As the investigation into the Paris attacks progresses, and the identities of the perpetrators are revealed, some curious patterns emerge. To begin with, the alleged mastermind, 28-year-old Belgium-born Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, seems to have led a charmed life. A...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. As I’ve written elsewhere, what Chalmers Johnson called America’s “empire of bases” was “not so much our little secret as a secret we kept even from ourselves” – at least until Johnson broke the...
At least 116 were killed and 22 were wounded across Iraq: In Tuz Khormato, Shi’ite militiamen killed a Kurdish doctor. Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani urged security forces to contain the conflict that erupted between Kurdish Peshmerga and Shi’ite militiamen a few...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington to collect his payoff for being disgruntled over the agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program, which was signed by that country and the world's great powers. Although President Obama and Netanyahu seem to...
Among the presidential candidates of the Republican Party and their foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill the cry is almost universal: Barack Obama has no strategy for winning the war on ISIS. This criticism, however, sounds strange coming from a party that controls...
What were Islamist terrorists trying to accomplish when they attacked Paris on Friday, killing over 120 French civilians? A growing number of analysts now agree with Juan Cole’s theory about the extremists’ strategy in France, which he raised after the the Charlie...
The horrific attacks in Paris on Friday have, predictably, led to much over-reaction and demands that we do more of the exact things that radicalize people and make them want to attack us. The French military wasted no time bombing Syria in retaliation for the...
Stepping back from the horror, the editorializing, and our own sense of disbelief that such evil is even possible, let’s look at what’s actually happened within the space of a single week. The Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS, has launched major attacks on three...
You don’t want to read this, and I take no pleasure in writing it, and no one really wants to hear it right now. But I believe it needs to be said. I join the world in grieving for the dead in Paris. I have grieved for the dead from 9/11 forward – the Australians who...
