Alan Bock

It is unlikely that the veil will be parted long enough for the great casserole of prejudice, misinformation, partial information and (occasionally) accurate perception that pollsters and political scientists are pleased to call “public opinion” to process and absorb the perception completely. But the vaguely worded Israeli Cabinet decision that the time might have come … Continue reading “Lifting the Wool: Governments Are Mafias, War Is Their Racket”

President Bush looked calm, determined and resolved Sunday night as he capped off Week One of the National Football League with a reminder that U.S. troops are committed to a much more serious and deadly game halfway around the globe. Still it was not difficult to detect a certain sense of desperation in the decision … Continue reading “US in for More Than a Penny in Iraq”

Perhaps you have to hand it to some of the more creative war supporters. A few people in the blogosphere and the oped world are trying to spin the ongoing troubles with guerrilla attacks and truck bombs at the UN headquarters into an advantage for the United States. The fact that radical Islamist and Arab … Continue reading “Terrorism and Iraq: The Link Is Real Now”

The six-way multilateral talks over the North Korean nuclear threat and related issues – among North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States – scheduled for August 25-27, seem unlikely to yield notable breakthroughs. The best hope is probably that they will set up a framework within which the main issue of … Continue reading “Korean Prospects for Peace”

Slowly and gradually, as the death toll mounts, as the "weapons of mass destruction" continue to prove elusive, and as evidence mounts that many if not most of the certainties U.S. officials touted as evidence that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat were based on at least shaky and probably deceptive intelligence information, the American … Continue reading “Occupation: Counting the True Costs”

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, back from a whirlwind tour of Iraq, spent Sunday morning spinning the increasingly troubling aftermath of the war and occupation of Iraq. Seeking to defuse such news as that 13 Americans died during the seven days ending Saturday, he said, according to the AP, that Americans understand (or should come … Continue reading “Wolfowitz Spins the Aftermath”

I have just returned from Korea, where I spent a few days at a conference in Asan City, a couple of hours south of Seoul. (Full disclosure note: It was sponsored by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, which is part with the constellation of Sun Myung Moon-affiliated organizations. My function was to … Continue reading “Korean Impressions”

There are some in the Beltway who consider that the very fact that the United States has no particular interest in the outcome of the current civil war in Liberia – beyond a vague humanitarian desire for the killing to come to an end – as the best of justifications for sending American troops to … Continue reading “Liberia: What American Interest?”

It is seldom incorrect to discount hopes for imminent peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Nonetheless, it seems almost possible to hope beyond hope this time that something resembling a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians might stand a chance of lasting longer than a day or so. This seems the case especially since Israeli Prime Minister … Continue reading “A Glimmer of Hope?”

The ongoing protests beginning with students and expanding (although it’s difficult for an outsider, even one who follows news reports, to know exactly how much) to other sectors of society have created a great deal of hope among those – surely most decent people around the world – who would like to see the repressive … Continue reading “Deterring Regime Change in Iran?”