2013 had its fair share of bad news, but it was also a year of extraordinary activism.
Ten Good Things about 2013
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Military Intervention
From Syria to Bosnia: Memoirs of a Mujahid in Limbo
A Syrian national who fought in Bosnia and now languishes in an immigration detention center reflects on the Bosnian war, his predicament, and the civil war in Syria.
Seeing Past “Death to America”: A Conversation with Hooman Majd
Iranian-American author Hooman Majd says that Americans are starting to see Iran as more than “just a bunch of crazy mullahs shouting ‘Death to America’ all the time.”
Collapsism
When small children want something to go away, they close their eyes. Poof! The monster disappears. The spoonful of spinach vanishes. The spilled milk evaporates. Except that they don’t. U.S policymakers indulge in a similar variety of child’s play called collapsism....
America’s Orphaned Diplomacy
Thanks to some well-timed diplomacy this September, the world narrowly escaped another U.S. intervention in the Middle East. But military action in Syria was not prevented by a professional diplomatic strategy on the part of the Obama administration—that part was...
Latin America’s Anti-Intervention Bloc
As political attention has shifted from a potential U.S. military strike against Syria to a potential agreement on the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons arbitrated by Russia, all eyes are on the United States, the Middle East, and key actors in Europe. But what...
Breaking the Cycle of Counterinsurgency
This September marked a potential turning point in America’s long and seemingly bottomless appetite for war. The Obama administration made a pitch for U.S. military intervention against Syria, and the American public didn’t buy it. Across the country, people...
Syria: What’s Next?
World BeatIt started as a peaceful revolt. It descended into a civil war that has so far claimed over 100,000 casualties and ejected nearly one-third of the population from their homes. Even worse, it has broadened into a regional conflict in which neighboring...
How Syria Brought the U.S. and Iran Together
This year's UN General Assembly may well be remembered as the beginning of the end for Washington's decades-long standoff with Tehran. And none of it would have been possible if the Obama administration had gone ahead with its plan to attack Syria. A few weeks ago,...
An Off-the-Cuff Breakthrough on Syria
John Kerry may have just accidentally earned himself a Nobel Peace Prize. In off-the-cuff remarks to reporters, the Secretary of State reiterated his support for a U.S. attack on Syria, saying Bashar al-Assad could only ward off a U.S. strike by turning over his...