In diplomacy, always leave your adversary an honorable avenue of retreat. Fifty years ago this October, to resolve a Cuban missile crisis that had brought us to the brink of nuclear war, JFK did that. He conveyed to Nikita Khrushchev, secretly, that if the Soviet...
My first reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu’s exhibition of comics at the U.N. General Assembly was shame. Shame that the supreme elected representative of my country would stoop to such a primitive rhetorical device, bordering on the childish. (One Israeli commentator...
Samuel Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." H.L. Mencken expanded that definition when he said, "Patriotism, in truth, is the great nursery of scoundrels.… Its chief glories are the demagogue, the military bully, and the spreaders of libels...
On the front page of a prominent newspaper the news is grim: a Middle Eastern country run by a ruthless dictatorial regime has been secretly developing “weapons of mass destruction.” While in public they deny it, in their underground labs their scientists are busy,...
Plenty of monikers have been attached to Omar Khadr, one of the most famous Guantanamo Bay detainees – child soldier, terrorist, war criminal, Al-Qaeda family member, security threat. One thing is certain: Khadr’s release last weekend to Canadian custody after...
Many who have now seen creepy event video clips featuring Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Research Director Patrick Clawson listing "crisis initiation" pretexts such as the Gulf of Tonkin phantom torpedo attacks, or false blame for the...
Despite the sharp charges and counter-charges about foreign policy there are no important differences on such matters between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney. The back and forth between the candidates on international issues is largely about...
