Month: September 2006

The media missed the real story regarding the National Intelligence Estimate of the global terror threat. It’s not what’s in the declassified executive summary of the report – Iraq, which was unavoidable – it’s what’s absent from it – Afghanistan, where the Taliban are making a frightening and bloody comeback. No where in the released … Continue reading “Missing From the NIE: Afghanistan”

Shinzo Abe has become the youngest postwar prime minister of Japan. He is seen as a reformer, following the lead of his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Of greater significance to the U.S. and the rest of world, Abe also is a nationalist dedicated increasing his country’s global role. By encouraging Japan to become a normal nation … Continue reading “Normalizing Relations
With Japan”

There is nothing "normal" or "ordinary" about Pakistan, from the rationale for its creation to the fact that it played a crucial role in the last epic battle of the Cold War, the expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. It played an equally significant role in the first battle of George W. Bush’s global … Continue reading “Uneasy Partners: Pakistan and the United States”

ROME – Italy is once again torn by bitter controversies over its military presence in Afghanistan after 31-year-old Italian soldier Giorgio Langella was killed and another five were injured Sept. 26 near Kabul. Militants, said to be from the resurgent Taliban, detonated a remote-control bomb as an Italian military convoy was on patrol in the … Continue reading “Afghanistan Casualties Raise New Doubts in Italy”

Iraqis – especially the majority Shi’ites – are increasingly angry and frustrated about their situation and impatient for U.S. troops to leave, but most do not believe their country will fall apart, according to a major new poll [.pdf] released here Wednesday by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). Seventy-one percent … Continue reading “Poll Shows Iraqis Weary of Violence, US Presence”

The Empire Tries to Browbeat Serbia Last week, representatives of the Contact Group met in New York and agreed with the chief UN negotiator on Kosovo that the talks concerning the status of the occupied Serbian province were stalled. The Group – a self-appointed committee of what a century ago would have been called the … Continue reading “A Desperate Push”

With Salam Talib Few in Iraq have experienced sectarian violence more than residents of Samarra, an ancient, mid-sized city on the Tigris River northwest of Baghdad. For centuries, the areas Sunni majority had lived at peace with its Shi’ite minority – but in February, someone blew up a major Shi’ite shrine in the city, sparking … Continue reading “In Iraq, Strife Follows US Military Wherever It Goes”

I‘ll probably be sorry for suggesting it. But maybe it really wasn’t such a good idea for the CIA to help the British overthrow Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected, secular prime minister of Iran, back in 1953. Maybe we should have been more careful about installing the shah and propping him up with American arms. … Continue reading “Opening With an Apology”

Our parent organization, the Randolph Bourne Institute, is named after an early 20th-century liberal famous for, among other things, his trenchant observation that “war is the health of the State” – a phrase that takes on quite a different connotation in our degraded era. In these dark times, Bourne’s statement might be taken as meaning … Continue reading “Bizarro Conservatism”

The 2006 U.S. congressional elections are heating up, along with a proliferation of television ads featuring U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I’m a veteran," a series of plainclothes men and women say into the camera in an attack ad against antiwar Democrat Ned Lamont, who is challenging incumbent Joe Lieberman for … Continue reading “I’m a Veteran, and I Support/Despise This War”