Washington Times columnist Diana West writes a weekly commentary column for Newspaper Enterprise Association. A conservative with a strong bent for cultural commentary, 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 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." West's column has appeared in NEA since 2001. A journalist with experience in feature-writing, political coverage and arts criticism, 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. She won second place for editorial writing in the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association Contest (largest daily division) in 2001. In 1990, she 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. 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. She has also written fiction for The Atlantic Monthly and has been a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. Born and raised in Hollywood, West spent a year as a youngster living in Ireland with her family. She went on to graduate from Yale with a B.A. in English. A Washingtonian for many years, she 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) 2008 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:32:32 GMT Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:32:32 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ Alas, we have just passed another marker on the way down. That's "we" as in "We, the people," and that's "down" as in "glug, glug." This marker will stand as a testament to the savage zeal with which our mainstream... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/09/04/media_sharks_out_for_amniotic_fluid f1c39985-0153-478c-ae47-e4b3a869be4b Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:32:32 GMT The star of the Democratic National Convention wasn't Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Hillary's husband -- certainly not Joe Biden or even Barack Obama. The single-most riveting presence at the Democratic gathering --... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/08/28/barackus_accepts_from_temple_o e7f05a56-2019-48cd-ae29-3cae7fc00f91 Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:32:58 GMT I hate to say it, but both John McCain and Barack Obama are wrong in their approaches to Iraq. On Aug. 18, McCain said, "The lasting advantage of a peaceful and democratic ally in the heart of the Middle East could stil http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/08/22/americas_global_influence_spread_too_thin baacc2bc-5d89-46e2-bbce-19171cc9fe99 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:01:00 GMT Amazing how quickly the punditocracy switches maps, time zones and histories, simultaneously mastering new combinations of consonants and vowels, to report and react to a "surprise" conflict in Georgia. It's almost... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/08/15/roars_about_russia,_bare_whispers_about_islam 4b591b55-daa5-4b4e-a023-546ddc9d1f0b Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:01:00 GMT Reading about the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, we are reminded of his epic force of will -- despite the threat to life and limb posed by the Soviet police state -- to bear witness, to document, to record everything he... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/08/08/free_speech_jilted_by_muhammad_romance_novel_warpath 449563cb-7752-4a26-bb93-276e1c9893f0 Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:01:00 GMT Strange, the apparent lack of public alarm in Britain over an extensive new poll showing that significant minorities of Muslim students at some of Britain's better colleges and universities embrace the most... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/08/01/britains_silence_ammo_for_a_sharia-run_future 27c25887-867a-43e5-a434-4f2a64650c1f Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:01:00 GMT Now that Barack Obama's photo-op safari through the Middle East is over -- "Look, Obama-nation, I bagged the Western Wall!" -- I find there's still that detail about Jordan's King Abdullah II himself chauffeuring... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/07/25/so,_what_did_barack_talk_about c03e386b-eb7b-4f21-89f1-b898a7e96b09 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT THE SWISS ALPS, SWITZERLAND -- "Explain the minaret ban," I asked. I was sitting in the side room of a house, overlooking a flat plot somewhat larger than the trampoline outside. Beyond that trampoline, still... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/07/17/a_swiss_extremist_against_islamic_law 45805985-cf92-456f-b412-7577d767f2de Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:08:23 GMT I think it was the American Thinker blog that first went public with the suggestion that we may see post-convention "mass events" for Barack Obama "at least slightly reminiscent of the stagecraft of Leni Reifenstahl... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/07/12/obama_rockin_to_jfk_tune 75779e18-ba93-4625-ab5d-5b01443f3ba6 Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT THE HAGUE, The Netherlands -- Having run the polite-but-grim gauntlet of Dutch government security to gain access to Geert Wilders, I finally understood what the 24-hour security requirements of the man's continued... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/07/03/geert_wilders_prisoner_of_islam 44dcc4c3-7765-445c-b96e-589497c80def Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT As a dutiful American columnist, I should probably be pondering the half-baked presumption behind Barack Obama's bizarre "presidential" seal. Or shaking my head at John McCain's hair-trigger panic over an aide's... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/06/26/we_have_a_lot_to_learn_from_over_there d00977bf-a16c-47b9-9143-2a086d508201 Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:28:30 GMT WASHINGTON -- An unlikely, man-bites-dog story recently appeared on the front page of one of our nation's most liberal newspapers, asserting that the U.S. economy is not as bad as people think. The Washington Post, a... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/06/20/at_last,_common_sense_on_the_economy 50ec8c79-dc67-451a-81df-dd22fb771475 Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:27:42 GMT On Sept. 11, 2001, Andrew Bostom, an academic research physician at Rhode Island Hospital, did what many outraged and shocked Americans did. On his way home from work, he stopped at a bookstore and bought a book about... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/06/13/islams_legacy_of_anti-semitism 53a8c2c3-120c-4b11-869e-a8521a3a5a01 Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:03:23 GMT Heading into Democratic Unity Weekend, with Hillary Clinton expected to end her presidential campaign and endorse Barack Obama, it's worth taking one last look at what might have been -- in fact, what was indeed the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/06/06/are_we_ready_for_obama-clinton-clinton 9fff12d7-9387-4ba7-9476-c8409852d2ab Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT What interested me most about the official reaction to this month's Koran Sniper story -- apologies galore, a kissed Koran for probable former insurgents, a punished soldier -- was what it made vivid about our... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/05/29/blind_defense_of_koran_abrogates_reality 579bdec3-cc42-4c9e-bcb8-68d1b8450486 Thu, 29 May 2008 18:48:36 GMT It is late August 1939. American columnist Augusta "Gusto" Nash, played by the incomparable Claudette Colbert in the 1940 movie "Arise, My Love," is sitting in a French railway car taking her from Paris (and love... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/05/23/sniper_shooting_koran_hardly_criminal_behavior 60aeb259-2861-4bca-a310-ceedc03f3e12 Fri, 23 May 2008 16:01:00 GMT Don't know why I bother. The man is leaving office in eight months; his presidency noticeably marked by the uneven tread of the lame duck. But so long as George W. Bush is commander in chief, there remains something... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/05/15/israel_is_not_a_freedom_franchise,_mr_president 19e60d3b-eae4-48f5-afdd-a7735417dffc Thu, 15 May 2008 16:54:12 GMT A few years ago, Harvard psychiatric instructor Kenneth Levin wrote "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege." In this illuminating book, Levin examines the Israeli experience of concessionary... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/05/08/its_islamic_jihad,_not_extremism,_uncle_sam 018fed16-fcbb-4b33-8631-5b9b837abf77 Thu, 08 May 2008 17:37:09 GMT So there I was, listening to a few of the major "architects" of the war in Iraq -- Paul Wolfowitz, formerly No. 2 man at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld; Douglas J. Feith, formerly No. 3 man at the Pentagon under... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/05/02/iraq_war_architects_shrug_off_truth e4f9cfe6-c16a-4184-89c7-7004a9eb75a8 Fri, 02 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT Reading U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick's "Wake Up America" agenda -- a 10-point plan targeting potential jihadist infiltration into this country's military, security, educational and financial institutions -- triggers mixed... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/04/24/myrick_aces,_dc_flunks_jihadism_101 1de569ca-bb9e-49a6-b20d-c51ae0ff5c1d Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:01:01 GMT In mustering arguments against Jimmy Carter's head-to-head, if not heart-to-heart, get-togethers with the arch-murderers of Hamas -- the Iranian-supported, Muslim Brotherhood-linked terror organization openly... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/04/18/jimmy_carter_makes_me_sick d3c5e1c5-50e9-4c35-a94b-1b71ec64b0bd Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:01:00 GMT Recently, I opened an e-mail and read: "I am Sgt. Evan Vela's father. I do no not know if you have followed my son's case but some people have drawn similarities between the Luttrell situation and Evan's." The... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/04/10/was_soldier_jailed_to_appease_iraqi_allies f93a776c-67b3-418b-bcfc-c116b0f95b2e Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:26:38 GMT I wonder if Condoleezza Rice was surprised by the headlines over her comment to The Washington Times that America suffers from a national "birth defect" -- namely, the practice of slavery at the time of the nation's... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/04/03/note_to_rice,_bombingham_isnt_iraq dd062798-b412-4509-a1a4-8002b708616b Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:59:55 GMT Any day now, a short film connecting the Koran to Islamic violence is expected to be released. The film is by Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament who wants to reverse the Islamization of Europe and believes... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/03/28/apologists_throwing_a_fitna_over_upcoming_film 40c8a865-3dc8-4bfb-9971-9bf778ae290a Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:09:22 GMT As a conservative in no way comforted by the Clinton-Obama-Pelosi-Reid rhetoric on the war in Iraq, I should have taken heart from the president's fifth-anniversary remarks revisiting the Battle of Baghdad, the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/03/21/after_five_years,_what_have_we_won 3ac224b8-1f5e-43c8-bb3f-9a236ef2993d Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:01:00 GMT As a reasonably optimistic person, I try to look on the bright side whenever possible -- unless bright-side facts are completely blotted out by bleak ones. Example: In a recent e-mail blast, former Republican senator... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/03/14/middle_east_bright_side_blinding_us_to_costly_us_reality 00c62d6c-3247-4f36-b639-dfaa2e95a7e5 Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:46:33 GMT I can't think of a point of historic comparison to the figurative bed we have made for ourselves in Iraq -- particularly now that our Iraqi allies have welcomed our Iranian enemies right into it. Maybe the way to... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/03/07/irans_betrayal_leaves_us_suffering_pulp_fiction ce05c4ed-6462-4401-a887-0f6331f6fdc2 Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:55:15 GMT Transfixed by the two-candidate "horse race," maybe we didn't focus precisely on what happened in the home stretch of the last Democratic debate when Barack Obama tried to pick and nuance his way through a... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/03/01/obamas_truthiness_about_farrakhan 56bd7560-582b-45c0-89d3-7014f51dbb58 Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:01:00 GMT The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr. thinks there's "something peculiar" about conservatives who turn "Islamic extremism into a mighty ideological force with the power to overrun the world." In a way, he's right.... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/02/23/ignoring_sharias_advance_extremely_stupid fa800414-0004-4012-adce-736813fcbaab Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:01:00 GMT Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates penned an op-ed this week to say it's time to negotiate "a basic framework for normalized relations with the Iraqi government." This, they wrote, will "set the basic parameters for... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/02/15/stop_treating_sharia-supreme_iraq_like_post-war_japan c069c74a-67ad-417d-915b-b669c3e22f58 Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:01:00 GMT Something went by in a blur on the road to Super Tuesday. The National Journal ranked Sen. Barack Obama the No. 1 liberal U.S. senator of 2007. Sen. Hillary Clinton came in somewhat less left-wing at No. 16.... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/02/08/obama_skirts_the_l_word 278b3f7e-f94f-4729-93d1-9896dd8b6ba1 Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:01:00 GMT By now it's clear that John McCain's "blasphemy" on conservative principles is making some conservatives consider "apostasy" on Election Day -- not voting Republican. A quick Google search shows such terminology... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/02/01/little_stated_in_final_union_address b6e4e572-8d58-4d40-9a64-52d5618c1091 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:01:00 GMT News flash from U.S.-liberated Afghanistan. Remember the 23-year-old Afghan journalist I recently mentioned, the one detained in a Mazar-i-sharif jail for three months on "blasphemy" charges? Well, his limbo is... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/01/24/some_questions_for_the_next_leader_of_the_free_world a2a38bcc-f435-4ef6-9119-f54bb4b32d05 Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:26:14 GMT Ring a bell? In 2001, a 32-year-old Marine captain and CIA officer named John Michael Spann was killed there in a prison riot, thus becoming the first American combat death in Afghanistan. Not incidentally, Spann, bef http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/01/19/frank_talk_about_islamic_law_blasphemy! e9280bf3-e8ea-466f-97ca-f4e2f5ccba46 Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:01:00 GMT The year is 1942. The place, the Pentagon. A Berlin-born aide to the U.S. deputy secretary of Defense has learned that a military intelligence officer has not only read Hitler's "Mein Kampf," but is lecturing senior... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/01/17/the_pentagon_mantra_pc_trumps_security 973fd26c-11da-4458-833c-66319733884e Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:01:01 GMT A major story of 2007 was the progressive unraveling of the case against the seven Marines and one Navy corpsman charged in connection with the Nov. 19, 2005, killings of Iraqi civilians in Haditha during a day of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2008/01/04/a_defining_atrocity_yes,_against_our_marines 2b6b04bc-5f90-4191-9bea-ed4d5cb8c1e5 Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:01:00 GMT Christmas came early to the Palestinian Authority when the "international community" decided not only to meet PA President Mahmoud Abbas' request for $5.6 billion in aid, but to throw in almost $2 billion more. Why?... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/12/28/paying_islam_for_our_western_guilt 7e0fefe4-d4f0-40d6-82a1-da4c6228e645 Fri, 28 Dec 2007 05:01:00 GMT "I don't like old people on a rock 'n' roll stage. What you're pretty much doing is imitating yourself at the age of 25, and there's basically nothing more pathetic." -- Grace Slick Finally found people even... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/12/18/no_fury_like_a_zep_fan_scorned 97ce614d-74dd-4e9e-9bf1-3317fcf210e5 Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:01:00 GMT I've learned a lot about Led Zeppelin lately. For instance, it wasn't just any concert the rock band played in London this week for the first time since breaking up 27 years ago after the 1980 death of drummer John... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/12/14/deflating_zeppelin f67fedad-a411-450e-8aea-c5dbd0ddfb4e Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:01:00 GMT A few weeks ago, I went rummaging through my attic looking for a box of books. Not just any box of books: my Clinton books. Or, should I say, given the range and number of tomes, my Clinton library. I'd tucked it... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/12/07/dont_close_the_book_on_the_clintons b02ee2d6-bfde-41e8-8930-9d790db87b89 Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:59:48 GMT What could the USS Kitty Hawk and Citigroup possibly have in common? I'll start with the aircraft carrier because I'm still stewing over what happened when the People's Republic of China abruptly denied the USS... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/11/30/stop_letting_them_treat_us_like_a_turkey 696e50d9-1e66-4a1a-a913-32cf2e095726 Fri, 30 Nov 2007 05:01:00 GMT I recently came across an unread e-mail from Richard L. Benkin, the American champion of Bangladeshi journalist Saleh Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. Choudhury is the fearless Muslim newspaper editor who was arrested by... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/11/23/we_must_each_save_shoaib fa7f5e12-c2ec-4e8f-a674-84ea256933bf Fri, 23 Nov 2007 05:01:00 GMT Somehow, it isn't fair that with illegal immigration now a defining issue of American politics, the one politician more than any other who has taught Americans to re-imagine their land as a nation with controllable... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/11/16/tancredos_raw_truth_about_terrorism 51393364-f499-4c82-a7b9-eb12e457b8da Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:01:00 GMT We all have questions about Pakistan. Will civil war convulse the country? Will jihadists, rulers of Taliban-friendly provinces, conquer all of Pakistan? Will Musharraf himself be deposed in a military coup? Precisely... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/11/10/two_camps_on_pakistan_muddle_the_middle 2a23fb74-a170-4cd1-91ad-cc074dc861c5 Sat, 10 Nov 2007 05:01:00 GMT Funny thing happened recently. Or, rather, it didn't. A hunk of juicy news broke, hit the wires and fell with a thud into media oblivion. No one cared. And what did no one care about? Let me quote from the original... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/11/02/rice_tapping_us_policy_failures_for_mideast_success 79478e81-6477-4e16-8a5c-ca50730e2be4 Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:01:00 GMT I could start today's column this way: Something downright incendiary is happening in Oklahoma. First one, then 17, and now 24 state lawmakers have declined a copy of the Koran offered to all 149 members of the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/10/26/hanging_tough_in_oklahoma 9db4a342-cb40-40b3-af48-536b2af4cda0 Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:01:00 GMT Earlier this week, I took a trip down memory lane to Yale, where I happily attended college almost 25 years ago in the second decade of its co-ed existence. Which meant that I was plenty old enough to be the mother of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/10/19/making_the_west_disappear 15610063-0628-4fb7-af4f-e0622204aa98 Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:01:00 GMT True confession: I've never followed local politics closely enough. I've always been drawn more to the interplay of nations than of neighbors. But now, with illegal immigration out of control and our border a shambles... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/10/12/new_york_clerks_protecting_our_borders 8e8b931b-0e44-4cff-834f-52b7e948249d Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:01:00 GMT I wasn't going to write about Ramadan in official Washington this fall season -- not again. But I just can't resist. First, there are all the holiday trappings of this by-now annual column -- such seasonal staples as... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/10/05/guess_who_came_to_iftar_for_dinner 1b6bc0bd-4b30-4b7f-ac99-f3a2fbe91441 Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:24:26 GMT Some years ago, when our teenagers were tots, my husband and I took them to a puppet version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Or was that "The Three Bears and Goldilocks"? Turns out, we were seeing "the other side"... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/09/28/going_gaga_over_ahmadinejad efc6cf96-23e7-4ada-807d-c491c25f3c12 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:01:00 GMT