Ivan Eland

A glimmer of hope exists in Iraq, but it has not been produced by the surge of extra U.S. forces. Although the surge, prior ethnic cleansing that has separated warring ethno-sectarian groups, and the U.S. military’s paying off Sunni insurgents have reduced violence, the lull is likely to be temporary. The underlying ethno-sectarian fissures in … Continue reading “Hope in Iraq”

Both the book and movie Charlie Wilson’s War glorify the "colorful" liberal Democratic congressman’s successful crusade to bludgeon the reluctant, neoconservative Reagan administration into dramatically escalating funding, arming, and training of radical Islamists fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Although the zestful life and escapades of Wilson make for an entertaining and true-to-(Wilson’s)-life movie, … Continue reading “Charlie Wilson’s Warlords”

Now that the deadline has passed without an international agreement on the future of Kosovo – the Serbian province that has enjoyed autonomy under the tutelage of the United Nations since the NATO-Serb war of 1999 – a showdown in the UN Security Council looms. No matter what the outcome of Wednesday’s debate, don’t be … Continue reading “The Solution to the Kosovo Problem”

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is now teetering on the edge of the abyss, just as I predicted in the spring of 2007. He was pushed there by U.S. policy, and worse yet, his country is armed with nukes. To prevent the Pakistani Supreme Court from declaring him ineligible to serve another term as president, … Continue reading “Bush’s Role in Bringing
Pakistan to the Abyss”

The Bush administration is attempting to soothe the Turkish government’s apoplectic reaction to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s label of “genocide” on Turkey’s slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, which occurred almost a century ago. The administration fears that an enraged Turkish ally, already threatening to invade northern Iraq in order to suppress armed Turkish Kurd … Continue reading “US Has Double Standard at Home and Abroad”

A small number of politicians and analysts, including me, have been advocating for some time what has generally been loosely labeled the "partition" option for Iraq. Although at least one anonymous administration official has said that the Bush administration probably would end up there, and although administration policy is tending toward actions on the ground … Continue reading “Why ‘Partition’ (of Iraq) Is a Dirty Word”

If a restaurant, dry cleaner, or home-repair business provided inferior goods or shoddy services, it is likely that the concern would go belly-up. Yet when the U.S. government makes a blunder, the more its citizens reward its failure with further money and authority. For example, after the Bush administration exacerbated the worldwide threat from Islamic … Continue reading “The State Perpetuates Itself
by Failing”

Those of us who opposed the expansion of NATO in 1999 (admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) and 2004 (Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania) warned that it would lead to problems with Russia. Those problems have arrived. A resurgent Russia – flush with oil revenues … Continue reading “Payback for NATO Expansion”

As Congress begins to consider the Iraq War funding bill, defections by important Republican senators have caused a White House debate on whether to try to get ahead of the onrushing train to leave Iraq. In the Bush administration’s surreal parallel universe, this “post surge redeployment” – normal people would call this a withdrawal after … Continue reading “Would Iraqi Civil War
Hurt the US?”