As children, most of us learned the so-called golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or in more plain language: "Treat others as you would like to be treated." Also known as the ethic of reciprocity, the golden rule...
Blowback of Iran War Likely to Be ‘Terrible’
Since the release of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear capabilities last December, the prevailing conventional wisdom has been that the report's finding that Iran is not currently pursuing nuclear weapons had derailed the possibility of the...
In Lebanon, Time to Step Back From the Brink
Describing the current Lebanese political impasse as a moment "pregnant with incredible danger," a US expert Tuesday urged rival factions and their international patrons to adopt of a formula of "no victim, no vanquished" in order to mitigate a...
Thursday: 39 Iraqis Killed, 112 Wounded
Updated at 11:36 p.m. EDT, Mar. 13, 2008As the body of a kidnapped Chaldean Catholic priest was found in northern Iraq, a car bomb blast in Baghdad killed and injured scores of civilians. Overall at least 39 Iraqis were killed or found dead and another 112 were...
No to Torture, Yes to the Constitution
On Tuesday, March 11, the US House of Representatives voted for the version of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008 that banned waterboarding and other forms of torture. The measure, previously passed by Congress, was vetoed by President Bush. This vote was an...
Two-State Dreamers
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into...
How To Reduce Terrorism
Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. Job 4:8 (King James Version) Often people express concern about future acts of terrorism in America and about terrorists entering our country at our borders. I feel it is most important...
When the Money Stops,
Military Reform May Start
At a recent book party for Winslow Wheeler's new history of the military reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s, I was asked for my views on the prospects for genuine reform. I replied that "So long as the money flow continues, nothing will change." Chuck Spinney, a...
Questions We Wish They’d Asked Five Years Ago
[Excerpt from the new book by Greg Mitchell, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq (Union Square Press).] On March 6, 2003, less than two weeks before he ordered the country to war, President Bush conducted a...
‘Fox’ Fallon Fired
"If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran," says the March Esquire, "it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man." The piece describes this top military figure as the last obstacle...


