News Abroad

Letter from Judith: Now What Should Be Done in Israel?

by Judith Klinghoffer

Here I go again with my advice. This time from Israel where the situation is fast deteriorating. Within days after the seemingly ground breaking Aqaba summit, in which the new Palestinian Prime minister dared call Palestinian targeting of civilians terror, they discovered that nothing has changed. A furious Yassir Arafat determined to prove his relevance struck back. No longer satisfied with cooperating with the rejectionists surreptitiously in order to keep Israel and the West in line

Will the New Road to Peace in Palestine Be Washed Out?

by Harvey Sicherman

On June 4, 2003, President George W. Bush personally renewed the latest American quest for Arab-Israeli peace. Presiding over a summit at the Jordanian port of Aqaba, with King Abdullah of Jordan, Prime Minister Sharon of Israel, and the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Bush pledged to see the parties through to a shared Holy Land: "a vibrant Jewish state" and a democratic, sovereign Palestinian state. As the Red Sea lapped gently behind them, Abdullah foresaw norm

No WMD? It Wasn't the Main Cause for War Anyway

by Daniel Pipes

Two oddly similar searches are underway in Iraq these days, one for Saddam Hussein and another for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Neither has yet been found. No one argues that because Saddam has not been located, he never existed. But that is what some are saying about the coalition forces not finding actual WMD. Probably those weapons were well hidden; maybe some were latterly destroyed. What if they are never found -- does that undercut the rationale for going to

Japan's Continuing Obsession with Militarism

by Rick Shenkman

Visiting the Japanese War Museum in Tokyo this spring brought to mind a line from Schopenhauer: "Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis."  

Does the CIA Know How to Overthrow Foreign Governments Successfully?

by Chalmers Johnson

The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every "secret" armed intervention it ever undertook. From the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of Congo, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the "secret war" in Laos, aid to the Greek colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of Salvador Allende in Chile and

Can Germany Be Counted on to Fight Fascism?

by Jeffrey Herf

We’re all familiar with the variety of short-term explanations for Germany’s opposition to the war in Iraq. These stress that above all opposition was due to rejection of the policies of the Bush administration, its alleged unilateralism and advocacy of preemptive war linked to a political discourse laden with religious overtones that does not fit into the disillusioned mentalities of post-twentieth century Europe. Yet there are longer term issues, issues of deep seated polit

Symposium: Saudi Arabia ... Friend or Foe?

by Jamie Glazov, Daniel Pipes, Michael Ledeen, Stephen Schwartz

Following is a symposium hosted by Jamie Glazov for frontpagemag.com. Question #1: After 9/11, it became questionable whether the Saudis were our allies. The problem is that it was long before 9/11 that the Saudis violated their love affair with the Americans. We now know what they have been doing for a long time: funding terrorism, sponsoring jihad against the U.S. etc. But let us firs

Will the Real Dr. George Please Stand Up

by Martin Kramer

Last Tuesday, April 29, 2003, directors of some of the world's leading museums met at the British Museum in London. Their mission: salvaging what can be salvaged at the plundered Iraq Museum. Their point man in Baghdad will be Dr. Donny George, research director of the Iraq Museum, who visited London for the meeting. There was much ado about the much-quoted Dr. George, who gave a colorful account of the museum under siege. He (again) pointed an accusing finger at the United States, f

Can Anything Be Done to Stop States from Going Nuclear?

by William Lambers

India and Pakistan. North Korea. Possibly Israel. And now Iran. There is no doubt the Bush administration is facing a nuclear proliferation crisis. Yet, to quote one of Bush's predecessors, Dwight D. Eisenhower: "If a danger exists in the world, it is a danger shared by all." A multilateral approach is needed to win the struggle against nuclear proliferation.North Korea may already have one or two nuclear bombs, and Iran is suspected of developing its own

Why We Must Hope and Pray that the Saudi Monarchy Reforms

by Daniel Pipes

The four bombings in Saudi Arabia last week, which killed dozens, including 10 Americans, are symptomatic of a deep fissure in that country. The argument is over religion, politics and foreigners—and it goes back a long way. The West must react by helping the Saudi family win this dispute, while putting pressure on it to reform. Saudi Arabia's origins lie in the mid-eighteenth century, when a tribal leader named Muhammad Al Saud joined forces with a religious leader named M

Avoiding a Pearl Harbor in Korea

by Jonathan Dresner

Although it is a pitifully poor country, North Korea has nuclear weapons technology. As a result, the United States and China are trying to force North Korea to abandon plans to develop and export nuclear weapons by imposing economic sanctions and threatening military force, either of which North Korea has said it would view as an act of war. But a resumption of the Korean War (1950-1953) after a half-century of armistice would threaten millions of lives. It might be avoided

What Is It About Radical Islamism that Leads People to Commit Acts of Terror?

by John Calvert

To judge from the terminology employed by Islamist radicals such as Osama bin Laden, one would assume that the current terrorist campaign against the United States and its allies is part of a religious war with roots reaching back to the distant past. Bin Laden and his associates speak of America as the most recent incarnation of "Crusaderism" and conflate Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with the calumny of the Medina Jews in the time of the Prophet Muhamma

Now that We've Got Iraq, What Do We Do with It?

by Walter A. McDougal

A REASON TO GET UP IN THE MORNING After the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived us of our enemy (in Colin Powell's words), veteran defense officials and intellectuals confessed to a certain nostalgia for the Cold War. Back in the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet and related Communist threats world-wide gave them "a reason to get up in the morning." During the 1990s, by contrast, the coterie one might dub the neo-conservative "war party" were out of a job both

Iraq Needs a Democratic Strongman

by Daniel Pipes

Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites chanted "No to America, No to Saddam, Yes to Islam" a few days ago, during pilgrimage rites at the holy city of Karbala. Increasing numbers of Iraqis appear to agree with these sentiments. They have ominous implications for the coalition forces. Gratitude for liberation usually has a short shelf life, and Iraq will be no exception. As a middle-aged factory manager put it, "Thank you, Americans. But now we don't need anybody to stay her

Why Iraq Is Not Japan

by John Dower

Who wants to be occupied? Shigeru Yoshida, the conservative politician who served four terms as prime minister of Japan in the wake of World War II, put the matter succinctly in a later reminiscence about living under Gen. Douglas MacArthur's ``GHQ'' (General Headquarters). Whenever he heard the dreaded acronym, Yoshida said, he immediately thought ``Go Home Quickly!''The Americans did not do anything of the sort, of course. The occupation of Japan began in August

Was Abu Mazen a Holocaust Denier?

by Brynn Malone

Abu Mazen (aka: Mahmoud Abbas) is the newly appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. He has a controversial past. In his doctoral thesis he denied that the Holocaust had left 6 million Jews dead. Below is a sampling of comments regarding his views on the Holocaust.New PA ´Prime Minister´ Denies Holocaust (IsraelNews.com 3-03)The Memri Institute for mo

What the Looting of the Iraqi National Museum Tells Us About Iraqi Society

by Daniel Pipes

Who's to blame for the destruction of Iraqi museums, libraries and archives, amounting to what the New York Times calls "one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history"? The Bush administration, say academic specialists on the Middle East. They proceed to compare American leaders to some of the worst mass-murderers in history. Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University: U.S. political leaders are "destroyers of civilizati

Shiites in Revolt: Why Paul Wolfowitz Is in a State of Shock

by Juan Cole

Religious Shiite parties and militias in Iraq have recently stepped into the gap resulting from the collapse of the Baath Party, especially in the sacred shrine cities. This development must have come as a shock to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who in early March preferred Iraqis as US allies to Saudis, saying that they are secular and "overwhelmingly Shia, which is different from the Wahhabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the hol

We've Had Other Quick Regime Changes. They Turned Out Terrible.

by Jon Wiener

What conclusions will the White House draw from its quick and relatively easy victory in Iraq? An undersecretary of state told Israeli officials in February that the U.S. will "deal with" Iran, North Korea and Syria next. The U.S. certainly has the power to do that, and it would not be the first time Washington forced a series of regime changes around the world.In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration decided to "deal with" objectionable govern

The Question the Pentagon Doesn't Want Answered

by Anthony B. Toth

In lightning attacks from the south, Iraq is invaded by superior forces, resulting in many civilian casualties. It is not the spring of 2003, but the winter of 1927, when bedouin herders in the steppes of Iraq were slaughtered by fierce fighters from the Ikhwan movement, quasi-military forces based in the lands of the Al Saud, driven by a virulent ideology and a quest for plunder. In several raids on December 9, for example, Ikhwan forces killed at least 87 Iraqi tribesmen, and looted