Month: April 2004

Richard Clarke was right. So was Paul O’Neill. During the six months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration paid little attention to the threat from al-Qaeda and instead set the stage for a war with Iraq. Two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, national security wasn’t even a top priority for the Bush … Continue reading “Rice Never Spoke About Al-Qaeda, bin Laden Before 9/11”

The always tense relationship between the Sadrist movement among Iraqi Shiites and the US and its Coalition partners has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Perhaps a third of Iraqi Shiites are sympathetic to the radical, Khomeini-like ideology of Sadrism, and some analysts with long experience in Iraq put it at 50%. Earlier Muqtada … Continue reading “Phase II of the Anti-Occupation Revolt Begins”

In my last column, I made some broad generalizations about Chinese and China. One of the points of the column was to show that Chinese businessmen make decisions based on guanxi. Any businessman – or any foreigner for that matter – has a collection of stories about the power of guanxi in China. The other … Continue reading “Chinese Generalizations”

Would that mob in Fallujah have dared treat the security men of Saddam the way they treated those Americans? Would they have danced and shouted, “Death to Saddam,” as they did “Death to Bush”? No way. For every one in those TV pictures and photos would now be in an Iraqi prison or dead. But … Continue reading “Does the US Have the Will to Win?”

Israel’s Isolation – and America’s Bush can’t see the connections between the US and Israel because he doesn’t want to see the connections or just doesn’t care and it certainly doesn’t help that Sharon has the US Congress in his pocket too. How many years have we been sending military aid to the "man of … Continue reading “”

A band of neoconservative pundits with close ties to Israel have mounted a campaign against American scholars who study the Middle East. Martin Kramer, an Israeli-American and former director of the Dayan Center for Middle East Studies at Tel-Aviv University, has led the way in blaming these scholars for failing to warn the American public … Continue reading “Thought Control for Middle East Studies”

Many Chinese revere Hitler. This may seem unfathomably irrational to Europeans, especially when coupled with the intense dislike most Chinese have for all things Japanese, but it fits in with the Revere the Big Man Effect that dominates vast aspects of Chinese culture. A RBME is usually followed closely by a RBCE — Revere the … Continue reading “Revering the Big Men”

The hype surrounding the 9/11 Commission and Richard Clarke’s testimony is mostly superficial and overly partisan. Americans argue whether George W. Bush or Bill Clinton was the stronger president against terrorism, when in fact neither did anything to stop al Qaeda, and, more importantly, both of them supported the foolish policies in the Middle East … Continue reading “Remembering Afghanistan”

The cold war is long over, but with the support of U.S. supremacists in both parties NATO lives on as America’s global cop. Seven more nations are joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and three more Central European nations have their applications pending. Although the Bush administration has set an overall course in foreign … Continue reading “Long Live NATO”

WASHINGTON – Just before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified before the 9-11 Commission last week, reporters were handed his prepared statement. Unlike statements by other witnesses during the hearings, his came with an attachment – a stack of papers almost an inch thick, held together by a binder clip. "Boy," one reporter remarked under her … Continue reading “Rummy’s Rules for War”