The U.S. government is finally moving – albeit with the slowness of its Katrina response – to rescue Americans trapped in Lebanon. As our warships steam toward the Eastern Mediterranean, however, innocent tourists out for a pleasant sojourn in Beirut have...
Caught between the need to explore a possible diplomatic way out of an otherwise hopeless mess in Iraq and the domestic political need to keep the Democrats on the defensive, U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are playing a double game on the...
LATAKIA, Syria – Hezbollah, a group often misunderstood by Westerners, is a militant as well as political group. The Arabic name means "Party of God." Led by the charismatic Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Islamist Shi'ite group was set up in 1982 to resist...
After posing as the champion of democratic reform and the long-oppressed Shia minority in the Arab world, the administration of President George W. Bush appears to be scurrying back to Washington's traditional policy of strong support for the region's Sunni-dominated,...
When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unleashed his navy and air force on Lebanon, accusing that tiny nation of an "act of war," the last pillar of Bush's Middle East policy collapsed. First came capitulation on the Bush Doctrine, as Pyongyang and Tehran defied...
A Tale of Jupiters and Cattle Ancient Romans had a saying: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi, meaning "Jupiter may do what cattle may not." The modern notion of law explicitly rejects this concept of double standards. And yet, it is as much in force today as...
With Hezbollah's entry into the war between Israel and Hamas, Fourth Generation war has taken another developmental step forward. For the first time, a non-state entity has gone to war with a state not by waging an insurgency against a state invader, but across an...
Please name the U.S. presidential candidate who made the following point during the 2000 race for the White House: "I think that one of the problems that we have faced in the world is that we are so much more powerful than any single nation has been in...
By declaring that "Israel has the right to defend itself," the Bush administration is tacitly approving Israel's pounding Lebanon into rubble and re-invading Gaza. Since 9/11, the administration has tried to cast its "war on terror" as broadly as...
The G-8 summit is taking place at a fortuitous global moment when Russia and the United States are facing challenges of different natures. Russia is struggling to emerge as a superpower. In the pursuit of that objective, it is encountering a lot of problems. However,...
