By now you have heard about the military weapons, vehicles, aircraft, drones, classified technology, and encrypted communications equipment the feckless and incompetent Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left behind for our new friends the Taliban in Afghanistan. Clearly, the deaths of 12 U.S. …
Joe Biden is a disgrace. He is feckless. He is a coward. He is a liar. Yesterday, he went on television to talk about the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan. But how did he begin? He started by talking about the Democrat’s Build Back Better plan and all the “free stuff” …
Recently I was interviewed on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” show, hosted by Jan Jakielek about the similarities and differences between what is happening now in Afghanistan and what happened in Saigon in April 1975. Here is a link to that interview. It lasts about 30 minutes. I hope you …
Ocassionally, I post stories I wrote while working as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. I filed the story that follows in Febrary 1987 after returning from a foray into Afghanistan with a warlord and his Mujahideen militia. The Mujahideen, who eventually morphed into the Taliban, were fighting the …
Accomplished wordsmith William Safire once defined a gap between the generations as “a frustrating lack of communication between young and old, or a useful stretch of time that separates cultures within a society, allowing them to develop their own character.” That’s a pretty good definition. But it doesn’t tell the …
In the past few weeks, two stories caught my attention. One decried the growing wealth gap between the young and old in America. The other highlighted the growing difference between older and younger Americans on issues such as social values and morality. Should we be surprised by either of these …
Today, I am running an obituary of legendary Vietnam war correspondent Joe Galloway that appeared in the Stars & Stripes newspaper. Galloway passed away Wednesday. I hope you will take a look at it. Galloway was the quintessential war reporter–self-effacing, courageous, and honest in his powerful reporting. Ron Yates In …
Today, I am reposting a commentary I wrote while I was the Dean of the College of Media at the University of Illinois. At the time I taught classes in journalism and shared this with my students. It still resonates with me even though I wrote it about ten years …
America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan with an enemy and a people still stuck in the Middle Ages has ended. Finally. And just as it was 47 years ago in a place called Vietnam, it did not end in victory. That became clear on Sunday when Taliban forces entered Kabul essentially unimpeded by …
This has been around awhile, but I just read it again and I thought I would share it with my followers. Whether you agree or not with the prayer’s premise it seems sad that this is where we are as a country. One common misconception is that the Supreme Court …