Washington Times columnist Diana West writes a weekly commentary column for Newspaper Enterprise Association. A conservative with a strong bent for cultural commentary, Diana West explores topics few writers touch upon - from whether Islam is really a religion of peace, to whether Howard Dean was as good a governor as his campaign claims he was, to society's bizarre efforts to protect children from Mother's Day, to the rise of "PC" summer camps in Vermont - presenting all in a deft, often humorous manner. "I feel that such an approach, besides being more readable, is also more persuasive than a steady output of sober jeremiads," says Diana West. "Not that I haven't been known to do a few of those, but I do strive to slip in a few zingers. In other words, mine is not a who's up, who's down Beltway column; nor is it just another take on the Big Story-of-the-Week. Instead, I am fascinated by the culture stories, the ones that reveal who we are as a people." Diana West's column has appeared in NEA since 2001. A journalist with experience in feature-writing, political coverage and arts criticism, Diana West joined The Washington Times' editorial page in 1999 to comment on cultural and social issues, along with a range of political affairs, including Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign, sundry Clinton scandals and the ongoing fight over the judiciary, resigning in 2002 to pursue other writing projects. Diana West won second place for editorial writing in the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association Contest (largest daily division) in 2001. In 1990, Diana West won a first place prize in feature writing from the National Newspaper Association for a two-part story on the David Baltimore affair, a scientific fraud controversy involving the Nobel prizewinner. Diana West has contributed essays and features to many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, Commentary, The New Criterion, The Public Interest and The Women's Quarterly. Diana West has also written fiction for The Atlantic Monthly and has been a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. Born and raised in Hollywood, Diana West spent a year as a youngster living in Ireland with her family. Diana West went on to graduate from Yale with a B.A. in English. A Washingtonian for many years, Diana West lives in the nation's capital with her husband and two daughters. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest http://media.townhall.com/TownHall/icons/TH-feed-icon-128x128.gif http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest TownHall.com, Where your opinion counts. 128 Copyright (c) 2009 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:00:49 GMT Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:00:49 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ The main reason the "surge" in Afghanistan is on is because the conventional wisdom tells us the "surge" in Iraq "worked." The problem is, the Iraq surge did not work. Yes, the U.S. military perfectly executed its... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/12/18/how_a_surge_fails_us,_part_1 74aac224-c4d8-409b-86bf-9a92ed726f74 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:00:49 GMT Gen. Stanley McChrystal's long-awaited testimony before Congress on the Afghanistan "surge" was, according to one account, "uneventful." The general himself, another story noted, was "a study in circumspection." And... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/12/11/questions_no_one_wants_to_ask_gen_mcchrystal ad9541b2-1293-4183-b865-22567aeebeae Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:34:13 GMT Barack Obama is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, to come home again starting in 2011. Madness. Worse is the conservative reaction. The futility of "nation-building" in the Islamic world lost on the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/12/04/what_if_we_fought_the_nazis_like_were_fighting_the_taliban 2317626c-5334-4360-af29-84118d8aeb4e Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:01:02 GMT During the Thanksgiving season especially, Americans should give thanks to our brave men in uniform, and women, too, fighting in hostile lands under atrocious conditions. But there's another duty upon us as Americans... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/11/27/clemency_for_terrorists_but_not_our_soldiers 53e24528-dc2d-4d45-8d69-62a057ac8a00 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:34:06 GMT You might have missed it, but for much of this past week, the Islamic apology-police were on the case of the Republican governor-elect of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell. It seems that following the jihadist attack on... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/11/19/media_still_rely_on_jihad_apologists 842dfb4b-ff38-46d8-a03a-43b9ae974d48 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:31:05 GMT Stephen Coughlin is an attorney and intelligence officer who was once the Pentagon's sole specialist on Islamic law. He lectured on jihad doctrine -- what the Koran and key Islamic texts actually say about waging war --... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/11/12/us_military_sees_pc_instead_of_jihad ff90cc4f-6e20-4aeb-8503-f73cf34fa303 Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:04:12 GMT Finally, some transparency from the Obama White House. I refer to see-through efforts to affect nonchalance about Tuesday's elections in which Republicans made gains unthinkable just a year ago. No, of course President... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/11/10/election_victories_useless_if_we_lose_our_way_of_life 95a1297f-883e-4005-91db-8cbc9b6861f1 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:24:13 GMT Pakistani jihad death squads were much in the news this week. In Peshawar, Pakistan, they bombed a marketplace, claiming more than 100 lives, and in Chicago, they were thwarted, according to an FBI affidavit, from carry http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/10/30/rally_behind_denmark 614cce3d-319d-4aea-af2d-65604031f436 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:39:06 GMT When it comes to Afghanistan, what separates President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal? Not much. Neither wants to destroy the Taliban -- just tamp it down to the point where an as-yet non-existent Afghan... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/10/25/stop_nation-building,_just_save_our_way_of_life bb8b9060-6cd4-4d2e-89a6-4b4c40a2b973 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:57:38 GMT Before I get to the chilling implications for free conservative speech underscored by the vicious, public campaign to blackball Rush Limbaugh as a potential owner of an NFL team, I want to provide a little context about... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/10/16/lefts_rush_blitz_a_cheap_shot a864efa4-7fce-4807-88f6-656d90cb353c Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:42:32 GMT Last week's column was about something that doesn't exist -- a multi-level strategy to combat the advance of sharia (Islamic law) across the West. The strategy doesn't exist because there's little understanding that... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/10/10/sharia_trumps_yales_free_speech c9efef0b-b93f-4b1d-9ea7-ccd029a9802c Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:09:11 GMT Today's column is for all hawkish Americans currently wrestling with looming doubts about the pointlessness of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and clubbing those doubts down with the much-mentioned perils of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/10/07/losing_our_way_to_victory 5a10efa3-71fe-4be7-8f6b-4ac39673a3bf Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:32:09 GMT There are many reasons to fire Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and all of them are contained within his 66-page "assessment" of the war in Afghanistan. The document is fascinating, just as the work of zealots is... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/09/25/ready,_aim,_fire_mcchrystal 148209d2-86de-47e0-bd1e-b4baef6bf064 Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:01:00 GMT South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson may have unexpectedly ignited an explosion of race rhetoric with two words in the House chamber -- "You lie" -- but I can snuff it out with two words in a newspaper --... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/09/18/when_did_opposition_become_racism 538a787e-1155-48e7-9f53-c53813b179c2 Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:01:00 GMT Well, it happened. Or, rather it happened and was reported, which is something else again. I will wager it has already happened, unnoticed, unrecorded, totally ignored. But on this occasion, there was someone to witnes http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2009/09/11/new_strategy_in_afghanistan_protect_everyone_but_americans 2057d09f-e4a1-49f8-8e35-d43228c42048 Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:01:00 GMT