Douglas Ernst

Bill Clinton has admitted that he took the easy wrong instead of the hard right when it came to handling the world’s most famous Islamic terrorist. And who would have thought that it would come in an ad for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign? Speaking on President Obama’s decision to send Navy SEALS into Pakistan to [...]

They are two different tales, but they belong to one culture. In Syria, Assad’s thugs are burying men alive. In Egypt, the “moderate” Islamist parliament seeks to pass a law that would allow men to have sex with their wife for up to six hours after her death. Meanwhile, in college classrooms across the United [...]

Years ago, smarmy journalists asked Bush about public opinion fading on the war effort (take your pick, Afghanistan or Iraq, it doesn’t matter), and his response was telling. In short, he tactfully told them to shove it because a leader’s job is to do the hard right, even if doing the easy wrong is in [...]

When I was in graduate school I asked my classmates to raise their hand if they had watched any of the beheadings that terrorist groups posted online. I was the only one in the room who had done so. I made the point because my professor had just allowed a rather ignorant young man to [...]

What would happen if a U.S. soldier, for some weird reason, was accused of beating an Afghan woman? You know the answer—the place would explode into a screaming, yelling, semi-automatic rifle firing ball of Islamic rage. Yet, oddly enough, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has opted for “outreach” to the Taliban that touches on (or should [...]

The Sun reports that while destorying Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, demolition crews found Bibles inscribed with coded terror plots. Pakistan’s intelligence services are now in possession of the religious texts, and if true it’s something that the CIA will want in on. Regardless, coming off the heels of Afghanistan’s Koran-burning riots, such a find [...]

Imagine you’ve found Ayman al-Zawahiri. You’ve located him hiding in a barren, mountainous region of Pakistan. It’s cold. Really cold. You know he has information on an imminent attack on American soil, and you need to extract it fast. You’re short on professional interrogators and help isn’t coming anytime soon, but you do have a [...]

Clint Eastwood is now on record, denying there were political motives behind his “Halftime in America” Super Bowl ad for the U.S. auto industry. Regardless, the ad went viral, largely because the “two teams” metaphor is perfect for the upcoming election. Most commentators have largely focused on what the two teams have done domestically, but [...]

I’ve posted on Iran quite a few times over the past few years, usually lamenting the Christopher Nolan Momento-ish feel to the whole situation. However, I think articles like Why We’re Not Going to War with Iran, that touch on the same observation, are flawed. Sure, it’s Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day with the Iranian nuclear [...]

The world collectively yawned when Momar Gaddafi was sodomized with a crude instrument in his last bloody moments. Egypt’s Hussein Tantawi has a military whose first major objective after the fall of Hosni Mubarak was to strip down female protestors, drag them by the hair, and stomp on their chests. North Korea runs modern-day gulags, [...]