Only fifteen months after his historic Cairo speech, there are alarming signs that President Obama’s new engagement policy with the Middle East may soon find its place in history’s dustbin. The Obama administration’s withdrawal announcement of US “combat” troops from Iraq by the end of August is nothing more than a PR campaign to rename the occupation.
Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he’s headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.
Since the U.S. is a secular, not a Judaeo-Christian state, there is no need for Muslims to be “tolerated” because they’re already as much a part of the state as any group.
Coining a clever euphemism and co-opting a key nuclear term aid pro-nuclear forces in furthering their agenda.
Embracing Armageddon, as well as creating the conditions for it, is blatantly un-Christian.
By attacking the Ground Zero Islamic Center, conservatives are both inciting attacks on American Muslims and undermining the Afghan strategy of General Petraeus.
Kavitha Rajagopalan’s book, Muslims of Metropolis, chronicles the struggles of three Muslim immigrants and their families as they vie to establish themselves in this unwelcoming environment. An immigration scholar, Rajagopalan offers accounts that are at once broad and detailed, clinical and intimate, providing scholarly insight and sociological context with a deft touch.
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal delivered its first verdict in July against Kaing Guek Euv, alias “Duch,” the director of the notorious S-21 prison, a torture and extermination center under the rule of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. After a 77-day trial, the five judges — two international and three Cambodian — unanimously convicted Duch of committing crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.
In the raging currents of world history, the framework of Cold War-style “alliance diplomacy” has reached its limit. In particular, the mechanism of the US-Japan alliance that has become fixed by inertia and vested interests in the 65 years since the end of the war has clearly begun to squeak, and the need for the rejuvenation of this alliance is becoming sharply visible.