Roundup: Media's Take

Simon Jenkins: A trillion-dollar catastrophe. Yes, Iraq was a headline war

[Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author.] Today the Iraq war was declared over by Barack Obama. As his troops return home, Iraqis are marginally freer than in 2003, and considerably less secure. Two million remain abroad as refugees from seven years of anarchy, with another 2 million internally displaced. Ironically, almost all Iraqi Christians have had to flee. Under western rule, production of oil – Iraq's staple product – is still below its pre-invasion level, and homes enjoy f

David Rieff: At Least President Bush Was Sincere About Afghanistan

[David Rieff is the author of eight books, including A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis.] When President Obama named his cabinet, people harkened back to Lincoln and said that he had assembled a team of rivals. To put it charitably, this is an exaggeration. Lincoln brought not just his principal rival, William Seward, into his cabinet as secretary of state, he also brought in his two other main contenders for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. Salmon Chase,

Stephen Hadley: Why We Fought and What We Achieved

[Mr. Hadley was national security adviser to President Bush from 2005-2009.] The U.S. effort in Iraq is not over. Some 50,000 U.S. troops, together with a robust diplomatic presence, continue to train and assist Iraq's security forces and support its democratic progress. The American people, our coalition allies and especially the Iraqi people have paid an enormous price. It is important to remember why. For over two decades, the regime of Saddam Hussein had threatened

Richard Cohen: In the Middle East, it's still 1947

[Richard Cohen is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post.] Say what you will about the Arab world, it's hard to earn its gratitude. President Obama went to Egypt and not Israel. He demanded that Israel cease adding new settlements in the West Bank. He treated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a chilling disdain. For all of that, though, Obama's approval rating in Arab countries has sunk. Unlike almost a fifth of Americans, the Arab world clearly knows Obama is no Muslim

Chrystia Freeland: China's Economic Model Isn't the Answer for the U.S.

[Chrystia Freeland is global editor at large for Thomson Reuters. She is writing a book about the global super-elite.] Forget the "Ground Zero mosque," Michelle Obama's Spanish holiday and even the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. When future historians look back to the summer of 2010, the event they are most likely to focus on is China's emergence as the world's second-largest economy.... So far, China's rise has mostly been about industrializing an incredibl

Bob Herbert: We Owe the Troops an Exit

[Bob Herbert is a columnist for the New York Times.] Wars are not problems that need managing, which suggests that they will always be with us. They are catastrophes that need to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Wars consume lives by the thousands (in Iraq, by the scores of thousands) and sometimes, as in World War II, by the millions. The goal when fighting any war should be peace, not a permanent simmer of nonstop maiming and killing. Wars are meant to be won — if they

Paul D. Wolfowitz: In Korea, a Model for Iraq

[Paul D. Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was the deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005.] Vice President Joe Biden, who traveled to Iraq this week to mark the formal end of United States combat operations there, has claimed that peace and stability there could be “one of the great achievements” of the Obama administration. Of course, the largest share of credit belongs to the brave men and women of the American military, who have sacrificed

Mark Helprin: The World Trade Center Mosque and the Constitution

[Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, "Winter's Tale" (Harcourt), "A Soldier of the Great War" (Harcourt) and, most recently, "Digital Barbarism" (HarperCollins).] The plan to erect a mosque of major proportions in what would have been the shadow of the World Trade Center involves not just the indisputable constitutional rights that sanction it, but, providentially, others that may frustrate it.

Hayder al-Khoei: Did Iran really do so well out of the Iraq war?

[Hayder al-Khoei is a researcher at the Centre for Academic Shi'a Studies in London.] Many people argue the biggest winner of the 2003 Iraq war is neighbouring Iran. The American-led forces removed one of Iran's bitterest enemies, Saddam Hussein, and paved the way for successive Shia-dominated governments in Baghdad. The Iranians have not shied away from interfering in domestic Iraqi affairs and the power vacuum created by the American administration in Iraq gave them ample room to

Edward E. Curtis IV: Five Myths About Mosques in America

[Edward E. Curtis IV is millennium chair of liberal arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.] Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver,

Gadi Taub: In Israel, Settling for Less

[Gadi Taub, an assistant professor of communications and public policy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is the author of “The Settlers.”] Will Israel remain a Zionist state? If so, what kind? These are the important questions in Israeli politics today, and will be looming over the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority scheduled to begin Thursday in Washington. The secular Zionist dream was fundamentally democratic. Its proponents, from Theodor Herz

Alyssa Battistoni: Glenn Beck's revisionist, apolitical history

[Alyssa Battistoni is a writer and graduate student in geography and environment at Oxford University.] ...By invoking great American leaders in a call for apolitical heroism, Beck seeks to whitewash the political struggles and debates of earlier eras: to suggest that our finest leaders have always been above politics, and that to achieve their greatness, we need to rise above politics and do "the right thing." It's certainly true that Franklin, Jefferson, Was

Brad Hirschfeld: Who's Your Nazi?

[Brad Hirschfeld is an author, rabbi, and columnist for the Washington Post.] We seem to have a love affair with comparisons to Nazis and Hitler these days, at least when it comes to finding analogies for those with whom we disagree. Some cause or policy we oppose? Compare it to Nazism. Some people whose actions disturb us? Compare them to Hitler. An event that appalls us? It's a Holocaust. This practice of comparing people and things to Nazis and the Holocaust has been

Erin Aubry Kaplan: President Obama, 'The View' and Race in America

[Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to Opinion.] President Obama botched it again. From the beginning, I knew things were going to be tough for him, what with the economy and two wars and all. But I assumed he could at least strike the right tone on matters of race and color. Yes, I know he was the black guy elected to not say anything about color, but I refused to believe Obama would stick to that deal, at least not all the time. But then came the humiliation o

Alveda King: Glenn Beck's 8/28 Rally: It's a Matter of Honor

[Dr. Alveda King is the director of African-American outreach for Priests for Life, and the founder of King for America.] In front of the Lincoln Memorial in June, a group of students caught up in a moment of spontaneous patriotism broke into song. But the US Park Police were quick to shush the members of the Young America’s Foundation, saying singing is not allowed at the memorial. The song that was stifled? “The Star-Spangled Banner.” So much for freedom of speech.

Eugene Robinson: Even Beck Can't Mar King's Legacy

[Eugene Robinson is a columnist for the WaPo.] The majestic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial belong to all Americans -- even to egomaniacal talk-show hosts who profit handsomely from stoking fear, resentment and anger. So let me state clearly that Glenn Beck has every right to hold his absurdly titled "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday. But the rest of us have every right to call the event what it is: an exercise in self-aggrandizement on a Napoleonic scale. I

Douglas E. Schoen: Time for Obama to Pull a Clinton

[Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is the author of the "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," out from Harper on Sept. 14.] As campaign season heats up—for the midterms, of course, as well as for 2012—President Obama is pursuing a strategy that is bound to fail. To secure his political future, he needs to change his approach in the way that Bill Clinton did halfway through his first term.

Paul Moses: Islamophobia and Anti-Catholocism

[Paul Moses teaches journalism at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.] For the past few months, I’ve been doing some research in New York newspapers on the anti-Catholic vitriol the Irish faced in the nineteenth century. It’s been hard to avoid noticing how similar those attacks are to the biting comments being made against Islam and the backers of a Muslim community center proposed for a lower Manhattan building near the World Trade Center site. Lo

Doyle McManus: Obama, Midterm Elections and the 2012 Race

[Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has reported on national and international issues from Washington for more than 25 years. His weekly Op-Ed column delivers original reporting and analysis on a wide range of national issues.] Sixteen years ago, as the summer of 1994 came to a close, then-President Clinton could see that his party's congressional campaign was in trouble. "Hillary had called our old pollster Dick Morris for his assessment," Clin

Con Coughlin: Obama Risks Iraq's Future

[Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph and author of "Saddam: The Secret Life".] "We won. It's over, America. We brought democracy to Iraq," one young American soldier proclaimed as the last U.S. combat troops completed their withdrawal across the Kuwait border. But all the hard-won achievements of the past seven years are now in jeopardy thanks to President Barack Obama's insistence on reducing Washington's military commitment befo