ANDREW J. BACEVICH says “the big story of Muslim self-determination is likely to continue unimpeded” and lead to the rollback of American hegemony over Muslim societies. In his Washington Post piece, the historian recalled that when the British Empire was collapsing, it could turn over its “imperial responsibility” to the United States. But Americans today,...
John Kerry’s recipe to meet U.S. foreign policy challenges appeared to have been copied from the neoconservatives’ play book: trade, aid and democracy. All these have been tried. They didn’t work.
AS CHUCK HAGEL is about to be nominated for the defense secretary post, neocons and the Israel lobby have got their knives out. These henchmen of the Israeli right-wing masterminded the disastrous Iraq war. Most of us knew the war’s twofold goals: To take out Saddam Hussein because he was Israel’s fiercest and strongest Arab...
A Kashmiri Muslim noticed my Facebook comment about protests over the gang rape of a medical student in India. The 23-year-old woman has died of injuries from the brutal assault. I had applauded the electrifying protests in New Delhi and elsewhere in the country. And I had expressed hope that they would shame the Indian...
(Published in the San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 2012) It was a reprehensible crime. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. diplomatic staff members were nurturing excellent U.S.-Libyan relations until they were murdered by a Muslim mob in Benghazi. Many Libyans will fondly remember Stevens’ hard work to implement the U.S. policy to facilitate...
A Republican activist I had met last month at a Middle East Policy Council seminar in Washington called over the weekend. She asked what I thought about President Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., before getting to the reason for her call. Did I know if “Obama is really a Muslim”? The...
The documentary “2016: Obama’s America” is drawing big crowds in the South, reports my hometown newspaper the Washington Examiner . And “liberal and conservative voters” watching it are cursing President Obama. “I have to get some more friends” to see the documentary, says 18-year-old Tammy Birdwell who watched it in Greenville, N.C. “We have to...
The Obama administration knows by now that Russia will not let any action against the murderous Syrian dictatorship get the green light from the U.N. Security Council. In response, the administration is taking baby steps to help the Syrian uprising, dedicated to overthrowing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. These steps include sharing intelligence with...
“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” These were the words of a young antiwar activist named John Kerry, testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Forty-one years later Kerry, now chairman of the same Senate committee, was defending the Afghan war, in which the last man has probably yet to die.
By Mustafa Malik The other day Robert Malley said at a Capitol Hill seminar that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was “more likely” now than ever before. Malley is a widely respected Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group, and he gave two reasons for his concern. One, he said Benjamin Netanyahu...