Two bombings shook the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday, killing 27 and wounding over 50 persons. Ironically, one bomb hit a rally of the fundamentalist Jama’at-i Islami (Islamic Grouping), a group that has sometimes been relatively sympathetic to the Taliban. Peshawar, a city of over 3 million, is about the size of Chicago […]
Archives for April 2010
Anzalone: The Death of a Caliph
In a guest opinion piece for Informed Comment, Christopher Anzalone asks if the Reported Killings of the Islamic State of Iraq’s two senior Leaders spell the end of the Self-styled Jihadi State. Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the head of al-Qa ‘ida in the […]
Why Economic Sanctions on Iran will Fail
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said at Columbia U. that a military strike on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities would be his ‘last option.’ He makes an excellent point, too often overlooked. In some instances the price of doing something is just about as high as the price of doing nothing. […]
Gates Worries about Iranian Nuclear Research, while Khamenei blasts US for Hiroshima
David Sanger of the New York Times gets the scoop– that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sent the White House a memo last January observing that the US has no real developed policy for dealing with Iran should Tehran achieve ‘nuclear latency’ (where a country has the ability to construct a nuclear weapon but […]
Khamenei: US ‘only’ ‘nuclear criminal’ for Hiroshima
The USG Open Source Center translates the speech on Saturday of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the attendees of a nuclear security conference in Tehran. Iranian Supreme Leader Criticizes US Nuclear Policies Message by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i to the Tehran international nuclear conference “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None” — […]
Top Ten Differences between Mir Hosain Mousavi and Lady Gaga
Satire alert. Time magazine’s publicists inform me that there is a duke-out going on between Lady Gaga fans and those of Iranian Green Movement leader Mir Hosain Mousavi. So, below, I offer the top ten differences between the two. First the announcement: ‘Lady Gaga fans are protesting the results of TIME.com’s TIME 100 online poll, […]
Afghanistan Attacks Leave 13 Dead
Attacks in Afghanistan left 13 dead and many more wounded on Thursday. A suicide car bombing near an Afghanistan National Army base in Qandahar left 6 dead, three of them military and the other three civilians. Qandahar, a city of 1 million (i.e. slightly larger than Detroit), is a hotbed of Taliban radicalism. It is […]
Florida Times-Union on Engaging the Muslim World
The Florida Times-Union has an editorial today on the US and the Muslim world (and American Muslims) that draws on my most recent book, Engaging the Muslim World
Wright: Assassinations Strengthen Religious Terrorist Groups
Robert Wright argues that not only is assassination (including by drone) legally and ethically troubling, but there is reason to think that it is counterproductive when deployed against religious terrorist groups. He cites the study of Jenna Jordan [pdf], a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, in Security Studies. She did a large-scale study […]
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