Iraq

The confirmation hearing in the Senate for Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, was painful to watch because it displayed the tomfoolery, pretense, self-righteous know-nothingism, and embarrassing lack of contact with reality that dominate the landscape of America’s broken democracy. It was like watching a Nebraska ordinary Joe set upon by circus […]

Iraq

Iraq in Crisis as Troops Shoot Down unarmed 6 Sunni Protesters

Juan Cole

Sunni Arab tribes in Falluja (presumably branches of Dulaim) on Saturday demanded that the government turn over to them within 7 days the troops who fired on protesters on the outskirts of the western city of Falluja, killing 6 and wounding 19 on Friday. Otherwise, they say, they will declare jihad on government troops. The […]

Afghanistan

How Torture Misled the US into an Illegal War: What Zero Dark Thirty Really Leaves Out

Juan Cole

An important problem with the narrative line of “Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the Central Intelligence Agency’s quest for Usama Bin Laden, is not just that it comes across as pro-torture but that it ignores the elephant in the room: Bad intelligence elicited by torture almost derailed that quest to put down al-Qaeda […]

Egypt

Christmas 2012: The Flowering of Middle Eastern Christianity and the Challenges it Faces

Juan Cole

There are more Middle Eastern Christians than ever before, and they are poised between emergence as a new political force in a democratizing region and the dangers to them of fundamentalism and political repression. The arguments you see for Christian decline in the region are mostly wrong. If we count the Christians in the Arab […]

Iraq War

Psy of “Gangnam Style” attacked Bush’s Iraq War, not America

Juan Cole

Korean pop star Psy (Park Jae-sang ) is apologizing for performances in 2004 in which he condemned the Iraq War. At one point he sang another songwriter’s lyrics about US soldiers killing and torturing Iraqis and the need to fight back against them and their family members. This is the purported video of Psy, protesting […]

Energy

The Tesla S and World Peace: Can American Green Energy End the Gulf Oil Wars?

Juan Cole

Petroleum makes the world go round, with 70% of it used to power automobiles. About a fifth of the world’s 90 million barrels a day of oil production comes out of the Persian Gulf/ Arabian Gulf. A large part of the US stand-off with Iran has to do with petroleum. The US doesn’t want a […]

Iran

Syria crisis Shakes Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia as Cease-Fire Crumbles

Juan Cole

The inability of the Syrian government to crush an 18-month-old revolutionary movement is putting increasing pressure on its neighbors. Not only have hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria poured into Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, but political forces in each of those countries are having to choose sides and to reevaluate their choices over […]

Iraq

10,000 Syrian Refugees Trapped on Iraq & Turkish Borders

Juan Cole

Human Rights Watch is calling on Iraq and Turkey to open their borders in Syria’s northeast to allow the passage of some 10,000 Syrian refugees, caught in the desert without proper sanitation. Aljazeera English reports on the closed Iraqi border at Qa’im. The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government fears that some of the Syrians seeking to escape […]

Afghanistan

Romney’s Five Wars

Juan Cole

Mitt Romney’s speech at VMI on foreign policy has been widely condemned as vague and lacking in substance, sort of like the man who gave it. But the speech is also full of suggestions and criticisms of the Obama administration that are simply not realistic. The speech is Romney’s “Mission Impossible,” only without the cool […]