JERUSALEM - After Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank torched a mosque and desecrated copies of the Koran in the Palestinian village of Yasuf last Friday morning, they ran into a wall of condemnation. The attackers were consensually branded as extremists, even...
Tuesday: 15 Iraqis Killed, 63 Wounded
Hezbollah Fortifies Frontier Against Israel
NABATIYEH, Lebanon - In the mountains towering above this southern city, Hezbollah (Party of God) is building a new line of defense on lands where a fierce war was once fought between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel. An asphalt road rising up...
Parting Thoughts, for Now
This will be the last "On War" column, at least for the foreseeable future. I will (unexpectedly) retire from the Free Congress Foundation, where I have worked for 22 years, at the end of this month. Once I am reestablished, either with a new institution or...
One War Obama May Curtail
Monday: 8 Iraqis Killed, 32 Wounded
The Dust Bowl of Babylon
[This report appears in the winter 2009/10 issue of World Policy Journal and is posted here with the kind permission of the editors of that magazine.] BAGHDAD - From his mud brick home on the edge of the Garden of Eden, Awda Khasaf has twice seen his country's...
Prussia in Palestine
A short historical quiz: Which state: Arose after a holocaust in which a third of its people were destroyed? Drew from that holocaust the conclusion that only superior military forces could ensure its survival? Accorded the army a central role in its life, making it...
The Af-Pak Train Wreck
When President Barack Obama laid out his plan for winning the war in Afghanistan, behind him stood an army of ghosts: Greeks, Mongols, Buddhists, British, and Russians, all whom had almost the same illusions as the current resident of the Oval Office about Central...
The Taxi Driver Who Drove Us to War
Over on the other side of the pond, the British are doing something we would never ever do – aside, that is, from spreading Marmite on a tea biscuit and actually consuming it. They are investigating the origins of the Iraq war. They want to know how did they get lured...


