Archives for April 2009

Click here for Charlie Rose’s interview with me about my new book, Engaging the Muslim World. Rose’s is among the best interview shows on television, and don’t miss his conversation with my co-guest, Robin Wright, the same day. Engaging the Muslim World End/ (Not Continued)

My Salon.com, “The Great Right-Wing Freak-Out” has been posted, with the subtitle: “Symptoms of the conservative crack-up were on full display after President Obama’s trip abroad. Bill Kristol, take a bow.” Excerpt: ‘ President Obama’s recent trip to Europe, Turkey and Iraq was a fairly bland freshman outing in foreign affairs, notable for the enormous […]

General Ray Odierno, after months of appearing to want to wriggle out of the requirement in the Status of Forces Agreement that US troops depart Iraq by the end of 2011, reversed himself forcefully on CNN on Sunday: ‘ KING: And on a scale of 1 to 10, sir, how confident are you, 10 being […]

I don’t know David Kilcullen. But the things he is alleged to have told Paul McGeogh of the Sydney Morning Herald about Pakistan are just bizarre. I don’t know what is intended by the prediction that Pakistan might “collapse” in six months. The country faces security challenges, and has already seen terrorist attacks such as […]

Pakistani authorities investigating the aftermath of US bombing raids in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan have come to the conclusion that they cause more harm than good: ‘ Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 […]

A suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest detonated his payload Saturday in the midst of a crowd of Sunni Arab militiamen in Iskandariya south of Baghdad. He killed 9 members of the local Awakening Council or “Sons of Iraq,” and wounded dozens. The Awakening Council members took a salary from the US and subsequently from […]

McClatchy reports that a suicide truck bomber hit a police barricade in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, detonating 200 pounds of explosives just as a US convoy was going by. The explosion killed two Iraqi policemen and 5 US troops, and wounded two other US soldiers. Mosul is the scene of an intense […]

April 9 was the sixth anniversary of the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. The date passed without much remark in the United States, which is consumed with its own domestic economic problems and high rates of unemployment, rendering a distant foreign misadventure virtually invisible. Gone are the debates over whether a US […]

Humanities West, a San Francisco cultural institution, is having a program April 17-18 on Napoleon at which I will speak on Napoleon’s Egypt. Media Contact: Genevieve Antaky510/482-3553, gantaky@comcast.net Public Info: Humanities West www. humanitieswest. org Tickets: City Box Office 415/392-4400, www. cityboxoffice. com. (There are still plenty of tickets, so come on down.) HUMANITIES WEST […]