Many Yemenis believe that al Qaeda’s presence in their country is a bogeyman conjured up by their government for its own agenda.
Yemenis More Sensitive to Disinformation Than Americans
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Ballot Box Blues: The Most Dispiriting Election of a Lifetime (Mine)
By the time you read this, I’ll already have voted — the single most reflexive political act of my life — in the single most dispiriting election I can remember. As I haven’t missed a midterm or presidential election since my first vote in 1968, that says something. Or maybe by the time you’ve gotten to this, the results of the 2010 midterm elections will be in. In either case, I’ll try to explain just why you don’t really need those results to know which way the wind is gusting.
Election Was Missed Opportunity to Convince Voters to Abandon Current Afghanistan Strategy
Americans forget that the $3 billion a week it spends on Afghanistan and Iraq makes the bank bailout and stimulus look like chump change.
A Progressive-Tea Party Foreign Policy Coalition? Don’t Hold Your Breath
Once “official,” Tea Partiers drop their flirtation with defense cuts and libertarian non-intervention in favor of good old American exceptionalism.
Obama Foreign Policy Likely to Face Republican Challenges
While foreign policy issues played almost no role in Tuesday’s election results, the historic Republican landslide will almost certainly make Barack Obama’s vision of a more positive U.S. role in international affairs more difficult to pursue.
Americans Still Turn Blind Eye to the Savagery We Unleashed in Iraq
No matter how kind we are to our families, friends, and communities, ignoring what we did to Iraq leaves our ethical spreadsheets hopelessly unbalanced.
Method to the Madness of Iraqi Insurgents’ Mindless Violence
You’d think that insurgents who strike out at both Shia and Sunni would alienate most Middle-Easterners, but they may know what they’re doing.
Note to Al Qaeda in Iraq: How Does Attacking Your Own People Undermine Their Confidence in the Government?
Attempts by Iraqi insurgents to undermine confidence in the government only undermine confidence on the part of the public in their cause.
Brazil’s First Female President Expected to Carry on Lula’s Work — for Better or Worse
The new Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff may once have been a Marxist guerilla but her administration is no more a friend to the left than President Obama’s is.
Was Church Attack Blowback for Would-Be Koran Burner?
Were Rev. Terry Jones’s threats to burn the Koran enough to inspire the carnage that Islamic State of Iraq inflicted on the church in Baghdad?