Historic days in Israel: a showdown between the government and the settlers. Though the sides do negotiate behind the scenes, this time it does not look like the cat-and-mouse games for the media a few years ago, Prime Minister Barak's favorite dissimulation, when a...
In the 16th century, Europe was devastated by wars of religion, a fact that gives that unhappy time some relevance to our own. The foremost soldier and commander in 16th-century Europe was the duke of Alba. An excellent new biography of the duke by Henry Kamen offers...
JERUSALEM - A growing number of Palestinians are beginning to believe that Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip will not mean the end of occupation. "The Gaza Strip will still be occupied territory under international law," says Renad Qubbaj of the...
The five elderly women stood in front of a U.S. Army recruiting office in Tucson, Arizona, and began to sing. To the tune of "There's No Business Like Show Business," they belted out the lyrics they had written: "There's no business like war business...
The election of the hardline Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new head of Iran is undeniably a setback for those hoping to advance greater social and political freedom in that country. It should not...
Barely two minutes into the premiere episode of Over There, Steven Bochco's gritty television series about soldiers fighting in the Iraq war, and already the myth of the "stab in the back" – the nutty idea that we are, somehow, not being allowed to win by pansy...
There's been a distinct shift in the way U.S. officials talk not only about the war on terror, but about the "mission" in Iraq. As the International Herald Tribune noted in a story Wednesday, the "global war on terror" has been transmogrified into...
Imperial Policy in Action Judging by news coming from the Balkans this past week, the usually languid days of summer were anything but. Bosnia underwent another major centralization effort, while Serbia-Montenegro signed a treaty giving free passage through the...
It's almost tempting to breathe a sigh of relief. Raw, heads-in-the-sand stupidity is not limited to those who prop up the Bush agenda here in the land of polarized red and blue. Last week the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) issued a report [.pdf]...
The acclaimed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has often voiced enthusiasm for violent destruction by the U.S. government. Hidden in plain sight, his glee about such carnage is worth pondering. Many people view Friedman as notably articulate, while others find...
