Israel's recent response to actions by Hamas and Hezbollah has raised alarms in the region to a higher level than in any time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Rather than strengthen Israel's security, it might well have weakened it by setting the stage, perhaps...
A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War
What explains the indifference of the Bush administration to the slaughter of civilians in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza? As of the morning of July 19, Israeli bombardments of Lebanese civilian residential districts and public infrastructure have murdered 300 Lebanese,...
No, We’re Not ‘All Israelis Now’
Even in an age when e-mail, word processors, and high-speed Internet connections allow writers to almost instantaneously publish glaringly inchoate offerings, it is not often that one comes across a work as poorly conceived as Larry Kudlow's contribution to National...
‘The Israel Lobby’ Revisited
Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt created quite a stir earlier this year with their report "The Israel Lobby," which contends that Israeli influence has led the U.S. to adopt self-destructive policies in the Middle East. In the following video...
Enrich Iranians, Not Uranium
Is the Iranian nuclear challenge impossible to solve? To judge by President Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric and his seeming indifference to world opinion, you could be forgiven for thinking so. The mullahs now look ready to defy the UN's month-long ultimatum on uranium...
Backtalk, July 20, 2006
Attention-Deficit Americans Are Being Misled to War Conflating the U.S. action in Iraq with Israel's invasion of Gaza and Lebanon is at best an oversimplification, and at worst an outright distortion of fact. It is common knowledge that Iran funds and supports...
Back to Sunni Authoritarians?
After posing as the champion of democratic reform and the long-oppressed Shia minority in the Arab world, the administration of President George W. Bush appears to be scurrying back to Washington's traditional policy of strong support for the region's Sunni-dominated,...
Hezbollah an Emerging Political Force
LATAKIA, Syria Hezbollah, a group often misunderstood by Westerners, is a militant as well as political group. The Arabic name means "Party of God." Led by the charismatic Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Islamist Shi'ite group was set up in 1982 to resist...
Bush’s Double Game on an Iraq Withdrawal Timetable
Caught between the need to explore a possible diplomatic way out of an otherwise hopeless mess in Iraq and the domestic political need to keep the Democrats on the defensive, U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are playing a double game on the...
Playing the Sunni Card
The U.S. government is finally moving albeit with the slowness of its Katrina response to rescue Americans trapped in Lebanon. As our warships steam toward the Eastern Mediterranean, however, innocent tourists out for a pleasant sojourn in Beirut have...


