Named for a tenth-century poet and revolutionary who lived in what is now Iraq, Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad was the center of the city’s intellectual and literary life. It was home to booksellers, stationery stores, antiquarian bookstores, and cafes as famous for the ideas that flowed freely as for their pungent coffee.
To get elected to the Senate, you have to meet certain requirements. You have to be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for nine years, and a resident of the state you represent. Based on Jim Webb’s recent performance, I would like to propose a fourth requirement: you have to be a novelist. If we had 100 novelists in the Senate, the body might finally be able, like Webb, to distinguish fact from fiction.
The assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden did more than knock off U.S. Public Enemy Number One. It formalized a new kind of warfare, where sovereignty is irrelevant, armies tangential, and decisions are secret. It is, in the words of counterinsurgency expert John Nagl, “an astounding change in the nature of warfare.”
Many of the same people who led the push for regime-change in Baghdad now have their sights set on Tehran.
Canada offered to “discreetly” assist the United States as it prepared to invade Iraq even as the ruling Liberal party trumpeted its foreign policy independence from Washington.
As with Iraq beating the drums of war on Iran only requires alleging imminent acquisition of WMD.
“Iraqis have broken the chains. But the world is silent and apparently deaf and blind. Where is the free Western press?”
The exhibition, “Artists in Exile: Forgotten Iraqi Refugees in Syria,” seeks to bridge cultural gaps between the United States and Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
However different the two, Libya could still end up like Iraq today: a nation deeply divided not by sect and language but by geography and tribe.
Foreign occupation is the common thread tying suicide terrorism together the world over. In Dying to Win and again in Cutting the Fuse, Robert Pape argues that the United States must endeavor to draw down its occupation of Middle Eastern countries and return to a policy of offshore balancing to maintain its regional interests.