Does anyone still remember the "Global War on Terror"? For roughly two decades following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the struggle against al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants was a fixture of U.S. foreign and security policy. Of late, though, this focus has receded, replaced by an emphasis on "great power competition" with China, as well as Russia. This attention has only been reinforced by Russia's current war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine—a conflict that has succeeded in galvanizing a unified Western response to Russian neo-imperialism. This shift has had concrete effects. It has altered military budgets, as the U.S. defense bureaucracy has de-emphasized special operations and low intensity conflict in favor of planning for conventional force-on-force competition with near-peer adversaries.[1] Just as profoundly, it has marked the end of counterterrorism as a significant orienting principle in U.S. policy planning. The Biden administration's October 2022 National Security Strategy, for instance, relegates the fight against militant Islam and extremist actors to what is, at best, a second-tier priority.[2] But if the fight against militant Islam has become less urgent for the United States, America's allies in the Muslim World are still very much embroiled in it—as well as the struggle for hearts and minds that serves as its central front.

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"I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom," George W. Bush famously said.

I've never been convinced.

I think plenty of people don't give a fig about freedom – not their own and certainly not anyone else's. And I think there are those whose most heartfelt desire is to eradicate the freedom of others.

But there is a moral elite so devoted to the cause of freedom that they are willing to martyr themselves to prevent the future from becoming the nightmare George Orwell imagined: "a boot stamping on a human face – forever."

Two such heroes – Jimmy Lai and Dmitry Muratov– are profiled in two documentary films. I unhesitatingly recommend them.

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America marked a grim anniversary on August 30. That was the date, two years ago, when the United States ended its military presence in Afghanistan. The war that began there in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks lasted a full two decades. The war ended with a botched American retrograde that led directly to the deaths of 13 brave servicemen and thousands of stranded American citizens and Afghan allies.

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This Friday, September 15, marks Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This year, however, Rosh Hashanah also marks the 100th anniversary of the Daf Yomi, a program for daily Talmud study that has become a staple throughout the Jewish world and brought some measure of unity to an increasingly fragmented people.

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Next week marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords, one of the most colossal strategic errors in modern Israel's history.

Three decades after prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat shook hands as a beaming US president Bill Clinton looked on, the smiles have long ago been erased thanks to the disaster wrought by the agreement.

And since the legacy of that catastrophic capitulation by the Jewish state is still very much with us, it is worth gazing back, however briefly, at the folly of that regrettable attempt to appease terror with territory.

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Since inflation's pace has slowed and growth has accelerated, President Biden has embraced as his own what once was a Republican slur on his economic policies — "Bidenomics." Though few commentators seem to have noticed, Bidenomics bears a striking resemblance to "America First," the economic programs of former President Donald Trump that helped endear him to so many working-class voters.

"While they are motivated by radically different agendas," says Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone's Private Wealth Solutions division, "Trump's and Biden's economic policies have striking parallels."

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I can't believe we're having this discussion in September 2023, just as the fall respiratory virus season commences and we're experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, but the politicizers of COVID won't let up. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) this week introduced legislation that "would prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools."

There was also the ill-timed article by John Tierney in City Journal on August 27th claiming that "maskaholics are incorrigible" and everyone should reject masks because "we're rational."

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While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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A new report about "anti-Muslim hostility" commissioned by the German government has faced a barrage of criticism after it was revealed that Islamist groups linked to Iran and Turkey were involved in producing the document. Unsurprisingly, the long-awaited report paints a highly distorted picture of Muslim discrimination in Germany: It brands virtually all criticism of Islam or Islamism as "anti-Muslim hostility" and reprimands German lawmakers and even reformist Muslims who oppose the spread of Islamism in Germany.

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In a widely predicted move, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) has now joined the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in adopting a boycott of Israeli universities. It represents a turning point in the discipline of anthropology and a milestone in the fall of American academia as a whole.

The resolution, which was adopted by a large margin of its members, prohibits Israeli universities from advertising in AAA journals and participating in other organizational activities. It does not, however, prevent Israeli anthropologists from presenting at AAA meetings or publishing papers in AAA journals.

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