Roundup: Media's Take

Crispin Burke: What Can Ike and Lawrence of Arabia Teach Us about Army Personnel Policy?

[The author is an observer/controller at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany.] A recent Atlantic article by Tim Kane spotlights several top-performing officers who lament the military's "peacetime" personnel system, which promotes officers along a generic timeline. Many point to the promotion policies during the two World Wars, when innovative officers enjoyed meteoric advancement through the ranks. Anecdotes from the private sector and even the

Sallai Meridor: What Israel Fears in Egypt

[The writer was Israel's ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2009.] One might expect that Israelis, who live in the only democracy in the Middle East, would turn out in the squares of Jerusalem and the gardens of Tel Aviv to show solidarity with the demonstrators in Egypt. The protesters, after all, are seeking to overthrow an authoritarian regime. Israelis, however, have stayed at home, warily following events on TV and the Internet. It is not a

Stephen Kinzer: Dictators' Sons, From Egypt to Libya, Are Doomed

[Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent. His new book is Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future.] Hosni Mubarak is falling from power in Egypt partly because he refused to heed one of history’s hidden lessons: Dictators shouldn’t have sons. Most do. That often hastens their downfall or that of their nations. Egyptians might have been willing to accept their lot for a while longer if the ailing Mubarak had not made it clear he intended hi

Tarek Osman: Egypt: After Revolt, Transition

[Tarek Osman is an Egyptian writer. He was educated at the American University in Cairo and Bocconi University in Italy. He is the author of Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak (Yale University Press, 2010)] The first factor is the transformation in the composition of the country’s middle class. This group of public-sector employees, professionals, army officers and owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises coalesced in the 1950s and 1960s. But in the mid-197

David Bukay: Misconception or Betrayal? The U.S., Egypt, and Iran

[David Bukay, Ph.D. is at the School of Political Science, the University of Haifa.] The similarities between Iran and Egypt concerning U.S. policy are disconcerting. Is Egypt repeating the 1979 Iranian revolution, led by religious preaching against authoritarian friend of the U.S., the shah, resulting in an Islamic theocracy? Will the Islamic theocracy led by the Muslim Brotherhood win, or will the military keep its political power?... Both branches of the Muslim Br

James Bernard Murphy: In Defense of Being a Kid

[Mr. Murphy is a professor of government at Dartmouth College.] Amy Chua, the “tiger mother,” is clearly hitting a nerve—especially among the anxious class (it used to be called the upper class), which understands how much skill and discipline are necessary for success in the new economy.... Our wisest sages also disagree fundamentally about the nature of childhood. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle famously declared that “no child is happy” on the grounds that ch

Frances Fox Piven: Crazy Talk and American Politics: or, My Glenn Beck Story

[Frances Fox Piven is a professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a past president of the American Sociological Association.] Most academics probably paid little attention at the end of January when Glenn Beck explained to his listeners that the protests in Egypt would lead to the establishment of a Muslim caliphate that would engulf Europe while China would extend its domination to New Zealand and, curiously, the Neth

Asef Bayat: Egypt, and the Post-Islamist Middle East

For years, western political elites and their local allies have charged the Arab peoples with political apathy and lethargy. The argument that Arabs are uninterested in seeking to wrest greater democratic freedoms from their authoritarian rulers always rested on shaky foundations. But now that millions of Egyptians, following the Tunisians’ example, have proved it wrong by mobilising against power, the sceptical ground has adjusted: toward the murmured fear that Egypt’s uprising would develop in

Jonah Goldberg: The Real 'Realism' on Israel

[Jonah Goldberg is a syndicated columnist and editor at large for the National Review] Finally, I can put the rumors to rest: The land of Zion isn't merely an abstraction, it's an actual country. I am in Israel — my first time — to cover the Herzliya Conference, the country's premier national security forum. (Full disclosure: My trip, as well as that of several journalists, was underwritten by the Emergency Committee for Israel, which seeks "to educate the public a

Moataz A. Fattah: Five Reasons Why Arab Regimes are Falling

[Moataz A. Fattah is an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and Central Michigan University. He is also a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and the author of “Democratic Values in the Muslim World.”] Public protests in Egypt are not about minor changes or grievances. President Hosni Mubarak’s regime faces a deep process of legitimacy erosion – the same pattern of legitimacy erosion that exists across much of the Arab region. This er

Douglas Murray: Cameron's Multicultural Wake-Up Call

[Mr. Murray is director of the Center for Social Cohesion in London.] 'Multiculturalism has failed," said British Prime Minister David Cameron last weekend in Munich. If anybody thought they had read those words before, it is because they have. Many times. Last October German Chancellor Angela Merkel (sitting onstage with Mr. Cameron when he gave his speech on Saturday) said the same. Finally, Europe's mainstream party leaders seem to be realizing what others have long noticed:

Daniel Gordis: A Friendship of Values, Not Convenience

[Daniel Gordis is the senior vice president of the Shalem Center and the author, most recently, of “Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End.”] FOR decades Shimon Peres, now Israel’s president, has spoken of his country’s yearning for a “new Middle East,” one in which Israel is at peace with its neighbors, regional economies cooperate and the conflict with the Palestinians is finally set aside. Now, with Egypt’s government on the edge of collapse, Israel

Barbara Kay: Obama’s Carter-esque foreign policy deployed to Egypt

[Barbara Kay is a columnist with the National Post.] In November, 1979, Richard V. Allen, Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy advisor, commended a just-published magazine article to his boss’s attention. “What you gave me to read was extraordinary!” Reagan told Allen. “Who is this guy Jeane Kirkpatrick?” The “guy,” a political science professor at Georgetown University and a Democrat of the muscularly anti-Communist school, went on to become president Reagan’s ambassador to

Philip Hamburger: Are Health-Care Waivers Unconstitutional?

[Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.] The constitutional dispute over the health-care law has thus far centered on the lawfulness of the statute itself — most dramatically when, last week in Florida, a federal judge held the act to be void. Waiting in the wings, however, is another constitutional question, one concerning not the statute, but waivers from it.... As it happens, waivers have a history. In the Middle A

Michael Lind: How Reaganism Actually Started with Carter

[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."] The hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth has produced disagreement over his policies among conservatives and liberals, but agreement on one point: Reagan's presidency marked the end of one era in American politics and the beginning of a new one. An epochal shift inde

Eugene Robinson: The GOP's Selective Memory on Ronald Reagan

[Eugene Robinson is a columnist for the WaPo.] As we mark the centennial of Ronald Reagan's birth, one of our major political parties has become imbued with the Gipper's political philosophy and governing style. I mean the Democrats, of course. The Republican Party tries to claim the Reagan mantle but has moved so far to the right that it now inhabits its own parallel universe. On the planet that today's GOP leaders call home, Reagan would qualify as one of those big-g

Harris Mylonas and Wilder Bullard: This is no 1989 moment for the Arab world

[Harris Mylonas is assistant professor of political science and international affairs. Wilder Bullard is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the George Washington University.] Analogies will be drawn in the coming weeks between the recent popular uprisings, most notably in Egypt, and the events beginning in 1989 and continuing into the early 1990s that brought democracy to much of the former Eastern bloc. In what is known as the third wave of democratisation (the first being in

Ulrich Beck: The Way out of the Euro Crisis

[Ulrich Beck is a sociologist at the University of Munich and the London School of Economics.] THE EURO is burning. Where are the European intellectuals clamoring to offer an enthusiastic defense of the unfinished project of the European Union and its historical achievements in its hour of need? Where are the intellectuals arguing against the EU critics’ national misunderstanding? This cadre has no members. Yet the situation is rapidly coming to a head. The member gover

Richard Lourie: World War IV

[Richard Lourie is the author of “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin” and “Sakharov: A Biography.”] The horrendous bombing at Domodedovo Airport was quickly eclipsed by the Egyptian uprising, but both are incidents in the new world war. That war began on Sept. 11, 2001, with an act of violence as specific as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in August 1914 that started World War I. World War II also began with specific acts of violence — the invasion of P

Fawaz A. Gerges: The Arab World's Berlin Wall Moment

[Fawaz A. Gerges is the director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics. He is author of the forthcoming book, “Obama and the Middle East: Continuity and Change.”] As mass protests rock Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, and Jordan, the omnipotence of the Mukhabarat, or security-controlled state, appears to be crumbling. In particular, the inability of President Hosni Mubarak’s much-feared security apparatus to suppress swelling protesters and retain the status quo