Presidential Hawks,
Left and Right

The best that can be said about the upcoming presidential election is that in January 2009 President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney will be out of office. It is tempting to believe that their successors couldn't be worse. Yet only the "second tier"...

read more

Surging Numbers in Iraq

Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love, obliterate emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can also tell a necessary story in ways nothing else can. This...

read more

How Hamas Got
Where It Is Today

In light of Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip, it is worthwhile to understand how this radical Islamist organization came to play such a major role in Palestinian political life and how Israel and the United States contributed to making that possible. Ironically, it...

read more

Curfew-Bound Fallujah
On the Boil Again

FALLUJAH - Strict curfew and tight security measures have brought difficult living conditions and heightened tempers to residents of this besieged city. The siege in this city located 40 mi. west of Baghdad has entered its second month. There is little sign of any...

read more

Survey: US Image Abroad
Still Sinking

Consistent with its performance since at least 2002, the global image of the United States sank further over the past year, particularly among predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) survey...

read more

Conservatives Must Oppose Militarism and War

The fetishization of all things martial by the bulk of 21st-century conservatives is inescapable and worrisome. Whether it's rapturous warmongering in the pages of The Weekly Standard or embarrassing displays of machismo on the part of our president-cum-fighter pilot,...

read more

Neoconned Again?

That the rhetoric used to justify war against Iraq sounds eerily similar to the case being made to start a war against Iran and Syria is not purely a coincidence. Many of the advocates of a muscular policy against countries regarded as outside the pale or perceived as...

read more

Divide and Rule, Israeli-Style

The boycott by Israel and the international community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with Hamas' recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. "Starving, drying up, and...

read more