Afghans show door to blind hegemon
America and Iraq would have been spared the horrors of the uncalled for Iraq war if children of those who had decided to invade that country had been sent into the battlefields.
Syria: Needed US-Islamist detente
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...
Abbas to U.S.: Go fly a kite!
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...
Chuck Hagel: Oil did spark Iraq war
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...
Kashmiris try to globalize struggle
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...
Back to old Palestine?
Political columnist Pat Buchanan once described Capitol Hill as the third “Israeli-occupied territory” after the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Those days the White House frequently resisted Israeli pressure to support its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, while Congress routinely supported the Israeli stance. Thursday, the Obama administration voted against the U.N....
Obama, Romney clueless about Islam
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...
Obama’s sermon on extremism
President Obama told the U.N. General Assembly that Muslims must shun “extremism” and exercise “tolerance” for their adversaries. He was referring to the violence-prone protest rallies that the American film “Innocence of Muslims” has triggered in many Muslim countries. The amateurish video shows the Prophet Muhammad in pornographic poses and other demeaning postures. Some Muslim...
The rising visibility of Muslims in America
THE BALTIMORE SUNOctober 22, 1996 My friend Tom Neumann complains that American news media are distorting the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. Tom is the head of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Other supporters of the Israeli prime minister have also assailed American reporters for suggesting that he is trying...