ARBIL - Iraq's national reconciliation conference held over the weekend highlights the gap between the country's various political groups and their lack of consensus on a common basis for reconciliation. Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's call for the return of...
Updated at 11:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 20, 2006 New U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made an unannounced trip to Iraq where he discussed with local military commanders the possibility of increasing the number of troops there. Meanwhile, President Bush talked about the...
At this time last year, the Pentagon was hinting that troop levels in Iraq would be reduced. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that two combat brigades scheduled for combat tours would not be deployed to Iraq. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of...
The era of the Middle East strongman, propped up by and enforcing Western policy, appears well and truly over. His power is being replaced with rule by civil war, apparently now the American administration's favored model across the region. Fratricidal fighting is...
Although Vietnam flooded instantly back into American consciousness as the invasion of Iraq was launched in March 2003 – along with its ancient vocabulary from "hearts and minds" to "quagmire" (or the deeply referential "Q-word") – for the Bush...
Over the past 20 years, the U.S. Christian right has evolved into one of the most powerful grassroots organizing forces within the Republican Party, and a host of Christian Zionists have taken a well-earned seat at the foreign policy table. At the same time, their...
The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost fewer U.S. lives than the Filipino insurgency of 1899-1902. Yet Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker warned Congress last week the U.S. Army "will break" without more troops. We started this war...
When Colin Powell endorsed the Iraq Study Group report during his Dec. 17 appearance on Face the Nation, it was another curtain call for a tragic farce. Four years ago, "moderates" like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of...
"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." - George Washington Last week, I wrote about the critical need for Congress to reassert its authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize...
Since 1927, the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic in his single-engine Spirit of St. Louis, Time has devoted its final cover of the year to the Man of the Year. The Lone Eagle was first. In the 1930s and 1940s, FDR was the Man of the Year three times. Stalin, Truman,...
