We hear cries of “another Munich” with very little provocation: it’s the War Party’s pat response to any attempt to negotiate or otherwise engage our alleged enemies. It was a favorite neoconservative trope during the cold war era, one that greeted every diplomatic...
Russia’s unyielding support for Damascus throughout the 16 months of Syria’s escalating crisis has earned Moscow strong condemnation from Washington and other Western governments, but the reasons for Russia’s implacable position have never been fully explained by...
In a traditional cowboy movie, we know what to do: we look for the guy wearing the white hat to be sure whom to cheer, and for the one wearing the black hat to know who deserves to die, preferably gruesomely, before the credits roll. If Hollywood learned early to play...
Information activist Julian Assange shocked his fans and gave more grist to his haters last week by announcing he would flee Swedish extradition orders to seek asylum from the South American nation of Ecuador. "I had expected him to face the allegations. I am as...
Sixteen months after the United States abandoned its loyal satrap of 30 years, President Hosni Mubarak, to champion democracy in Egypt, the returns are in. Mohammed Mursi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, is president of Egypt, while the military has dissolved the...
Everybody knows by now why we are stuck in Palestine. When God instructed Moses to plead with pharaoh to let his people go, Moses told him that he was unfit for the job because “I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10). Actually, in the Hebrew original,...
Divide et impera – a strategy employed by empires since ancient times, and perfected by the British – has been the leitmotif of American foreign policy in the Middle East since the Bush administration’s “Arab Awakening” in Iraq and the supposed success of the “surge.”...
