Dr. Earl H. Tilford Jr.'s blog

Israel has right to defend itself

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:32:01 -0500

The Hamas Charter proscribes peace with Israel. Ceasefires are possible only when advantageous to Hamas and always are temporary.

November 2008 is like March 1936

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:07:43 -0500

Near the conclusion of the second presidential “town-hall” style debate, a questioner from the audience asked each candidate what he would do if Iran attacked Israel.

Strategic disaster: Vietnam lessons for the current political season

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:50:38 -0400

During his recent Middle East and European tour, Senator Barack Obama stated his strategic positions on Iraq and Afghanistan, which involves a timetable for withdrawal of most, if not all, U.S. forces from Iraq, and redeploying some forces to Afghanistan, which Obama seems to think is the epicenter of the misnamed “War on Terror.” This would constitute strategic disaster.

Seduction by air, then and now

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:16:30 -0400

Air power is seductive. From the Army Air Service’s Col. Billy Mitchell’s “Winged Defense,” written in the aftermath of the slaughter fields of the Great War, to U.S. Air Force Colonel John Warden’s “The Air Campaign,” first published in 1988, air power prophets have promised quick victories at low costs.

The end of my Vietnam War

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:04:34 -0400

[Editor’s note: This week marks the anniversary of the fall of Saigon. For most historians, this event in late April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War for the United States, but for Earl Tilford, closure would come much later, “on a cold Monday afternoon in late November 2007 at a lonely, windswept graveyard in Celina, Ohio” where he at last found the woman he had loved and lost so many years before.]

Where have all the flower children gone?

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:50:33 -0500

The American left clings to the myth that the anti-war movement ended the U.S. war in Vietnam. In fact, the anti-war movement failed to prompt any substantive changes in U.S. war policy.

Casualties of war: The untold story

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:53:54 -0500

According to recent intelligence reports, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) killed 40 Hamas terrorists in Gaza this past December without inflicting a single civilian casualty.

Victory Japan Tilford

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:11:10 -0400

In early August, members of the Witherspoon Society, a “progressive” religious advocacy group affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA, attended the “Ghost Ranch Week of Peace” in rural New Mexico.

Iran in the crosshairs?

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 23:16:47 -0400

“There is nothing so dreadful as a great victory ... excepting a great defeat.” — Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington

A limited missile defense makes sense for everyone

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:05:28 -0400

Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to target Europe with missiles if the United States deployed components of a limited missile defense system to the Czech Republic and Poland.

How to avoid the almost- certain Iraq hangover

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:17:48 -0400

After Saigon fell to a North Vietnamese onslaught on April 29, 1975, Americans experienced a “Vietnam hangover” lasting until the electorate emerged from its grogginess to elect Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980.