Barnett Rubin has just posted another entry in his brilliant series on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan.
Archives for August 2007
Gonzales Gone for Wrong Reasons
The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution’s own prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” (such […]
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Terrorism
At the Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi tells us how Tehran is reacting to the Bush adminstration’s threat to declare sections of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a ‘terrorist organization. She argues that through such threats, Bush is merely strengthening the Iranian Right.
War in a Time of Cholera
Violence at Karbala, Baghdad, Falluja dogged the al-Maliki government on Monday, while the significance of the agreements reached by the presidential council on national reconciliation remained in doubt. Unless parliament passes them, they remain a dead letter. The Sunni Arabs continued to decline to rejoin al-Maliki’s government. Meanwhile, the public health crisis that is Iraq […]
Churchill on When to Throw in the Towel on Iraq
Glenn Greenwald once remarked that “the highest achievement to which one can aspire in the neocon universe it to be compared to Winston Churchill.” So Churchill would advocate another surge and toughing it out forever in Iraq, right? Here is what he wrote in 1922, a couple of years after Britain was awarded Iraq by […]
Williams Guest Op-ed: W. and Graham Greene
John S. Williams writes: “One of the most curious comments in Incurious Boy George’s recent speech before the Veterans of Foreign War in Kansas City was his totally uninformed reference to Graham Greene’s novel about American involvement in Vietnam, The Quiet American. Perhaps the best article on the matter I’ve read thus far is one […]
Al-Maliki Threatens Journalists Al-Hashemi Plays Hard to Get
Al-Maliki tells off US pols., threatens journalists with libel lawsuits. A hint to Mr. al-Maliki: This kind of shrillness does not look prime ministerial and just hurts your cause. Muzzling criticism in the press is a contradiction of your claim to legitimacy because of a democratic victory in the polls. Tariq al-Hashimi was in Ankara […]
Who is the US Fighting in Iraq?
Who exactly is the US fighting in Iraq? Graphed by self-confessed identity of captives, it is largely Sunni Arab Iraqis, often motivated primarily by the opportunity to earn some money from the resistance leaders. Source: New York Times, 2007/08/25. The second largest group is Salafi Takfiris, i.e. fundamentalists who do not consider Shiites to be […]
Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East
The video of my appearance at the New America Foundation is now online. Many thanks again to kind host Steve Clemons. The short version, covering some of the same points, can be read at Tomdispatch.com, which is carrying my essay on Bonaparte and Bush.
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