Roundup: Media's Take

Amatzia Baram and Robert J. Lieber: Preventing nuclear war between Iran and Israel would be more difficult than between the US and USSR

[Amatzia Baram is professor emeritus in the Department of Middle East History and director of the Center for Iraq Studies, University of Haifa. Robert J. Lieber is professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.] A number of influential policymakers and foreign policy analysts appear much too complacent regarding the prospects of a nuclear-armed Iran. Former CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid has argued that "[d]eterrence will work with Iran,"

Moshe Dann: One Pakistan is enough

(Moshe Dunn, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist living in Israel.) We don’t need a nuclear-armed, terrorist-run Palestinian state next to Israel. Chaos in Pakistan has the world sweating; they have The Bomb – actually, lots of them, and they've already distributed the technology and parts to other countries, like Iran, North Korea and Libya, which send them on. Think of this probability: Under a sovereign state of Palestine,

Sasha Polakow-Suransky: Early conflicts over colonialism and genocide explain many of the United Nations' modern-day failures.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs. His book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, will be published by Pantheon next May. In April, as earnest diplomats puzzled over Polisario's latest moves in the Western Sahara and the most recent developments in Darfur, a visibly shaken news anchor reported that a Ugandan had seized control of the United Nations, threatening to reduce agricultural funding to any country opposi

Michael Nazir-Ali: We Must Not Leave Afghanistan Yet

[Michael Nazir-Ali was the Bishop of Rochester until last September. He is the author of numerous books and articles on religion, including Conviction and Conflict: Islam, Christianity and World Order.] Not since the demise of Marxism has the world been faced with a comprehensive political, social and economic ideology determined, by force if necessary, to achieve hegemony over large parts of the world. I mean, of course, the rise of radical Islam, in its various manifestations, wit

Adam Clymer: A Bill Fit for a Kennedy

[Adam Clymer is a former chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times and author of Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography.] Ted Kennedy thought this moment would come, though by this spring he did not expect to see it. In May, he wrote to President Obama that he was “confident… that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the president who at long last signs into law the health-care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stret

Nikolas K. Gvosdev: A Bismarckian Approach for U.S.

[Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest, and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College.] In discussing my proposal last week for a Sino-Indian Convention that would define 21st century spheres of influence in Central Asia, a colleague suggested that it was an idea that Otto von Bismarck would have been proud of. They didn't mean it as a compliment. W

Tom Engelhardt: Rebecca Solnit, Earth, Too Big to Fail?

Just last week, a little air armada of at least five Hellfire-missile-armed unmanned aerial vehicles -- robot planes to you -- attacked an area in North Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands, reportedly killing 15 or more people. It’s unclear whether these were all Predator drones or some were the more advanced Reapers -- names that might well have come out of the sci-fi memory banks of the generation now flying them via console from hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.

Sheldon H. Laskin: The Individual Mandate: An Unconstitutional Exercise of Congressional Power

It is generally agreed, by both proponents and opponents of the Administration’s health reform bill, that the lynchpin of the legislation is the individual mandate requiring uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance, or pay a penalty on their tax return for failing to do so. Without the mandate, even the Administration’s wildly exaggerated cost savings estimates simply cannot work. The whole plan is predicated on enlarging the risk pool by bringing in younger, healthier people who currently

Alex Tallarida: RN, A Man Before His Time On Healthcare

During his second term, RN made expanding health coverage to all Americans a centerpiece of his domestic agenda.“If the Government pays all the medical bills, then only the Government has a stake in holding down medical costs. This means t

Jack A. Smith: Afghanistan ... It’s Not a Just War

[Jack A. Smith is editor of the Activist Newsletter and a former editor of the Guardian (US) radical newsweekly. He may be reached at: jacdon@earthlink.net. Read other articles by Jack, or visit Jack's website.] President Barack Obama delivered a rather odd speech Dec. 10 when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at ceremonies in Oslo. In the name of peace, he sought to justify former President George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Afgha

Max Blumenthal: Obama, The Fallen Messiah and The Problem With Secular Salvation Narratives

In responding to my initial post, Sarah Posner, Todd Gitlin, and Fred Clarkson make some very important points about the appeal of the Christian right to ordinary Americans. I think their points dovetail with one another. Posner argues quite correctly that those who I described as giving up their individual freedom for the authoritarian structure of the right believe they are gaining new life in the Kingdom of God, along with a sense of community and belonging. She illustrates this trend in her

Lawrence of Arabia offers lessons for Afghanistan (Deutsche Welle interview with John Hulsman)

[John Hulsman is the author of the recently released "To Begin the World Over Again: Lawrence of Arabia from Damascus to Baghdad." He is president of John Hulsman Enterprises, an international relations consulting firm, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is based in Germany.] Deutsche Welle: In your new book you argue that instead of trying to develop new strategies for counterinsurgency and nation building in Afghanistan, Western leaders should read T. E

George Neumayr: Peacenicked ... Obama's Sister Souljah moment in Norway

[George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report and press critic for California Political Review.] Barack Obama has finally found royalty to snub. Seeing no need to bow before the powerless King of Norway and a chance to repair his image domestically, he used his trip to Oslo as a kind of Sister Souljah moment. Norwegians, according to press reports, felt a bit used. Obama breezed into the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony without attending the customary lunch with Norway

Con Coughlin: Obama Gives Britain the Cold Shoulder

[Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph.] Britain is the only European country President Barack Obama can really count on to respond positively to his plea for NATO to provide extra forces for Afghanistan. So why is it, then, that the Obama administration can barely conceal its disdain for a nation that, by its deeds, time and again proves itself to be America's staunchest and most reliable ally? Shortly before Mr. Obama's Afghan policy spe

Michelle Malkin: Hollywood and Howard Zinn’s Marxist Education Project

[Michelle Malkin is a columnist for FrontPageMag.com] The two most important questions for society, according to the Greek philosopher Plato, are these: What will we teach our children? And who will teach them? Left-wing celebrities have teamed up with one of America’s most radical historians to take control of the classroom in the name of “social justice.” Parents, beware: This Hollywood-backed Marxist education [1] project may be coming to a school near you. On Sunday

Tom Engelhardt: Martin Chulov, Is Iraq's Next Crisis Ecological?

With each passing day, the transfer of power from American forces to the Iraqi government looks less like a peaceful exchange and more like a bloody descent into chaos. On December 8th, a series of bombings in Baghdad killed at least 121 people and struck two Iraqi government institutions, an appeals court and the Finance Ministry. Those institutions had only recently been relocat

Michael Goodwin: Obama's Peace of History

[Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News.] There was much to like in President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech, including admitting his achieve- ments are "slight" and oth ers are more deserving. Candor becomes him. Other welcome passages defended the "just war" in Afghanistan and sang the praises of America as a peacemaker in ways that contradict his misbegotten apologies. Whether these senti

George Weigel: Obama Misunderstands Just-War Tradition

[George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.] In November, the president of the United States ordered a surge of U.S. forces into Afghanistan and called on other countries to do their duty in bringing that war to a successful conclusion. A few weeks later, the same president traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The notion that the juxtaposition of these two events involves a “contradiction” (as the Washington Post subhead put it

Doyle McManus: Obama doctrine emerges in Oslo speech

[Doyle McManus is Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times.] The headlines on President Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize last week focused on the apparent irony: A man who had just ordered 30,000 more troops into war was snagging a trophy as the world's leading champion of peace. Obama tackled the paradox head-on in his Oslo speech. "Evil does exist in the world," he said. "War is sometimes necessary." But the president's speech was about

Aaron Zelinsky: Judah the Maccabee's Five Lessons for Barack Obama

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. Modern celebrants (including Senator Hatch) focus on the miracle of the Menorah, which tradition tells us stayed lit for eight days on a single day's oil. However, Chanukah is also the political story of a few determined Maccabees leading an uprising against the much stronger Seleucid Empire.Though the events Chanukah commemorates took place over 2,000 years ago, the historical story of the Maccabees provides useful lessons for our modern era. Fr