THE UNITED STATES has taken a welcome step to tackle the Syrian crisis. It has joined Russia in arranging a peace conference in Geneva next month, which, unfortunately, would also expose America’s diminished global standing. The end of Syria’s murderous Bashar al-Assad regime will come, however, from its eventual attrition from the uprising. A main...
The Independent echoed the common Western views of Salam Fayyad’s resignation. The Palestinian prime minister’s exit had “thro[wn] into doubt the future of the Palestinian Authority and the peace process with Israel,” observed the liberal British newspaper. Has Fayyad’s parting really caused – or rather reflected – the crisis facing the Palestinian government and the...
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,...
That was a shocker. On Monday, Mitt Romney launched a blistering, if empty, assault on President Obama’s allegedly “passive” policy toward Muslim extremists and terrorists. The Republican presidential nominee accused the president of not being able to tackle “violent extremists,” some of whom stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Obama “passive” about extremists and...
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 revolution goes on,” said Mohammed Mursi, on being declared president of Egypt in its first-ever democratic election. He ran for president as the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. The transnational Brotherhood has been the world’s oldest Islamist movement. The president-elect has called for national unity. Mursi wouldn’t,...
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...
(Published in the Daily Star, Lebanon, September 14, 2011; Dawn, Pakistan, September 13, 2011) By Mustafa Malik POLASHPUR, Bangladesh – Since September 11, 2001, I visited my mother four other times here in the village of Polashpur in northeastern Bangladesh. She is 92 and lives in my ancestral home, surrounded by three fish ponds and...
(Published in the Columbus Dispatch, April 30, 2011) By Mustafa Malik Democratization of Arab societies “would be a disaster” for the West, warns Princeton University scholar Bernard Lewis. Yet he predicts that Islamic political parties are “very likely to win … genuinely fair and free elections” in the Arab world. One of the West’s best-known...
By Mustafa Malik President Obama always makes good speeches, and he gave an excellent one defending his administration’s participation in NATO’s military intervention in Libya. The coalition bombing has averted, as the president pointed out, a “brutal repression and looming humanitarian crisis” brought on by Muammar Qadhafi’s forces. Even though the Qadhafi forces have halted...