For 40 years American presidents have pondered a fundamental question about Iran, best summed up by Henry Kissinger: Is it a country or a cause? Last week, Donald Trump gave his answer: Iran is a cause, a terrorist cause, and it will be treated as such.

OPINION

While visiting fire victims last week in Cobargo, just inland from the coast, conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison faced an irate crowd. Some refused to shake his hand; others called for more resources to fight the flames.

OPINION

Soleimani, an important figure in the region, had been destabilizing U.S. interests for decades. His death will have consequences, and those should be explored.

OPINION

The problem, as industry leaders acknowledge in their quieter moments, is still the same: getting the total cost of owning an EV down to that of a gas equivalent.

OPINION

Campaign reporting is at its best when we investigate the candidates, their histories and their proposals, and when we talk to voters to learn what they think. We’re at our worst when we make forecasts without warning how fallible we are.

OPINION

Our aim is to be able to abstract parts from the printers that make them, allowing consistent replication as printer technology changes.

OPINION

The result is that we designed a force that was incapable of fighting without American support. Even worse, we failed to address the endemic corruption that would undermine the legitimacy of both Afghan forces and the central government in the eyes of the Afghan people.

OPINION

The tide of the battle did not clearly turn until Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army broke through to the 101st Airborne Division, surrounded by the Wehrmacht in the crossroads town of Bastogne, on the day after Christmas.

OPINION

When voters are asked who they think is most electable against Trump, Biden wins. Even some voters who prefer other candidates say Biden has the best shot.

I find that the optimal time for one to muster motivation for self-improvement is right after one has polished off an entire pint of ice cream.

Sometime after the Earth cooled — let’s just say it was between a gazillion and a bajillion years ago — slimy little amoebas sprouted fins and then legs. Soon, critters of all shapes and sizes roamed the planet. Not too long after that (again, I’m foggy on the dates, but feel free to Google it), hairy Homo sapiens began squirreling away special rocks and animal pelts to present to each other as gifts.

OPINION

Despite criticism from spending hawks and late-night comics, Space Force is an idea whose time has come. But the public has questions: What will it look like? What will its mission be?

OPINION

Is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a reformer or a reactionary? The answer, maddening to those who love him as much as to those who loathe him, is that Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler might just be both those things.

OPINION

Christians historically understand themselves as a people of hope. But for many populist Christians, hope is an unstoppable power.

OPINION

It’s OK to see both sides, to climb out of our partisan foxholes and acknowledge the obvious, even when it contradicts our preferred narratives and political prejudices.

OPINION

Has Galli’s column changed a single mind in America, except about the magazine he was supposed to steward?

OPINION

A Christianity dependent on Trump is a weak faith, indeed.

OPINION

It’s about finding a shared sense of mission — even when you vehemently disagree on the details — that you can share with your political opponents because it’s important for the country.

OPINION

If one is serious about constitutional democracy, one needs to be consistently serious.

OPINION

No veteran deserves to have a target on their back because of their GI Bill.

OPINION

As long as Trump remains president, very little of the House Democratic agenda is likely to become law. But that’s hardly the Democrats’ fault.

For much of the Democratic presidential race, an obstreperous left wing defined the contest. Thursday’s debate showed that this has changed.

OPINION

When historians tell the story of Trump’s legacy of weakening the Constitution, they will now include the House’s response. That matters.

OPINION

This is a time when allies should be standing shoulder to shoulder, not bickering over money.

OPINION

In an entirely one-sided process, judges on this court sign off on classified government surveillance requests affecting countless Americans a year who are never suspected of committing a crime.

OPINION

Congress has given a heinous gift to human rights violators that will make the world less safe — and the United States less respected.

From a plastic chair beside a burbling aquarium tank occupied by one lonely suckerfish, I relayed our dog’s recent behavior to the veterinarian. “Moby’s been acting ... well, funny. He’s walking stiffly, favoring his left side, whining a lot, and he won’t get up for anything — except meals, of course. He is a lab, after all.”

OPINION

My chance encounter five years ago with the author of the Afghanistan Papers gave me the distinct impression that not only were we not winning, but also that our failures were widespread, well documented and widely known in Washington.

OPINION

Two members of an external committee set up to oversee the Swedish Academy quit this month in the aftermath of the furor surrounding Austrian writer Peter Handke’s selection as the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient.

OPINION

According to a new survey of 18 countries from the Pew Research Center, even America’s closest neighbors are losing faith in their U.S. alliance.

OPINION

Russia would be happy if Trump prevails, and just as happy if he is removed. What is much more important is the long-term strategy of sowing distrust of the democratic process for years to come, and leading to a constitutional crisis in perpetuity.

OPINION

For 14 years, Kathy Soliozy Prout — the widow of Navy Rear Adm. James “Jay” Prout, killed when a Navy jet in which he was riding crashed in New Mexico in 1995 — has fought for military widows struggling to make ends meet after the death of their spouse.

OPINION

Our resources extend only so far and there is no way we can keep every place else in the world safe from itself.

OPINION

The court’s unwillingness to philosophize about the Constitution in the abstract is one of the most important limits on its power.

OPINION

There is plenty of anger on both sides. The question is: Whose anger is legitimate?

OPINION

The Democrats might want to show a bit more humility.

OPINION

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s embrace of lawn mowing as a de facto military doctrine, is troubling. It implies that the United States has no alternative but to persist on the course it embarked on after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

OPINION

When GOP senators reject the impeachment, though, they will do it for the same reason Democrats are pressing it: fear of their base voters.

OPINION

A report’s authors must be willing to defend their conclusions publicly and, most importantly, correct those who misinterpret their work in bad faith.

OPINION

Retired military leaders have begun sounding the alarm. Yet those in real positions of power are nowhere to be found.

OPINION

I propose a standard: Focus on whether the merchandise contributes to further understanding, one way or another, rather than whether it might embody evil.

OPINION

Millions of Americans were laughing at Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the House Intelligence Committee chairman, simply refusing to indulge his begging for attention, scoffing at his repeated assertions that his impeachment hearings were a really big deal.

OPINION

One of the things every Catholic child is taught is that the word “hate” should never be used in connection with another human being.

OPINION

By leveraging their own unique strengths, each and every business can have their own role to play in supporting our nation’s heroes.

OPINION

For the moment, all we can safely say is that polls continue to confirm that Trump is in deep trouble, with a job approval rating that no incumbent president seeking reelection would want.

OPINION

The biracial lawmaker with an unfamiliar name who some believed was best situated to carry on the Obama legacy was never able to persuade large swaths of those who backed the former president to support her.

OPINION

Haunted by those epochal events, China’s top leaders have used quick and brutal methods to crush any new movement that strikes them as having the potential to link up people of varied classes in varied locales.

OPINION

If the president’s critics could look at the facts on the ground, free from political bias, they would see that his administration has done an excellent job aligning America’s global presence with U.S. national interests.

OPINION

Impeachment is almost certain “to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused,” he wrote in the Federalist Papers.

OPINION

Ethics is a muscle, and it only grows stronger when exercised.

America is a paradox where paying customers can also be have-nots. I discovered this, most recently, at the airport.

OPINION

So, we have just learned that not only are we destroying our planet much faster than we thought, but also we — and our children — are going to live a shorter life than we expected.

OPINION

Right now, the overprescribing seems to have prompted an overcorrection.

Polls show support for impeachment going south. Rather than softening, Trump’s GOP base is as solidified as ever.

OPINION

The main reason for Hoffa’s popularity was that he delivered for his members.

OPINION

The moment has arrived for France and Germany to adopt more than baby steps to make Europe great again.

I can’t remember that my reading glasses are perched on my head, where I parked my car at the commissary or where I left my cup of coffee, but I have many vivid recollections of my childhood. Especially of the holidays, when I stored detailed memories of the sights, sounds and aromas of the season deep in the recesses of my brain.

OPINION

Unity was an overarching Lincoln theme throughout the Civil War, employed with shrewd calculation and brilliant political timing.

OPINION

History shows how hard it will be to lessen political acrimony and restore at least a semblance of the bipartisanship that once marked foreign policy and, at times, domestic issues.

OPINION

Economically, starving the U.S. university system of funding would be a terrible move. Universities are the best tool the country has for revitalizing flagging regions.

OPINION

Outright nonenforcement of the law is an affront to the separation of powers.

OPINION

He had long lost the confidence of President Donald Trump and many other top administration officials and had been on shaky ground for months.

OPINION

It’s wrong to assume this is just a self-interested push by Paris to control the EU.

OPINION

As a legal description of the president’s conduct, all of these charges are accurate, and all at the same time.

OPINION

These powerhouses of the U.S. Navy support and maintain 75 aircraft — operating 24 hours a day, and provide a level of national security that is impossible to quantify with unmatched capability.

OPINION

This doesn’t appear to be about money. Despite its critics, Chick-fil-A has been remarkably successful. But if it’s an attempt to appease the left, there are already signs it has failed.

OPINION

Congress needs to step in and amend the caregiver law to establish a date at which time VA must begin accepting and processing applications from pre-9/11 veterans and caregivers.

OPINION

If there was ever a time and a place where the voice of John McCain was missing from Congress, this is it — at the intersection of an impeachment, an election and a constitutional crisis.

OPINION

The competition between a growing China and America will mainly be waged on economic, not military terms.

OPINION

While three-fourths of the electorate in Ohio's Highland County voted for Trump in 2016, those among the other 25 percent view him through a different lens, while trying to make sure the deep partisan divide does not affect lifelong friendships.

OPINION

A response to the crisis in Bolivia consistent with promoting democratic rule would involve simultaneously condemning the alleged electoral fraud that triggered the recent crisis and the military’s response to it.

By this point, everyone knows that the U.S. health care system is fundamentally broken. But every plan to fix it runs into a fusillade of opposition. This dynamic could be seen in the reaction to the Affordable Care Act, which remained unpopular for years after its passage. The “Obamacare” system substantially reduced the number of Americans who were uninsured, but costs kept growing.

Last month, another U.S. military veteran took his own life on a Veteran’s Administration campus. This is the sixth veteran suicide in the public areas of Florida’s Bay Pines VA facility in the last six years. This latest incident is also part of the ever-growing rate of veteran suicides each year, and part of a nationwide increase in suicides among all adults.

In 26 years of marriage, long-standing feuds have formed between my husband and me, never to be resolved. Which direction the toilet roll should be mounted. Where bowls go in the dishwasher. Whether it is insensitive to one’s passengers to insist on driving with the car windows down when the outside temperature is under 50 degrees.

OPINION

That we all gave some and that some gave all remains an elusive concept that will never occupy the consciousness of the 99.5% of the population.

OPINION

World leaders no longer trust America’s commitments — because they now no longer trust or respect the words and promises of America’s president. And Washington’s remaining respected and patriotic Republicans all know this; they just won’t admit it to you.

OPINION

Candidates will have good days, bad days and very bad days. But after day one, basically, it’s all downhill for almost everyone running, with the speed of decline dependent on many factors.

OPINION

A balanced U.S. foreign policy must promote strategic partnerships and accelerate innovative development across Latin America.

OPINION

Without liaison offices or a similar de-escalation mechanism, a third summit that does nothing on denuclearization has no value for either side.

OPINION

We represent the determination of my country to move to a brighter future. And just like us, Colombia is stronger thanks to the challenges it has overcome.

OPINION

It is only through cooperative efforts with other nations that we can ensure our security and theirs.

OPINION

Military personnel and veterans inhabit a lofty place in American society. We know how to carry burdens. We should embrace the responsibility of being in public in uniform despite the difficulties.

Military families have been hitting civilian department stores and base exchanges in search of the perfect Halloween costumes for next week’s trick-or-treating. I am always amazed at the unbelievable selection of reasonably priced costumes for kids and adults nowadays. Options range from Attila the Hun to Sexy Mr. Rogers, and everything in between. Today, there is no excuse for not having a decent costume on October 31st. However, it wasn’t always so easy.

OPINION

Lessons of the crisis include importance of thorough, objective intelligence analysis and communicating effectively with opponents. Then and now, strong U.S. presidential leadership is essential.

“Oh no!” I gasped Oct. 6, in a crowded Rhode Island bar, as I watched 6-foot-5-inch Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph drop like a rag doll after a helmet-to-helmet hit by Ravens safety Earl Thomas.