Month: June 2006

With less than six months before the mid-term congressional elections, President George W. Bush and his top aides are gambling heavily – some would say recklessly – that Iraq will not be the political liability for Republicans that most pundits have believed it would be. The White House’s apparent belief that recent events in Iraq … Continue reading “Bush Hitches GOP’s Political Star to Iraq”

Since the British imperial moment of the late 19th century, the image of much of the world – especially Central Asia and the Middle East – as but a set of pawns in a “Great Game” on a geopolitical “chessboard” where the great powers of whatever era are at play has been a commonplace. Many … Continue reading “The Tripolar Chessboard”

Two years from now, Hillary Clinton might be pleased to hear the kind of boos and antiwar chants that greeted her days ago when she spoke at the annual Take Back America conference of Democratic activists and argued against a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But so much of politics is about timing. And right … Continue reading “Hillary Clinton’s
Premature Triangulation”

Iraq is an unalloyed disaster. War with Iran would be even worse. Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution has empowered groups hostile to America. Where is the new democratic dawn in the Mideast that the administration promised? It certainly isn’t represented in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” The West Bank is still occupied and Gaza is nearing civil war. … Continue reading “Misguided Theology Makes Bad Foreign Policy”

The parents of a U.S. peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer built by the global machinery giant Caterpillar confronted the company Wednesday for the first time and urged shareholders at its annual meeting to end sales of "weaponized bulldozers to Israel." Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of the late Rachel … Continue reading “Caterpillar Pressured Over ‘Weaponized Bulldozers’”

An exodus of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis escaping growing violence in their homeland last year increased the total number of refugees around the world to some 12 million, according to the World Refugee Survey 2006 released here Wednesday by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). That total marked a reversal of a … Continue reading “Iraq Exodus Ends Four-Year Decline in Refugees”

If you are looking for an alternative to the Bush agenda, you aren’t going to find it inside the Beltway. While President Bush makes a covert slog around Iraq to tout the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the other deadly performances of our armed forces, the Democrats back home are doing exactly the same. … Continue reading “Zarqawi and Lesser-Evil Politics”

The history of war-atrocity snapshots did not start with the Abu Ghraib screensavers from hell. After all, photography itself came into being as the industrializing West was imposing its rule on much of the planet. That imposition meant wars of conquest; and such colonial wars, in turn, meant slaughter. From the moment the wooden sailing … Continue reading “War Crimes as Porn”

Three years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the image of the United States in Europe and the Islamic world has resumed its postwar slide, according to the latest in a series of surveys of public opinion [.pdf] in 14 countries released here Tuesday by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (PGAP). Support for Washington’s "global … Continue reading “US Image Abroad Takes a New Turn South”

A relative no-name before the Iraq war, self-styled investigative journalist Stephen F. Hayes has made quite a career for himself peddling war lies for his neocon publishing boss Bill Kristol. But now, with the death and autopsy of al-Qaeda strawman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, he’s having to live down a real whopper. Hayes, writing with the … Continue reading “Stephen Hayes, Call Your Editor”