes days after the US Treasury department put Anwar al-Awlaki on its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. “If George W. Bush is remembered as being the president who got America stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s looking like Obama wants to be remembered as the president [...]

From CNSNews.com: A majority of all combat-related U.S. casualties in the nine-year-long war in Afghanistan have occurred since President Barack Obama was inaugurated a little more than 17 months ago. Between Jan. 20, 2009 and July 2, 2010, according to CNSNews.com’s database of Afghanistan war casualties, U.S. military personnel suffered 452 combat-related deaths in Afghanistan. That amounts to more than [...]

From CNSNews.com: Gen. David Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week that President Barack Obama’s July 2011 drawdown date for U.S troops in Afghanistan was not proposed by military officials. Petraeus said that he understood that the “president has to be interested in fiscal considerations, political considerations, diplomatic considerations” in making decisions [...]

From NewsMax.com: Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele says Afghanistan is “a war of Obama’s choosing” and the conflict “is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” comments that drew an immediate rebuke from Republicans and Democrats. In remarks captured Thursday on camera and posted online, Steele criticized President [...]

From National Review: What do General McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic-party supporters. Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general [...]

From Telegraph.co.uk: For the Washington cognoscenti, the appointment of General David Petraeusmarked the crescendo of President Barack Obama’s Wonderful Week. In firing General Stanley McChrystal, Mr Obama, the ultimate cool cat, was transformed into Mr Angry. The law professor finally became commander-in-chief. Obama, so the Beltway groupthink goes, turned a lose-lose situation into a political victory by asserting [...]

From Townhall.com: Unless you live on the oil-saturated bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, you’re probably well aware that our President, who happens to have skin thinner than that of an Iberian Ribbed Newt, fired General Stanley McChrystal for committing the unpardonable sin: He told the ugly truth about Obama. Now, before I get flooded [...]

From The Heritage Foundation: When is a timeline not really a timeline? When the President says so. See GITMO, Healthcare, etc…now add Afghanistan. At a press conference today, President Obama said of his Afghanistan withdrawal timeline, “We didn’t say we’d be switching off the lights and closing the door behind us. We said we’d begin a [...]

From NewsMax.com: The man handpicked by President Obama to rescue the flagging American war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, must wage a critical battle on two fronts: Taking on the Taliban while quelling bureaucratic rivalries in Washington that present a serious threat to military morale. The Pentagon brass joined with members of Congress in [...]

From CNSNews.com: Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a candidate in the 2009 Afghan presidential election, said the July 2011 date set by President Barack Obama for U.S. troops to draw-down from Afghanistan is problematic because it creates a perception of mixed messages about U.S. commitment to the country. Dr. Abdullah explained that talks about withdrawing troops send [...]

From GOPUSA.com: WASHINGTON (AP) – A key to the U.S. approach to fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is this seemingly backward logic: The more aggressively you protect your own troops, the less secure they may be. The idea is that troops who put themselves at risk to protect innocents will ultimately help decrease violence [...]

President Obama only referred to himself 103 times in his first State of Himself Address… er, State of the Union Address, which is lower than the 132 times he referred to himself in a speech he gave just last week in Ohio. From The Heritage Foundation: Heritage members and fans are discussing President Barack Obama’s [...]

From CNSNews.com: President Barack Obama — a wartime president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan — was greeted by anti-war protesters and banners in Oslo, Norway, on Thursday. The Associated Press reported that posters around Oslo feature a campaign image of Obama reading “Change?”  The posters refer to Obama’s expansion of the [...]