162 articles
Former Reagan Secretary of State Shultz has an interesting piece, Sustaining Our Resolve, in the latest Policy Review. Some highlights: On December 29, 2000, the Security Council strongly condemned "the continuing use of the areas of Afghanistan under the control of the Afghan faction known as…
(Fox guarding the hen house? From AP: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syria has pledged to step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah….According to Annan, Assad said at a meeting in Damascus that Syria will boost the number…
CONTRARY TO COMMON WISDOM, Muslim radicalism in the United Kingdom is not rooted in grievance against British, American, Israeli, or other Western policies. Nor is it a reaction to fear or prejudice by non-Muslims. It originates in a specific ideology imported to the country by two generations of…
The Jerusalem Post reports: IDF troops discovered an underground tunnel earlier this week that had been dug by terror operatives on the outskirts of the Shajaiyeh neighborhood in Gaza City. The opening of the 13-meter-deep, 150-meter-long tunnel was found inside a building at least one kilometer…
Despite objections from Britain, the Netherlands and a few other nations, the Bush administration is pushing to give China more voting weight at the International Monetary Fund to reflect its growing economic power and encourage Beijing to become a "stakeholder" in the international system.…
Last month, the Security Council offered Iran "incentives" to come clean on its nuclear program. It also gave Tehran a deadline of August 31 to stop enriching uranium. But it's doubtful the regime will take the Security Council seriously until China and Russia stop coddling it. From today's…
ON FEBRUARY 23, 2004, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak phoned Galal Aref, head of the Egyptian Journalists' Syndicate, with some very good news: The country's practice of imprisoning journalists for their writings was going to be eliminated. Mubarak's promise of reform was in line with other…
Today, Secretary Rumsfeld resurrected a theme from Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous 1984 "San Francisco Democrats" speech in which she took on the "blame America first" crowd. She said: The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause. They…
The Lamont victory indicates that the road to the Democratic presidential nomination runs straight through the party's anti-war base. John Kerry and John Edwards long ago abandoned their hawkish positions on Iraq. Others, like Hillary, hedged. But since Lieberman's defeat, the New York senator has…
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reviews a forum, sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), held yesterday at the National Press Club. As Milbank observes, the featured speakers, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Harvard's Stephen Walt, made a point to single…
HURRICANE KATRINA caused the greatest natural disaster in American history. President Bush couldn't change that. But Katrina also was a political disaster for the president. And Bush, given a year to think about it, realizes he could have avoided that.
THE "R" WORD IS BACK. The housing market has moved from cooling, through slide, into collapse. At least, that's what many property analysts and economists are saying. They are hoping that the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy gurus take note when they convene in less than a month, and turn…
Once Clinton was in office, the first President Bush had enough class to travel the world without trashing the sitting Democratic president - and during Clinton's presidency the elder Bush could have said a lot. I wish I could say the same for this failed one-term president who regularly attacks…
Reuters reports: Saudi Arabia has released over 700 suspected militants after clerics "corrected" their thinking in a special program aimed at stemming a three-year-old campaign of violence by al Qaeda, officials said. "They are sympathizers. There are many of this kind of people, who are subject…
Jerusalem
Just after Lamont's primary victory, I noted that Hillary Clinton has tried to keep some distance from the party's noisy anti-war wing. Appearing with Lamont may endear [her] to the party's base, but it would also tie [her] to a candidate, who, in the words of Joe Lieberman, holds views that are…
It's an old story. The Sudanese regime continues its brutal campaign in Darfur and tells the UN to take a hike. Actually, Khartoum tells those nations who care about stopping the killing to get lost. The regime pays no price for its defiance. Why? No, it's not because George Bush invaded Iraq. For…
WHEN FIGHTERS FROM THE RADICAL Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu on June 5, analysts were immediately concerned that the country could become a haven for terrorists. Since then, the ICU's hold on the country has tightened. More alarming, the militia has come to more…
Four percent of the world's trade passes through the Panama Canal, making it a tempting terror target.
Jerusalem
THERE'S ALMOST NOTHING you need to know about the movie Snakes on a Plane that you didn't get from the title. Samuel L. Jackson gets on a trans-Pacific flight. A few hundred poisonous snakes get loose in the cabin. Samuel L. Jackson handles it in a way that Richard Gere probably wouldn't have. The…
Lt. Col. Stephen Coonen has an interesting piece in the US Army War College journal Parameters on the widening military capabilities gap between American and European forces. He argues: The improbability of many European states committing more of their treasuries toward defense suggests that…
From today's New York Times: The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. "When the…
SUPPORTERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS in China were heartened when, during her recent visit to Beijing, Assistant Secretary of State Ellen R. Sauerbrey urged the Chinese government to release Chen Guangcheng. Chen, a 35-year-old blind legal advocate from the eastern province of Shandong, had incurred the…
I'm not sure what to make of this, though Jerusalem must be enjoying it. Speaking of Damascus, what's the status of the UN investigation into the role Syria may have played in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister? Has it been swept under the rug as part of the recent cease-fire…
Tony Blankley of the Washington Times looks at what the world would look like if the president adopted the policies of his critics for the remainder of his term. You can add to Blankley's list the huge shot in the arm all this would give to al Qaeda. And a few months back, Gerard Baker speculated…
DID THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION covertly blow-up the World Trade Center, ignite the Pentagon, and shoot down United Flight 93 to pave the way for a new American empire? The answer is "yes," according to a new book printed by the official publishing house of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and written…
Today's USA Today/Gallup poll shows an up tick in the president's approval rating. It's now 42 percent, "suggesting that more positive evaluations of Bush could be tied to his handling of terrorism." Other polls also show a GOP advantage on security-related issues. An AP poll conducted well before…
(The latest poll has Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega leading the presidential race by 10 points. Venezuela's Chavez, who's been lobbying for a seat on the UN Security Council, has been just as busy trying to put Ortega in office. A Chavez win on both counts would obviously not be good news for the…
Johannesburg
IT'S OFFICIAL NOW. The German government plans to send naval forces in support of the proposed 15,000-strong enhanced UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon to help maintain the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. This compromise decision--which clearly excludes the deployment of German…
AMERICANS' OBSESSION with house prices remains undiminished. Indeed, now that it is becoming obvious that prices can move down as well as up, anxiety has increased the intensity of that obsession.
Saddam's second trial begins today. This time for genocide (see here for info. on Camp Slayer), as the New York Times reports: Mr. Hussein sat stone-faced in a courtroom in the fortified Green Zone of Baghdad, listening as prosecutors gave a detailed account of how Mr. Hussein and six co-defendants…
Call me a skeptic. From this weekend's Wall Street Journal: A senior State Department official contends that 'Hezbollah has been boxed in militarily.' Today's Journal editorial explains that given the facts on the ground in Lebanon it may be the U.S. that has been "boxed in." Resolution 1701 also…
Likud member Yuval Steinitz has an interesting piece in Haaretz. He argues: In recent years, a concept of ''victory from the air'' developed, negating the need for ground maneuvers or improved firepower on ground or in sea. In the case of Lebanon, a specific concept of repelling Katyusha rockets…
"A Hell of a Threat Out There"
America Against the World
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE
A TERRORIST CONSPIRACY to blow up American airliners flying from Britain to the United States--surely the most threat ening terrorist plot since 9/11--was broken up last week. The fighting between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah continued to raise the possibility of a full-scale Middle…
In June, the Supreme Court decided that Detroit police did not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of a drug dealer named Booker Hudson when they entered his home in August 1998 only five seconds after announcing their presence at his door. Hudson's lawyers argued that--although he had a loaded gun…
Sectarian violence has now surpassed the insurgency as the main security challenge in Iraq. Quelling this violence--which threatens to derail that country's troubled political transition, devastate the Iraqi people, inflict lasting harm on the country's social fabric and economy, erode flagging…
Paul Klee and America
London
Hartford, Conn.
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN guilty" is one of the few prop ositions that everyone supports, irrespective of his place on the political spectrum. Well, almost everyone. Some liberals don't need a trial to decide that Scooter Libby should be given an orange jump suit, and some conservatives think it absurd…
The Hollywood Book of Breakups
"DEAR DR. SATEL: You are an ideologically constipated coward." So begins one of several dyspeptic communications I've received recently from Vietnam veterans and others.
We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they [the Iranians] don't need to build a bomb, to give them incentives. . . . I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate. --Ned Lamont, April 25, 2006
At the outset of the current war in Lebanon, governments in Europe protested that Israel's response was "disproportionate." The U.N. human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, endorsing this claim, spoke darkly of Israeli "war crimes." I happened to be at a conference in mid-July where there were a…
A year ago, before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Kelo v. New London, the abuse of eminent domain was practically invisible. Today it's a hot-button issue in nearly every state in the Union--not least in Ohio, where the state supreme court last month unanimously blocked the city of…
Haifa, Israel
Disrobed: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left's Stranglehold on the Courts by Mark W. Smith (Crown Forum, 272 pp., $25.95). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once infamously wrote in a Supreme Court decision that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." In Mark W. Smith's new book Disrobed:…
Breaking the Spell
Elia Kazan
Eating dinner at a modest restaurant a block from our house the other night, we had a minor Washington moment. Leaning over toward me and indicating two men at a nearby table, my husband said quietly, "Who do you suppose that is with Lindsey Graham?"
The Reformation
"When the Levees Broke"
Jerusalem
NOW THAT JUNICHIRO Koizumi has committed the ultimate offense of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15th--the 61st anniversary of the end of World War II--what is "big" China going to do with an increasingly disobedient "little" Japan? Probably not much, except repeating the same old empty…
DESPITE CHARACTERIZATIONS of last week's thwarted attempt to blow up ten transatlantic flights as "homegrown," Pakistan, rather than the United Kingdom, has emerged as the epicenter of planning. The incident is part of a wider pattern--the past six weeks alone have revealed that several other…
(This reaction to the cease-fire is not good news, and now Iran's Ahmadinejad is calling for the US to "disarmed.") Posted on August 7, 2006: This report out of Damascus is why Hezbollah must be routed in southern Lebanon. Key quotes: In the last few weeks alone [Damascus shop owner] Ali says he…
POLYGAMY? POLYAMORY? The end of marriage as we know it? For the past few years, and with increased frequency in recent months, defenders of marriage have been sounding the alarm as to the real goals of the so-called gay "marriage" movement. In response, gay marriage's "conservative" proponents have…
This article originally appeared on TCS Daily.
THE RECENTLY DEFEATED minimum wage hike proposal in Congress has resulted in a regurgitation of economic misinformation. Here's a sampling of the propaganda:
IF WE NEEDED ANY REMINDING that our world can change with nerve-rattling speed, we got it last week when the security services uncovered a plot by Islamofascists to slaughter innocent air travelers. Suddenly, a cup of coffee looks suspiciously like a terror weapon, an iPod like an explosives…
CONTRARY TO popular belief, the party left most isolated by the U.N. Security Council's unanimous condemnation of North Korea's missile launches and nuclear programs is not the reclusive Pyongyang regime, but the other Korea, the affluent one south of the 38th parallel. After all, Kim Jong Il--the…
You fight the global war against jihadist Islam with the political parties you have.
Boston
LAST WEEK, even before the carnage in Qana, a parade of pundits, lawmakers, and former policymakers started calling for Washington to reengage in a dialogue with Damascus. President Carter, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, among others, argued that the…
PAMELA WAECHTER was murdered at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on Friday, July 28--an American who was born a Lutheran and reared in Minneapolis, a middle-aged mother, a convert to Judaism who became a leader in Seattle's Jewish community. Pamela Waechter. Do not stamp her "hate crime"…
The Moral Consequences
Jerusalem
Georgetown, Delaware
DURING A GET-TO-KNOW-YOU meeting with the new Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, last week, a veteran Washington journalist asked about possible bipartisan talks to deal with the growing cost of entitlements. "Would revenues be on the table?" he inquired. Paulson looked puzzled. Another journalist…
My wife's boss is currently on jury duty. I had lunch not long ago with an old classmate who regaled me with the saga of his tenure on a federal jury. Just this week a colleague told me about his service on the jury in a (locally notorious) criminal trial. Everyone has served on a jury, it would…
The publication of It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis's Depression-era novel of how homespun fascists took over America, was greeted with extraordinary praise. The New Yorker described it as "one of the most important books ever produced in this country . . . It is so crucial, so passionate, so…
WHETHER FIDEL CASTRO is sick, dead, or almost dead, the post-Fidel era has already begun, just in time for his 80th birthday on August 13. And while they may be honking horns and dancing in the streets of Miami, a sober look at Cuba suggests keeping the champagne on ice. Havana does not yet…
To Hell with All That
Talladega Nights:
The New Face of the Liberal Nutroots
Dogs of God
YOGA: NOT JUST FOR YUPS
Good and Plenty
Warlord
THE LEADERS of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan startled observers last month when they initially condemned Hezbollah's attacks on Israel and failed to show solidarity with the Shiite terrorist group. Most surprised of all were ordinary Arabs, who took to the streets in protest. At anti-Israel…
The Language of God
The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent edited by James Panero and Stefan Beck (ISI Books, 400 pp., $25.00). On June 7, 1980, an ambitious group of Dartmouth students printed the first issue of a publication that would change the school forever. In the spirit of William F. Buckley Jr. and National…
Two Iraq War veterans, Wade Zirkle and Connecticut native Josh Clark, make the case for Joe Lieberman in today's Wall Street Journal. They write: Joseph Lieberman's primary loss might be a satisfying victory for the partisan extremes, but it is a sharp blow to bipartisan efforts to prevail in a…
In his book Fiasco and in this interview with Hugh Hewitt, Tom Ricks points to the 1998 Desert Fox campaign against suspected wmd sites in Iraq as evidence that containment worked. But Clinton himself had no idea how much wmd was destroyed in that campaign. He told Larry King on July 27, 2003:…
Former Clinton administration official Richard Holbrooke and Newt Gingrich pen dueling op-eds, here and here. This is not the first time Holbrooke has got in a tussle of over foreign policy with a Republican. Last October, in a New Yorker piece on Brent Scowcroft and the so-called "realist" camp,…
THE SHEER MAGNITUDE of the foiled plot that British authorities announced yesterday was breathtaking. This may well have been "the next big one" that experts have predicted al Qaeda would attempt. As Friday began, British authorities had apprehended 24 suspects alleged to be part of a plot to blow…
IN THE COMING DAYS we will learn the details of the foiled, massive airline bomb plot. But early reports indicate that there are important similarities with the July 7, 2005 London bombings and the Pakistani terror network which orchestrated that attack.
V for Vendetta was a disappointment upon its initial theatrical release. Having had five months to reconsider that diagnosis, viewing the film again on DVD has led me to realize that it's not just disappointing: It's downright terrible.
Sen. Joe Lieberman today (via Hotline on Call): If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out [of Iraq] by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England…. It will strengthen them and they…
BRITISH AUTHORITIES have been slow to acknowledge openly the Pakistani-Muslim background of the suspects arrested in the mass terror conspiracy that brought chaos to British and American airports Thursday. At first, official sources in the United Kingdom would confirm only that they were working…
From the Senate minority leader: I commend British authorities for defusing this terror plot and apprehending the suspects. Their actions protected the lives of innocent civilians, including many American citizens. Today's events are an important reminder that we need to renew our focus on the war…
A short time ago, the British government released two reports -- here and here -- on the July 7, 2005 terrorist bombings in London, which killed 52 and injured over 800. The reports suggest that more interrogations and more wiretaps may have thwarted the attack, as Gary Schmitt explained in the…
Securitywatchtower.com has a good roundup of news (with multiple links) on the terrorist bomb plot here (scroll up a bit). At the Counterterrorism blog, Evan Kohlman comments: Though for some, news of a reported Al-Qaida plot to down multiple commercial airliners with liquid explosives may sound…
PRESIDENT BUSH admitted in late July that the security situation in Baghdad was "terrible" and announced that he was sending more troops to quell the violence. Because this is what I advocated in a May 24 column, I should be happy with the president's decision. But, alas, as with so many American…
THE JULY 30 NEW YORK TIMES gave prominent coverage to a Minnesota mega-church pastor who disavowed the Religious Right ("Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock"). The Rev. Gregory Boyd, ostensibly fed up by the political pressures of the 2004 presidential race, gave a…
This fall the UN will vote to replace the current non-permanent members of the Security Council with new nations. Though little reported in the media, for many weeks Hugo Chavez has been traveling the globe trolling for enough votes from regimes opposed to the U.S. to get on the Council. He's been…
Jerusalem
DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. In the early 1970s, they rejected their hawkish tradition on national security with the nomination of George McGovern for president. The resulting weakness on national security issues has haunted them ever since. Democrats didn't recover until the 1990s when the…
Now that Ned Lamont has won, some Democratic presidential candidates will be in a bind. Do they actively campaign for Lamont? Do they appear with him at campaign rallies with the crowd chanting, "Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home" as they did last night during his victory speech? It's no accident…
Here's what Sen. Lieberman had to say this morning on the Today show about his opponent - the same one all the '08 Democratic presidential candidates are cutting checks for and offering congratulations: My opponent says let's get all our troops out by a deadline. I saw that will be dangerous for…
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS, there have been rumblings among terrorism analysts about an unlikely alliance between Islamic radicals and the neo-Nazi far right. This union seems counterintuitive on the surface: The far right tends to see Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic radicals disdain most…
AFP reports: MIRANSHAH, Pakistan -- Pro-Taliban militants beheaded a pro-government tribal elder in Pakistan's restive tribal region bordering Afghanistan, officials said. The body of Loi Khan was found dumped on a road in Garhiyoum, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Miranshah, the main town…
First, Fidel goes missing and now another dictator hasn't been seen publicly for some time.
From Israel to Lebanon to Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been fomenting war (see here for more on this) in a bid to intimidate the US and other nations against taking a tougher line on its nuclear enrichment activities: TIKRIT, Iraq -- The U.S. ambassador to Iraq accused Iran on Tuesday of…
(With BP replacing Prudhoe Bay's feeder pipelines, I dusted off a post from a few months back on the construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Back then, overseas events forced Congress's hand by a razor-thin margin.) Posted on April 25, 2006: Last night, PBS' American Experience chronicled the…
WHILE THE WORLD focuses its attention on Lebanon, the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka looks poised for yet another flare-up. Even excluding the Sri Lankan army's current offensive, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)'s June 15 bombing of a passenger bus that killed 64 people and the June 26…
Fidel Castro hasn't been seen publicly since July 31, not even a photo of him propped in his hospital bed reading Che's Motorcycle Diaries. There's some speculation at the State Department that if Castro has indeed died, the government may using this time to build up the reputation of his brother,…
This report out of Damascus is why Hezbollah must be routed in southern Lebanon. Key quotes: In the last few weeks alone [Damascus shop owner] Ali says he has sold thousands of posters ranging from close-ups of a serene-looking Nasrallah to Hizbollah fighters stepping over skulls of Israeli…
The war didn't start on September 11. The simultaneous bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, on August 7, 1998, was just the latest attack in a war al Qaeda had been waging against us since the early 1990s. But we didn't treat it as a war until hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade…
A friend told me he discovered on eBay that someone is selling my signature, asking the odd price of $129. The signature itself appears on a plain postcard containing a stamp with a picture of Rachel Carson. Not an eBayista myself, I have no way of knowing if the seller ever got anywhere near the…
Fiasco
Scoop
Albany
SENATOR CARL LEVIN of Michigan had a grim and unhappy look on his face. For years, he had led Democrats in an effort to slash funding for missile defense. He had planned to seek a cut of $68 million. But with North Korea poised to launch missiles and Iran's relentless drive to go nuclear, the…
The Truth Is Our Weapon
Lakewood, New Jersey
The Girl Who
Ellsworth, Kansas
Saddam's Man in Niger
SPARRING OVER SERBIA
Damascus
CAPTURED for the past two decades by the left, the American Bar Association leverages its clout as a professional services group for lawyers in support of an array of liberal causes. Its special task force on presidential signing statements--which last week accused President Bush of undermining the…
FRANCE HAS A LONG HISTORY in Lebanon, a country it administered under a League of Nations mandate from 1920 to 1943 and whose elite is bilingual in French and Arabic. France also has a history with Hezbollah, going back to the group's beginnings more than twenty years ago. In order to appreciate…
IT HAS BEEN REPEATED so often that it is now a mantra: "Embryonic stem cells offer the most promise for finding cures" for degenerative diseases and conditions such as Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury. But saying something ten thousand times doesn't make it true. Indeed, the embryonic…
WITH ALL THE DISCUSSION, analysis, commentary, and recrimination that has sur rounded U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq, it is surprising that so few parallels have been drawn to the situation in Lebanon. As in the case of Iraq, it appears there was an intelligence failure of some magnitude. This…
Without Roots by Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera (Basic Books, 159 pp., $22.00). In a Socratic exchange of letters, the then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Italian senate president Marcello Pera propose that Europeans are loitering through history without a compass. Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict…
Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe "pops up" isn't quite right, conveying…
"I AM JUST GOING CRAZY about how she's doing it so quickly," Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez reportedly said, as he beamed at a young Russian woman in the provincial city of Izhevsk last week. Chávez, who was on a three-day trip to Russia, did not make this statement while carousing at a local…
Shepherdstown, West Virginia
FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD CHAIRMAN BEN BERNANKE and his monetary policy committee should allow some time at their meeting on Tuesday for a round of self-congratulation. They have been raising interest rates at every meeting, continuing Alan Greenspan's program of putting paid to the era of low interest…
The Center for Naval Analyses has just released a report on "Managing Civil Strife and Avoiding Civil War in Iraq." A senior military analyst emails his take after reviewing the report: There are two interesting things about this report, in my view. First, although the panelists identified the…
On August 2, Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, penned an excellent piece for Die Welt (Germany) on Hezbollah's barbarism and use of "its own people as human shields." He writes: Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanon's parliament, says that "the Zionist Dracula's thirst has yet…
(Robert Kagan has a must-read piece in Sunday's Washington Post on Lieberman and his critics.) Yes, they're out there. Thursday's Los Angeles Times poll found that a majority of Democrats prefer neutrality to alignment with Israel. But 39 percent disagree. They believe the US shouldn't remain…
Jerusalem
The other day Tony Blair stated: [I]t is almost incredible to me that so much of Western opinion appears to buy the idea that the emergence of this global terrorism is somehow our fault. For a start, it is indeed global. No-one who ever half bothers to look at the spread and range of activity…
Coddling dictatorships around the globe is their specialty. From AFP: China urged non-interference in the affairs of Cuba, following comments by US President George W. Bush offering US support for "democratic change" in the Caribbean nation. "China has all along stood for mutual respect between…
I should have noted this earlier, but late Monday French Foreign Minister Douse de Blazy went to meet the Iranian ambassador in Beirut at the Iranian embassy. Isn't it usually the other way around with the ambassador going to the embassy of the foreign minister - in this case the French embassy? Of…
IT IS DIFFICULT, maybe even impossible, to render critical judgment on a movie such as World Trade Center. The normal aspects of appraisal are meaningless. It would be absurd to measure the film by its pacing or its cinematography. Ultimately, the only thing that matters is whether or not it feels…
IF AN ALIEN from Mars were to read only Chinese newspapers during a visit to planet Earth, he could be forgiven for believing that Japan was this planet's evil empire and Junichiro Koizumi its most evil man. Beijing has repeatedly blamed Koizumi for damaging relations between the two Asian powers…
Last night, in an interview with Fox's Bill O'Reilly, Rudy Giuliani again put himself squarely in the president's camp on immigration reform. The mayor is for tough border security, but he has also made the case in recent speeches that real reform must include a guest worker program and a "path to…
Jerusalem
Democratic leaders may support a strong alliance with Israel, but a majority of Democratic voters don't agree. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today found that nearly 60 percent of Americans support Israel in the current conflict. But underneath that number, there is a significant…
You can bet this will some get attention when Secretary Rumsfeld goes before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning. If the BBC has the full text of the leaked memo, why not provide readers with the entire document (redacting where appropriate)? And if the BBC report is accurate, the…
AFTER 9/11 BROUGHT RADICAL ISLAM to the country's attention, some Americans wondered, "Why do they hate us?" Since then, many answers have been offered. But the best way to understand what drives jihadists is an examination of their own words. To that end, Professor Mary Habeck's book Knowing the…
The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli forces are close to "recreating the 'security zone' that Israel maintained in south Lebanon from 1982 until the army withdrew in 2000." Israeli commanders have also left open the possibility of "advancing north of the Litani River." Israeli jets, the Post…
The Worldwide Standard has learned that five members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who had previously agreed to campaign with Sen. Lieberman this Sunday in African-American churches, have apparently backed out of their commitments. I'm told that anti-war groups put heavy pressure on the…
Yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. It was remarkable speech. It was also noteworthy because on the same day the leader of the Labour Party delivered it, the Washington Post ran a front-page headline, "Hill Democrats Unite to Urge Bush to Begin Iraq…
Somehow this doesn't surprise me. Today's New York Times reports that if Sen. Lieberman loses his primary next Tuesday many Senate Democrats will not campaign for Lamont. A few will even actively support Lieberman's independent run. Then there's John Kerry, who apparently has no problem stepping on…
TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS are plagued by conceptual differences, the role of American power perhaps foremost among them. Lately, though, the role Turkey might play in an expanded European Union has become a point of some contention. The American foreign policy community has long viewed Turkey from a…
THE MIDDLE EAST STUDIES ASSOCIATION, the professional gatekeeper of American academic orthodoxy on all matters Islamic, has posted the lineup of presentations for its upcoming meeting in Boston this November. As always, what's not going to be talked about says as much about the political priorities…
If you're in to the deliberate mass killing of innocents and the brutal subjugation of those you disagree with, this channel is for you. From AKI (Italy): Rome, 28 July - The next evolution in al-Qaeda's propaganda war is a television channel visible only via the Internet, which has already begun…
In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. Later, the UN Security Council called for the disarmament of Hezbollah. All the while, Hezbollah, armed by Iran and Syria, prepared for war. When war finally erupted, the soldiers of C Company of the Golani Brigade would pay the price. From the London…
WHILE HANK JOHNSON and Cynthia McKinney's joust last night was no replay of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, it was certainly entertaining in its own right. Neither candidate delivered a knockout blow, so it's down to the scorecards. Here's a round-by-round analysis.
The Weekly Standard's Duncan Currie wrote on life after Fidel a few months back - see here.
Daniel Hannan, an Iraq War opponent, pulls no punches on the issue of Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. From the Telegraph: It won't be a "durable" ceasefire, Condi, and it won't be "sustainable"; not while the ayatollahs are in power in Iran. This war isn't about border security, or prisoner…
"HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN among you, let him first cast a stone . . . " European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, secure in the knowledge that the Biblical interdiction doesn't disqualify him as a first-stone-thrower, rushed to the television studios to blame the United States for the…
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH'S ELECTION of its first female presiding bishop has made a split with the Anglican Communion even more likely. Katharine Jefferts Schori delighted Episcopalians who support gay bishops, same-sex unions, and other liberal social policies. But her victory also confirmed what…