News Abroad

Would Americans Have Supported the War in Iraq If They Had Known the True Costs?

by Robert Higgs

Would you have bought into the Iraq War if George W. Bush had made you an honest offer? This question is a revealing variant of one that people often ask and answer: "Is the war worth its price?" Politicians and government officials are no strangers to such questions, and over the years they have given some amazing -- frankly, shocking -- answers. Thus, when General Curtis LeMay responded to questions about the U.S. fire-bombing of Tokyo's residential neighborhoods in the latter st

When the Seeds of the Modern Middle East Mess Were Laid ... In 1920

by Edwin Black

At the Paris Peace Conference, on January 1919, in a flag-bedecked, battle-scarred but victorious Paris, the great top-hatted Allied men of vision and illusion gathered to remake the world and invent the post-Ottoman Middle East. At those fateful meetings, the Arabs and Jews formally agreed to mutually endorse both their national aspirations. This was the deal: The Jews could have an unrestricted Zionist state in Palestine. The British could have Iraq and its fabulous albeit still undrilled

Our Three Options in Iraq

by William R. Polk

Official inquiries have verified what independent observers have long said: the invasion of Iraq was not justified; a small, remote and poor country, Iraq posed no threat to the United States. As in the Tonkin Gulf issue during the Vietnam war, the Congress and public were misled. Those of us who said so from the beginning are tempted now to say "I told you so" but that indulgence doesn't lead anywhere. When I was the member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council

Was Arafat Really the Obstacle to Peace?

by Neve Gordon

The leader and symbol of the Palestinian people is dead. His departure from the political scene has far-reaching implications, particularly for Israeli-Palestinian relations. The official Israeli line for the past four years has been that there is no Palestinian partner and that Yasser Arafat is persona non grata. Arafat has been blamed for being personally involved in planning and encouraging terror attacks. He has been accused of using funds donated by the European Union to finance te

4 Ways Falluja Can End

by Mark LeVine

As American forces penetrate ever deeper and more destructively into the city of Falluja, each of the major players in this violent drama is engaged in a complex, constantly shifting calculus involving ways of turning events to their advantage. Of the many possible outcomes to the battle of Falluja, the four which seem most plausible follow, starting with the one that might be viewed most positively by the Bush administration. In sum, they offer us a grim picture of how the window of

Is America's Empire Doomed?

by William E. Odom and Robert Dujarric

At least two sets of major threats from without confront the American empire, and critics suggest that these might be capable of undermining or catalyzing the empire's decline. First, some claim that the United States has paid insufficient attention to terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, information warfare, and other such so-called asymmetric threats. Second, other critics cite the political and moral tensions created by the empire's possession of th

Hating America: An Old Tradition in Some Quarters

by Daniel Pipes

“The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years.” Thus does Walter A. McDougall of the University of Pennsylvania begin the first volume of his acclaimed new American history, Freedom Just Around the Corner (HarperCollins). Not surprisingly, this central event has evoked a wide range of opinions. Tens of millions of immigrants have voted with their feet to slough off prior allegiances and join the boisterous experiment th

The Triumph of Fantasy Politics

by Jonathan Schell

Ever since September 11, 2001, and the "war on terror" it occasioned, the very quality of public events -- their grain, their tenor, their style, if you like -- has seemed to undergo a certain deterioration, as if from that day forward history was being authored by a third-rate writer rather than a master, or was being compelled, even as it visited increasing suffering on real people, to follow the plot of a bad comic book. Not the representation of the events but the actua

In the Middle East President Bush Has Dared to Be Different

by Daniel Pipes

The Middle East has so defined the presidency of George W. Bush that historians will, I expect, judge him primarily according to his actions there. And so, too, will American voters in just more than a week, when they go to the polls. It has not been fully appreciated that, when it comes to the Middle East, Bush has systematically responded to the region's problems by dispatching decades' worth of accepted practices and replacing them with stunningly different approaches. In contrast, John K

Why America Needs Someone Like Gorbachev

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The term statesman, in its positive sense, can be applied to only a few current and former heads of state. One of them is Mikhail Gorbachev. The former Soviet president spoke out forcefully in London recently at the kickoff of a new campaign called Come Clean.

How an Idea of Ike's Could Help Settle India/Pakistan Nuclear Tensions--And Help Us Win the War on Terrorism

by William Lambers

There's encouraging news about ending the decades-old conflict between India and Pakistan. At the United Nations, the leaders of both nations recently expressed their desire for peaceful coexistence, and called for confidence-building measures. How crucial is this development for the United States? Extremely. The war against terrorism cannot be won without stability in South Asia. Now is the time for the United States to intensify its efforts to help establish peace between the two r

How Jews and Arabs Use (and Misuse) the History of Jerusalem to Score Points

by Eric H. Cline

Today the struggle for Jerusalem and for all of Israel continues without respite, perpetuating 4,000 years of confrontation in the heart of the land once called Canaan. Where once the ancient weapons were bron

How Many Iraqis Have to Die Before We Care?

by Tom Palaima

What do war statistics mean to us? Imagine how Americans would feel if they were exposed to the same rate of insurgent attacks that are now occurring in Iraq. Six of the Iraqi provinces that have been declared safe have had four or more attacks per 100,000 people in the last month.Let's say that in Austin, Texas, where I teach, during the month of September, 25 explosions and killings and maimings took place in our neighborhoods. Imagine you knew that in larger cities such as Houston

Osama bin Laden's Scary Vision of a Grand Muslim Super State

by Juan Cole

In order to evaluate the aftermath of September 11, we first must understand that event. What did al-Qaeda intend to achieve? Only if we understand that can we gauge their success or failure.From the point of view of al-Qaeda, the Muslim world can and should be united into a single country. They believe that it once had this political unity, under the early caliphs. Even as late as the outbreak of World War I, the Ottoman state ruled much of the Middle East, and the Ottoman sulta

The Pentagon Insider Who Spread Rumors that Sounded Anti-Semitic

by Edwin Black

Since the run-up to the war in Iraq, Internet bloggers and discussion sites have been rife with anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rampages directed against Jewish neocons in the Pentagon. But their message lacked credibility until "Deep Throat" gave them the eyewitness testimony-direct from the Pentagon-they craved. The case of "Deep Throat" illustrates just how easy it is for anti-Israel blogging and chatting to escalate to serious media attention. I

How Israel's Defiance of the World Court Is Undermining the War on Terrorism

by Neve Gordon

Even though three years have passed since 9/11, most political leaders have failed to seriously probe the implications of the horrific attacks. One of the key questions that could have been asked following 9/11 is how the absence of certain international institutions helps engender conditions whereby groups and states resort to horrendous violence. Questions like this do not intend in any way to condone terrorism but rather to stimulate an investigation of how the creation and strengthe

If America Were Iraq, What would it be Like?

by Juan Cole

President Bush said last week that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country. What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number. Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and roc

Is Bush Really Responsible for Anti-Americanism Around the World?

by Judy Colp Rubin

We are constantly reminded nowadays of how much the world hates America. According to polls, many Chinese believe that the United States deliberately started the SARS epidemic; Islamic leaders in three Nigerian states blocked critical polio inoculations for children, denouncing them as a U.S. plot to spread AIDS or infertility among Muslims. And best-selling books in France and Germany claim that 9/11 was a propaganda stunt by American intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex.

You Don't Need to Be a Genius to Understand History's Dark Lessons for Iraq

by Tom Engelhardt

One of the fantasies of the present presidential race is that Vietnam is ancient history. It's a matter of musty documents, disputed records, ancient statements, and youthful acts of heroism, shame, or indiscretion by our two candidates. Been there, done that -- move on. And these days, when we do move on, it suddenly seems as if many people are in a rush to say that Iraq is certainly not Vietnam. Anything but. And in various ways this is obviously true (in part because nothing historically is e

Now the Neo-Cons Want a War with Iran?

by Murray Polner

Flipping the pages of a newspaper I ran across an AP dispatch buried in the back pages. In it, a grief-stricken father in Florida just informed that his 20-year-old marine son had been killed in Iraq, angrily tried to ignite the van carrying the marines sent to tell him the news, and in the process burning him severely. "My husband did not take the news well," his wife said. And a few days later another story about a mother in New York state mourning the death of her soldi