Syrian Rebel-Force Futility “If a regular Syrian comes and asks me what we have given him, I don’t know what to say,” Ahmed said. Momentum Shifts in Syria, Bolstering Assad’s Position, Ben Hubbard, the New York Times Netanyahu, Agitator-in-Chief on Iran The amped-up...
As more U.S. military women break the silence about sexual violence committed by their comrades in arms, it is clear that sporadic “scandals” are not isolated incidents, but spring from the mycelium of U.S. military culture and ideology.
Kurdistan has enjoyed an unprecedented level of political and economic stability since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. Yet not all is well in Kurdistan, due in part to the dominant presence of one ruling family. Descended from a political dynasty that has built a power base over centuries of fighting, regional president Massoud Barzani has blossomed into an authoritarian ruler not unlike many whose regimes are now crumbling from the internal pressures of the Arab Spring.
From Iraq to Iran to Syria.
Spurred on by the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi civilians each month this year, and by persistent complains about the government’s poor performance and rising authoritarianism, Iraqi demonstrators are now taking matters into their own hands. With ever louder chants of effective governance from certain sectors of the country, what Iraq may be going through is its own version of the Arab Spring movement—smaller and less universal, but equally empowering to those who are in the middle of it.
If, as alleged, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, it would indeed be a serious development, constituting a breach of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, one of the world’s most important disarmament treaties, which banned the use of chemical weapons. However, U.S. policy regarding chemical weapons has been so inconsistent and politicized that the United States is in no position to take leadership in response to any use of such weaponry by Syria.
Emphasis, as always, added.
Although the breathtaking violence that attended Iraq’s descent into sectarian nightmare has been well documented in many retrospectives on the 10-year-old war, what’s often overlooked is that by far more mundane standards, the United States did a spectacularly poor job of governing Iraq.
The conclave to elect the new Pope was an opportunity for the Catholic Church’s all-male college of cardinals to choose someone who would lead the Church into the 21st century. As they did when they elevated Joseph Ratzinger to his role as Pope Benedict XVI eight years ago, they flubbed the opportunity.
Today, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds enjoy unprecedented autonomy from Baghdad and Damascus, and the prospects of an independent Kurdish state are real. Despite the Kurds’ gains, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), led by President Massoud Barzani, finds its semi-autonomous state in northern Iraq at several geopolitical fault lines. Barzani must tread carefully in this volatile region to safeguard the Iraqi Kurds’ interests while pursuing independence from central Iraq.