News Abroad

What the French Ban on Head Scarves Says About France

by Sarah A. Curtis

In France this month, public schools reopened with surprisingly few confrontations regarding the ban on Muslim head scarves – as well as other “ostentatious” religious symbols – passed by the French National Assembly last spring and put in effect with the beginning of the school year. Girls who arrived at school wearing scarves pushed them off on entering the school grounds; others opted for smaller “bandannas” that passed as fashion rather than religious stat

The Deeper Significance of Bush's Slip that We Are Waging a Crusade Against Terror

by James Carroll

At the turn of the millennium, the world was braced for terrible things. Most "rational" worries were tied to an anticipated computer glitch, the Y2K problem, and even the most scientifically oriented of people seemed temporarily at the mercy of powerful mythic forces. Imagined hobgoblins leapt from hard drives directly into nightmares. Airlines canceled flights scheduled for the first day of the new year, citing fears that the computers for the traffic-control system would

Is There Something to Anti-Americanism?

by Bernard Chazelle

Last summer, with France on his mind, the British historian Paul Johnson graced the pages of Forbes Magazine with this trenchant observation:"Anti-Americanism is racist envy" [1]. Lest anyone miss the point, the best-selling author quickly rephrased it in more accessible language:"France is not a democracy." His novel insight could hardly be dismissed as mere anti-Frenchism for the simple reason that the word does not exist. In fact, nei

For How Long Has the CIA Engaged in Torture?

by Alfred W. McCoy

From ancient Rome's red-hot irons and lacerating hooks to medieval Europe's thumbscrews, rack, and wheel, for over 2,000 years anyone interrogated in a court of law could expect to suffer unspeakable tortures. For the last 200 years, humanist intellectuals from Voltaire to members of Amnesty International have led a sustained campaign against the horrors of state-sponsored cruelty, culminating in the United Nation's 1985 Convention Against Torture, ratified by the Clinton

Bush Hasn't Really Tried a Democratic Approach in the Middle East ... Kerry Should (If He Gets the Chance)

by Neve Gordon

As democratic presidential nominee John Kerry formulates his Middle East policy, he would do well to learn from the mistakes of both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Former President Bill Clinton began his tenure after the demise of the Soviet Union, and thus he was the first president to enter office following the establishment of U.S. hegemony around the globe. Accordingly, maintaining the status quo became the cornerstone of his foreign policy, which meant that U.S. interests would b

The War of Words Between South Korea and China Over An Ancient Kingdom: Why Both Sides Are Misguided

by Mark Byington

"A leading [Korean] opposition party leader on Monday underlined the necessity of joining forces with Asian countries or territories, including Tibet, to deal with China's attempt to distort the history of the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo." Korea Times (Aug. 23, 2004) The present academic and political debate unfolding between China and Korea over which

“Why Don’t Muslims Condemn Terrorism?”

by Irfan Khawaja

As I write, my part of the country is on “Orange Alert,” waiting more or less fatalistically for a repeat performance of September 11, 2001. We all hope that it won’t happen—that it’s a false alarm, or an attack averted by foreknowledge—but bluffing aside, no one knows what will happen, or if anything will, when it will. And there is a sense in which an attack is, and always has been inevitable: Al Qaeda is not defeated, and has not given up. Given all that

It's Not Because They Hate Who We Are

by Ivan Eland

According to one of the main findings of the 9/11 Commission, the U.S. government's failure to anticipate the grave threat from al Qaeda prior to the September 11 attacks was a failure of imagination. Since those attacks, however, the Bush administration's broad "war on terror" has exhibited nothing but imagination. To begin with, President Bush has the chimerical and dangerously naïve notion that al Qaeda attacks America because of its freedoms--that is, the

Should We Be Frightened of Hugo Chavez?

by William Loren Katz

To the sputtering fury of a Bush administration that has repeatedly conspired with Venezuela's elite to drive Hugo Chavez from power, the Black Indian President of this oil-rich nation has scored a decisive 59 percent victory over a recall effort. Chavez now sits more comfortably than ever atop a fourth of the world oil supplies -- equal to that of Iraq -- and he supplies a fifth of U.S. oil needs. In addition, he is current leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Count

An Exchange: American Imperialism

by Jonathan Schell and Tom Engelhardt

Following is an exchange between Mr. Schell and Mr. Engelhardt. Mr. Engelhardt edited Mr. Schell's book, The Unconquerable World, which recently appeared in paperback. Dear Tom, You'll remember that just before the September 11 attacks, when I was writing and you were editing my book The Unconquerable World, you were much readier than I to call American policies"imperial" and the United States an"empire." I hesitated; I hung back. After all, on

President Bush Admits He Misnamed the War on Terrorism

by Daniel Pipes

In a striking admission, George W. Bush said the other day that that"We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be [called] the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."This important concession

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Why Nation-Building on the Cheap in Iraq Won't Work

by Matthew Levinger

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush disavowed the goal of"nation-building" by U.S. military forces. Since then, he's reversed himself. But instead of nation building, he's given us nation-building lite.   Building peace in a war-torn country is an expensive and time-consuming proposition. The postwar occupations of Germany and Japan lasted seven years after 1945 and involved as many as 1.6 million U.S. troops in the European theater alone. In Kosovo since 1999, t

Why the Media Failed Us in Iraq

by Orville Schell

When, on May 26, 2004, the editors of the New York Times published a mea culpa for the paper's one-sided reporting on weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq war, they admitted to"a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been." They also commented that they had since come to"wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining claims" made by the Bush Administration. But we are still left to wonder why the Times, like many other major media outlets in t

Does America Usually Win the War but Lose the Peace?

by Tom Bruscino

“Americans love to fight—traditionally!” said General George S. Patton. Over the course of its history, the United States has been remarkably successful at winning wars. In part that success stems from the fact that at first Americans are almost always united in their enthusiasm to go to war—confident that their causes in fighting wars has been right and just. But American history, in the successive wars since the Civil War, has also seen an erosion in the strength and

The Rightwing Roots of Bush's Foreign Policy

by Jules Tygiel

Polls show that Americans have grown increasingly disillusioned with President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Most people view this as a product of the Bush administration’s hubris or

The Most Important Election Ever (In Venezuela)

by Elliott Young

On August 15, Venezuela will face the most important election in its history. It's a critical election because for the first time Venezuelans will vote to recall -- or not recall -- their president.   The United States had better respond more responsibly than it did two years ago. In April 2002, the United States stunned the world by immediately recognizing an illegal government installed after a military coup ousted the constitutionally elected president, Hugo Chavez. This time t

Do You Have to Be Brave to Attend this Year's Olympics?

by Tom Palaima

In 490 B.C.E., on the Plain of Marathon 26 miles northwest of Athens, Athenian citizen foot soldiers known as hoplites advanced on the run against an invading Persian army and defeated it. In 2004 C.E. the Greek enemy is terrorism threatening the security of the Olympic Games that will begin in Athens on Aug. 13. The main question for many people has more to do with the movie Marathon Man than with the ancient battle that changed the course of Western history. Like Sir Laurence Oliv

Review of Stefan Halper's and Jonathan Clarke's America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order

by Jim Sleeper

As prominent conservatives - diplomats, retired generals, commentators such as George Will - are breaking with the Bush administration over the military, constitutional and budgetary consequences of its foreign policy, two of them have published a solemn remonstrance assailing President Bush's capitulation to a"small group of neoconservative policy makers," whom they accuse of driving our national misadventures in regime change and nation-building even at the price of endless war and the loss of

Why the West Should Call a Truce with the Muslim World

by Mark LeVine

It is time for the United States to declare a truce with the Muslim world, and radical Islam in particular. This may sound like a naïve, even defeatist statement in the context of The 9/11 Commission Report's reminder that America remains very much at war with"Islamist terrorism" and the ideas behind it. Yet a truce -- in Arabic, hudna -- rather than an increasingly dangerous" clash of civilizations," is the only way to avoid a long, ultimately catastrophic conflict.