Middle East

Phase One feels like slapping a tourniquet on a two year hemorrhage, buying enough breath to get the hostages out, pull the troops back, and see if anyone is ready to run Gaza without the gunsmoke.

Two years after 7 October, the Middle East feels like riding around in the desert in a Humvee with a grenade with the pin half-pulled, grinding from Gaza to the Red Sea while diplomats in Cairo try to keep the spoon down and stop hostages, rockets, and headlines from detonating at once.

After the winter rains, the Shia south unfurled like a green flag—desert lakes flashing in the morning sun, children in new clothes racing our convoys, vendors offering kabobs, and every smile saying the same thing: Saddam is gone.

The war of terror is not fought with bombs or bullets, but in the human heart, where fear seeks to claim ground that only we can choose to surrender.

Years of envy and humiliation had hardened into a poverty of consciousness, where cruelty was mistaken for devotion and crime disguised itself as holy war.

In the desert’s crucible, where ego burned away, I discovered that truth itself could be the strongest shield a man might carry.

Between Hamas’s butchery, Israel’s grinding war, and a fog of propaganda that makes truth provisional, Gaza is where civilians are crushed while Washington looks away.

Hamas isn’t fighting for freedom—they’re a death cult that turns ceasefires into reload breaks and children into human shields.

We were fighting a war without a front line, where cruelty was as much a weapon as any rifle, and the enemy’s strength lay in finding the weakest point to strike.

U.S. and coalition forces have withdrawn from three forward operating bases in northeastern Syria—Mission Support Site Green Village, Mission Support Site Euphrates (often called the Conoco gas-field base), and a third smaller facility—sometime in May 2025, according to the latest Department of Defense Inspector General quarterly report. These closures represent a mass exodus from the […]

David Bellavia didn’t come back from Fallujah with swagger or speeches—he came back with ghosts, blood on his boots, and a vow that he’d never freeze again when the devil kicked in the door.

Israel’s failure to recognize the full extent of Hamas’ capabilities and intentions leading up to October 7th, 2023, shows that even the most advanced intelligence agencies can overlook critical threats when they make dangerous assumptions about their adversaries.