Updated at 11:45 p.m. EDT, Mar. 25, 2008The fragile ceasefire unilaterally imposed by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on his followers may be unraveling. Clashes between Iraqi security and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army are taking place in Basra and other cities, even as al-Sadr...
It has sometimes been noted that the neoconservatives, conspicuously absent on the battlefield, excel at the Washington infighting that enabled their ascent in the first place. Marine and Army combat units are justifiably proud of never leaving a comrade behind on the...
Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed Gallup Press, 2008 230 pp. A new book by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed ought to have a profound and transforming influence on Americans' view of their government's...
Five years ago last week, the U.S. military's "shock and awe" campaign lit up the Baghdad sky. Five years later, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,000 Americans dead, we should pause and reflect on just what has been gained and what has been...
Matt asked me this question (Matt being Matthew Barganier, merciless editor at this Web site) in response to a draft rant from me about NATO's role in Afghanistan. It's a good question: what should NATO do in Afghanistan? Here's my answer: (1) read the Globe and Mail,...
JERUSALEM - If Israeli leaders had hoped that their blockade of Gaza and the military's early March incursion into the coastal strip might undermine support for the leadership of the Islamic Hamas movement in power there, then they will be disappointed with the...
DAMASCUS - More than a million Iraqis in Syria cannot find work. For their idleness, they have come to be called the "pillow drivers." The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says there are at least 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria. If...
Why Did the US Invade Iraq? Mr. Lobe discussed and dismissed the role of Big Oil, but he does not consider (for want of a good term) peripheral oil. I mean companies that are ancillary to the big oil companies, such as Halliburton and Bechtel. These are companies...
During the early days of the Clinton administration, Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cringed when Madeleine Albright implied that because the United States had such a big, beautiful military, it should be willing to use it promiscuously...
Once again last week, the president and his men surged into the headlines, announcing that we had just zipped past yet another of those Iraqi "turning points." Or, as George W. Bush put it while speaking at the Pentagon (and perhaps dreaming of the days back in 2005...
