For the past month or so, news from the Balkans has been all Srebrenica, all the time. This quiet little town in eastern Bosnia, which got its name after the old silver mines nearby, has been dragged through the headlines of just about every major paper and across the...
London Terror Mystery
London's Terror Thursday establishes three realities beyond the shadow of a doubt: (1) the West is losing the "war on terrorism," (2) in our present strategic mode, we are essentially defenseless against al-Qaeda's offensive – I agree with Michael Scheuer, the...
Calls Mount to Prosecute Past Afghan Atrocities
As an unexpected resurgence of fighting by Taliban and allied forces against the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai is raising new concerns over Afghanistan's stability, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has repeated its call for the prosecution of past...
Saddam, Stalin, Hitler, and History
Even the harshest Bush-bashing pundit tends to qualify his or her criticism of the war in Iraq with the line, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was an evil man and we should all be thankful that he and his cronies have been deposed, but…" In fact, you can...
Silver City
Srebrenica, 10 Years Later For the past month or so, news from the Balkans has been all Srebrenica, all the time. This quiet little town in eastern Bosnia, which got its name after the old silver mines nearby, has been dragged through the headlines of just about every...
Charlie Wilson’s War, Act Two
Though it happened just over 20 years ago, today's media has all but forgotten that Afghanistan's Taliban was largely the creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a hard-drinking, party-loving Texas congressman who helped funnel billions of dollars...
Iraq: A Right-Wing Alternate Reality Show
Never mind all that folderol about Iraq's burgeoning insurgency: those bombs going off everywhere, the kidnappings, and the complete inability of the U.S.-installed Iraqi government to keep order in the streets of their own capital city – "The war is over," says...
Neocons Bludgeon Professors With ‘Academic Freedom’
OAKLAND, California - A specter is again haunting U.S. colleges and universities. At the beginning of the Cold War in the early 1950s, Joseph McCarthy, the infamous Republican senator from Wisconsin, stalked the political landscape recklessly hurling charges that...
Chasing Zarqawi
Just in the last few days, according to USA Today, a "propaganda video purportedly made by al-Qaeda-linked terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" has been released showing suicide attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq supposedly inspired by or ordered by him. Since George...
‘Withdrawal Would Cripple US Credibility’
Obsession with seeming unequivocal and immovable has been frequent in the Oval Office. During the Vietnam War, such fixations were indifferent to the fact that the war was losing the U.S. government moral credibility around the world. But from the outset, Lyndon...