Overview for David Frum in Print

Fooling Ourselves Into Feeling Safe

A little past midnight in the early morning of Sept. 9, 2001, a Maryland state trooper spotted a car driving at more than 90 miles an hour on I-95, the busy interstate that connects Washington to New York and Boston. The driver was Ziad Jarrah, shortly to become world famous as the lead …

Written by David Frum on Saturday June 10, 2006

American Politics In Microcosm

You can see America's political future taking shape in two congressional races, one on the Pacific Coast, one on the Atlantic. On Tuesday, voters in California's 50th congressional district will choose a new congressman to replace Representative Duke Cunningham, who resigned after pleading …

Written by David Frum on Saturday June 3, 2006

Ignatieff Finesses Afghanistan

Give the man credit: Michael Ignatieff, lately of Harvard University, the British Broadcasting Corporation and King's College (Cambridge), is showing a real aptitude for politics. As a writer, Ignatieff won acclaim for his dense, deeply considered meditations on issues of nationhood, human …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday May 23, 2006

Give Ahmadinejad The Cold Shoulder

Last week, the President of Iran published an 18-page letter to the President of the United States. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's epistle tells us a lot we don't especially need to know: It tells us that he believes that the Jews faked the Holocaust, and the U.S. faked 9/11; that Jesus would have supported …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday May 16, 2006

Who Lost Iraq? It's Not Who You Think

Who messed up Iraq? Donald Rumsfeld is the usual nominee. For conservative hawks, attacks on the U.S. Defence Secretary provide a way to attack the war without attacking the larger administration. And for liberal opponents of the war, attacks on Rumsfeld provide a way to attack the war without …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday May 2, 2006

Deep Throats

A tale of two leaks: One leak provoked an international scandal--it is the leak of the name of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent who arranged for her husband, Joseph Wilson, to travel to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports of Iraqi attempts to purchase nuclear fuel in Africa. You probably know the …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday April 26, 2006

The Truth About Hamas--and Its Followers

Over the past two years, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Canadian affiliate, CAIR-Canada, have filed a series of lawsuits against journalists and others who have traced the connection between CAIR and the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. Among the targets of these …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday April 25, 2006

Bush's Youth

If the Republicans want to win the next mid term elections, they have to cuddle up to new voters If the Republicans do badly in the November 2006 elections - and you have to assume they will - the international press will attribute the losses to the Iraq war. And look: Iraq does not help. …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday April 19, 2006

Maybe The Mullahs Don't Want War

Suppose, reader, that you were a mad Iranian mullah determined to obtain nuclear weapons at the earliest opportunity. Would you brag and boast and taunt the West--before you had actually finished your work? Or would you keep very still and quiet, denying everything until you had the bomb safely in …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday April 18, 2006

The Truth About The Un

"How corrupt is the UN?" That's the question asked by Claudia Rossett in the current issue of Commentary magazine. If any reporter on earth can offer a definitive answer, it is Rossett. A former editor at the Wall Street Journal, Rossett has led the investigation of the oil-for-food scandals--and …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday April 11, 2006

The Nightmare That Could Have Been

On this third anniversary of the war in Iraq, the mood in Washington is heavy with recrimination. You might think the important question in Iraq is how to move forward to success. Instead, we find ourselves endlessly rearguing the original decision to fight the war in the first place. So OK, …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday March 21, 2006

The High Price Of The Dubai Ports World Debacle

If you were to identify a single time and place at which the Dubai Ports World deal was lost, it was February 21, aboard Air Force One as George W. Bush, US president, flew back to Washington from a Colorado visit. Bill Frist, leader of the Senate's Republican majority and a 2008 presidential …

Written by David Frum on Thursday March 16, 2006

Why Are We Subsidizing Palestinian Extremism?

Visitors to Paris really must make time for a visit to the fabled rue St. Honore, one of the world's most expensive streets: Gucci is here, as is Faberge. Oh and somebody else, too: Suha Arafat, widow of the late Palestinian leader, who reportedly occupies one of the last private houses on the …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday March 14, 2006

Our Friends In New Delhi

"The supreme political fact of the 20th century," goes a prediction often credited to Otto von Bismarck, "will be that the United States and Great Britain speak the same language." I'll venture a prediction of my own: The supreme political fact of the 21st may well turn out to be that the Indian …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday March 7, 2006

Debating Terror In Hamas's Backyard

I left Iraq just hours before terrorists attacked the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra. My group flew out of the country late at night on a C-130 transport plane, filled with sleepy American soldiers all wearing full combat armour and carrying weapons. The benches on a C-130 run up and down the …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday February 28, 2006

Pride And Progress

"We're not going to shoot our way out of here." If there is one message the U.S. Army wants a visitor to take away from a tour of Iraq, that's it. The Pentagon isn't looking to kill every single terrorist before U.S. soldiers withdraw. Rather, it defines success as completing a transition from a …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday February 21, 2006

Conned By Hamas

Who says terrorism doesn't pay? Russian President Putin has invited the leaders of Hamas to come visit him in Moscow. Direct talks with France and Turkey are likely to begin soon. Hamas representatives are touring the Arab and Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia, which promised the United States …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday February 14, 2006

From Ramallah, Harper's First Big Test

The voters of the Palestinian Authority (PA) have just delivered Canada's incoming Harper government its first test. The Conservative position on Palestinian terrorism is clear: They condemn it--and they certainly oppose the Canadian taxpayer being asked to subsidize it. But the career …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday January 31, 2006

Putting An End To Ottawa's Brat Act

Washington D.C. will be very, very glad to see the back of Paul Martin, and for much the same reason that Canadians voted against him. After years of investing him with all their brightest hopes for change, they came to see him as a weak, vacillating leader whose word could not be trusted. …

Written by David Frum on Tuesday January 24, 2006

I Have A Dream

Through the 1990s, President Clinton had two powerful senior advisers: his wife, Hillary Clinton, spoke for the left of the Democratic party; his vice president, Al Gore, spoke for the right. It was Gore for example who pressed President Clinton to emphasize budget-balancing over public …

Written by David Frum on Wednesday January 18, 2006