News Abroad

Face It: Intelligence Agencies Sometimes Fail

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

The Bush administration deserves the grief it has been getting over the inclusion of the 16 words concerning Iraq's search for Uranium in Africa. For it unnecessarily insulted the British intelligence. No, the American intelligence does not always know better. Indeed, if the information uncovered by debka.co.il is correct, though the documents on which the information was based were forged, Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger. An American president who relies exclusively on America

Vietnam Echoes Are Getting Louder and Louder

by Christian G. Appy

An "invisible enemy" strikes U.S. soldiers in a faraway land we claim to be saving; overwhelming American firepower kills thousands before many citizens realize their president used phony pretexts to justify military action; policy makers insist that while progress is steady we must be patient; anti-American guerrillas attack their own countrymen, whom they deem U.S. "puppets"; only a few nations send troops to support the United States' cause; talk of a "qua

Is President Bush Repeating McKinley's Mistake in the Philippines?

by Frank Gibney

"A splendid little war," the secretary of state called the brief, victorious action. "Benevolent assimilation" was the name of the White House policy that guided U.S. occupation forces. "It should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration," the president wrote, "to win the confidence, respect and affection of the inhabitants by assuring them in every possible way [the] full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the

The Lovers Spat Between Chirac and Bush

by C.E. Richard

During their meeting in the French lakeside town of Evian, Presidents George Bush and Jacques Chirac of France offered the begrudging little gestures of bonhomie that were expected of them. Nonetheless, with ugly anti-American protests in Paris and perfectly good French wine poured down the gutter in Peoria, this year we're finally at liberty to admit the hard, historical truth: Americans and French people can find each other really annoying.Bush and Chirac a

50 Years After Korea: Not Much Has Changed

by Ira Chernus

Renewed concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons program are reviving memories of "the forgotten war," the war in Korea. But the real key to U.S. policy is the forgotten peace that began at the war's end, 50 years ago. The armistice of July 27, 1953, ushered in a new kind of peacetime: not a time of cooperation and harmony, not a time to change for the better, but only a time to contain threats and prevent changes that might make the world worse.This cons

Report from Baghdad: 4 Scholars Reveal What They Found During a Visit in June

by Keith Watenpaugh, Edouard Méténier, Jens Hanssen, Hala Fattah

Following are excerpts from a report filed on July 15, 2003 by four scholars who visited Baghdad in June to survey the state of the city's cultural institutions. The report--Opening the Doors: Intellectual Life and Academic Conditions in Post-War Baghdad-- can be read in its entirety on H-Net. Located at the northern end of Baghdad’s historic core between the Tigris and the old Ministry of Defence complex, Bayt al-Hikm

Islam and the West

by Jeremy Black

The use of historical evidence to provide rapid support for policy advice is all too easy in a crisis. At the same time, it is valuable to offer a historical resonance to current problems. This has certainly been the case over the last two years. A flood of works has appeared on the history of terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, and relations between Islam and the West. Some of the work has been of high quality but much has been superficial. This is understandable. Commercial opportunity plays

Christian Zionism Isn't New

by Daniel Pipes

Middle Easterners were widely puzzled in early 1994 when some leading American politicians, including Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), forwarded more assertive, tougher positions vis-à-vis the Palestinians than did the government of Israel. They were, for example, more reluctant than Jerusalem to let U.S. funds go to the PLO and they displayed more eagerness to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. One Arabic newspaper, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat

Does the U.S. Have a Special Relationship with Liberia?

by Michael Radu

Liberia is a mess. As usual we are being blamed for the mess. The reason Liberia is a failed state? It's the United States' neglect. That is the expressed opinion of Liberian president Charles Taylor, and there are many in the United States and elsewhere who share Taylor's premise that Washington is somehow responsible, at least morally, for Liberia's predicament, and hence somehow obliged to fix it, by sending troops there. We are being told that, since Liberia was established by

Does Colin Powell Remember the Powell Doctrine?

by Ruth Rosen

I KEEP WONDERING what Secretary of State Colin Powell really thinks about the war in Iraq and the fact that we appear to have no exit strategy. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Powell was determined to prevent another military quagmire. In the early 1990s, he developed the Powell Doctrine, a set of criteria for using military force. War, he said, should be a last resort, the purpose should reflect a well-defined national interest and enjoy strong public support, and once deci

Why We Are in Danger of Losing the Peace in Iraq

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

I cannot think of a more appropriate time for the message of this article than the week after "we the people" celebrated the anniversary of our liberation. For it was liberation. On the Fourth of July we ceased to be subjects and became citizens of a country. To be a citizen meant then, and means now, having the right to vote. Our founders knew that those lacking that right were but "slaves, . . . complete vassals, who have no voice to utter in choosing thei

What the Arab World Needs Is to Adopt the Rule of Law

by Paul Sullivan

The Arab world is a place of great and glorious, creative and cultured, innovative and inspiring history. The first known civilizations in Iraq and Egypt were there. Great science, architecture, poetry, architecture and art were created throughout the centuries in the Arab world. Greek civilization was preserved and built upon by the Arabs. The Arabs were the pacesetters for other civilizations for centuries. The Koran and Islam came out of the Arabian deserts. The Arabs carry a

Follow Britain's Lead in Building an Empire?

by Thomas Fleming

It is time to put an end to this talk about the United States becoming an empire, and comparing our war in Iraq to the British empire's occupation of that unfortunate country after World War I. Even more misleading is the claim that America's current hegemony bears any real similarity to the British empire's long reign over an estimated 440,000,000 people around the world. Let's start with the word empire. Once there was nothing wrong with it. After t

Back from Israel

by Derek Catsam

Early on the morning of April 30, 2003, two terrorist bombers, who had crossed into Israel using British passports by catching a ride with a credentialed Italian journalist, tried to enter Mike's Place, a popular nightclub near the American Embassy and just across the street from the beach in Tel Aviv. The standard eclectic group that frequented Mike's Place - out-of-towners, embassy staff, and a loyal group of regulars - were enjoying the bar's weekly jam session and

Is the U.S. Repeating the Mistakes of Japan in the 1930s?

by John Dower

As we enter a dramatically altered world, both internationally and domestically, it is only natural that we look to history for bearings, points of comparison, glimmerings of the familiar. In these predictable uses of the past, "Japan" has emerged as a small trope for both horror and hope. Thus, September 11 became our generation's Pearl Harbor (headline writers across America turned, almost instinctively, to "Day of Infamy!"). Our new global enemies have been dec

The Looting of Iraq Goes On

by Piotr Michalowski

It is two months since we learned of the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The news reports at the time were clear and consistent, but it now appears that they exaggerated the scope of the damage. Many of us reacted passionately to the news, writing editorials and letters expressing our sorrow and anger. Looking back at what I wrote at the time, I can only say that perhaps we should have realized we were dealing with preliminary repor

The Arabs' False View of the United States

by Robert Rabil

During my daily routine in Washington of reading the Arab press, I never cease to be astonished by the pervasive anti-American feelings that blame the U.S. for the miserable conditions gripping the Arab world. Although the charges are manifold, their common denominator is a belief that the U.S. does not understand or care about the Arab world. Monopolizing the Arabs' oil industry and making the region safe for Israel are held to be the driving forces behind American foreign policy

Burma's Martyr to Freedom

by Ralph Luker

The detention of a private citizen in a Third World country would not ordinarily get much attention elsewhere. But when Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned two weeks ago, world attention turned to the embattled hope for democracy in the impoverished southeast Asian country. Americans may remember Burma because of the controversy over its name. In 1989, Burma's military rulers appealed to nationalist sentiment by adopting the name "Myanmar" for their

The Oslo Trap

by Daniel Pipes

Can the "road map" that President Bush just launched do better than the dismal failure of prior Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy? Yes - if it avoids making the same mistakes. The failure of the last round was foreshadowed at its very start, on Sept. 13, 1993 - the day of the famous handshake between arch-enemies Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn and the signing of the Oslo accord.Less famously, the initiative's death knell came at the same mome

Oh My! The French Don't Like Us (Again)

by Thomas Fleming

Journalists and TV pundits who have been wringing their hands over America's unpopularity in France because of the war in Iraq are badly in need of a history lesson. Disillusion on both sides of this international equation goes back to 1778, the year that France signed a treaty of alliance with the infant United States, promising to fight the British until the Americans won their war for independence. The French sent a fleet to American waters and Washington rushed