A Tenuous ‘Peace’ in Anbar

RAMADI, Iraq – A semblance of calm belies an undercurrent of violence, detentions and fear across Iraq’s volatile Anbar province. The province – which occupies one-third of Iraq’s geographic area – has been a bane to authorities since the beginning of the occupation. "The Americans talked about our province as the deadliest enemy, and suddenly [...]

McCain’s Mangled Metaphor

Never mind Hillary’s plants or that guitar-strumming singing wannabe pundit, the real news out of the Youtube/CNN GOP slugfest is that John McCain’s failing, cash-strapped campaign was dealt another heavy blow in his embarrassing tiff with antiwar Republican Ron Paul. As Paul accurately pointed out that we could ameliorate a lot of suffering – including [...]

Friday: 2 U.S. Soldiers, 21 Iraqis Killed; 9 Iraqis Wounded; 30 Iraqis Kidnapped

Updated at 11:55 p.m. EST, Nov. 30, 2007An otherwise quiet prayer day was marked by the detention of dozens of people associated with a Sunni leader. Five U.S. soldiers were injured during a controlled detonation of a car bomb found at the politician’s Baghdad office. Two U.S soldiers were killed in separate incidents elsewhere. Overall, [...]

Khrushchev’s Cold War

Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War (New York: Norton paperback, 2007), 670 pp. Überhawks carelessly toss around the Hitler comparison – Ho Chi Minh was Hitler. Slobodan Milosevic was Hitler. Saddam Hussein was Hitler. Now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. Yet it is nonsense to compare the leaders of small, poor, and underdeveloped Third [...]

Exposing the Guardians of Power

What has changed in the way we see the world? For as long as I can remember, the relationship of journalists with power has been hidden behind a bogus objectivity and notions of an "apathetic public" that justify a mantra of "giving the public what they want.” What has changed is the public’s perception [...]

Catch 22 in Iraq: Why American Troops Can’t Go Home

Whoa, let’s hold those surging horses in check a moment. Violence has lessened in Iraq. That seems to be a fact of the last two months – and, for the Iraqis, a positive one, obviously. What to make of the “good news” from Iraq is another matter entirely, one made harder to assess by the [...]

Blowback From Moscow

Our next president will likely face a Russia led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, determined to stand up to a West that Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends. Americans who think Putin has never been anything but a KGB thug will reject accusations of any U.S. role in [...]

Christians And Muslims Coexist in Gaza

GAZA CITY – As Sunday dawns in Gaza City the traditional Islamic call to prayer mingles melodically with church bells. Side by side, mosque and church doors swing open, welcoming the faithful. Greetings are eagerly exchanged. The October kidnapping and murder of Rami Ayyad, the manager of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, sent shudders through the [...]

An American in Paris

I was in Paris last week with my wife and daughter for Thanksgiving. One of the things we noticed was that there were Americans almost everywhere we went. My initial reaction was a bit of surprise given the currently weak dollar versus the Euro ($1.48 USD = 1 Euro as this is written). But my [...]

On the Brink

There is one constant in the proclamations of those championing the independence of the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo: the more they claim it is "inevitable" and just around the corner, the less likely it becomes. The drive to officially sever the province – occupied in 1999 by NATO, following an illegal war, and administered [...]