Back in 2004, three years into the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 Commission report made its debut to the gushing admiration of the Washington press corps. The report was everything that the mainstream media adores: bipartisan, devoid of divisive finger-pointing, full of conventional wisdom.
Some feel that if the United States continues to provide financial aid to Islamabad, it will be recognized as acceptance of flourishing Islamist extremism in Pakistan.
The Middle East faces a moment of truth as country after country rises up against its authoritarian leaders. No government is secure against the people-powered protest movements sweeping the region. These dramatic events will likely be the greatest U.S. foreign policy challenge over the next decade. The regional security framework — with new roles for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Israel, and the likely Palestinian state (or states) — is evolving, and Washington must reexamine how it defends its regional interests in a new way.
It would be nice to see America expand its cache of good will cache to enhance our diplomatic — as opposed to military — capital.
As revolutions and reforms sweep the Arab world, Saudi women continue to push for their rights. Inspired by their sisters in Egypt and Tunisia, a national women’s movement called Saudi Women Revolution has coalesced with clear and wide-ranging demands. Chief among them is the ability to participate in the political process, including voting and running for election.
He was an officer in the Saudi Royal Navy assigned to the strategic Saudi base of Jubail in the Persian Gulf, and he wanted to hire a maid. She was a single mom from Mindanao in the Philippines who saw, like so many others, employment in Saudi Arabia as a route out of poverty. When he picked her up at the Dammam International Airport last June, little did she know she was entering not a brighter chapter of her life but a chamber of horrors from which she would be liberated only after six long months.
“He is finished,” was the regrettably premature pronouncement of a relative of bin Laden in the nineties.
The unarmed insurrection that overthrew the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia has opened up debate regarding prospects for democratization in Arab and other predominately Muslim countries. Many in the West are familiar with the way unarmed pro-democracy insurrections have helped bring democracy to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa. But they discount the chances of such movements in Islamic countries, despite Tunisia being far from the first. Meanwhile, the United States — despite giving lip service in support for democracy – continues to actively support authoritarian governments in Islamic countries.
Among the batch of classified diplomatic cables recently released by the controversial whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, several have highlighted the vast extent of the financial infrastructure of Islamist terrorism sponsored by key U.S. allies in the ongoing “War on Terror.”
Despite an unusual dip in global weapons sales in 2009, the United States retained its spot as the world’s top arms supplier of developing countries, according to an authoritative new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).