It’s often difficult to read stories about the Bush administration’s “policies” in the Middle East (policy assumes a certain amount of planning and foresight, which is something sorely missing of late in our government). It was bad enough in 2006 when the US decided to freeze out the democratically elected Hamas government, à la [...]
Entries from June 2007
17 June 2007
The Bush Administration’s Pakistan Problem
In today’s Washington Post, there is an excellent piece by Ahmed Rashid on the problems of the Bush administration’s unqualified support for Pakistan’s President Musharraf. Ever since 9/11, the US has supported Musharraf in the belief that only with his help can al-Qaeda and the Taliban be stopped in Afghanistan and prevent an Islamist takeover [...]
12 June 2007
The United States: the source of the problems in the Middle East
In today’s Guardian, there is a powerful article about a leaked UN report that discusses the recent actions of the US and their negative effect on the Middle East. While it should come as no surprise that the US has been responsible for creating additional problems in the Middle (or in most places around the [...]
12 June 2007
Gold Cup Thoughts
It’s time for a brief digression into the world of football. Tonight the US Mens team plays El Salvador in Foxboro. After two games in the Gold Cup, the US has a perfect record and has yet to concede a goal. This seems about as promising a start as possible. It [...]
11 June 2007
The War Economy of Iraq
In the latest issue of MERIP, Christopher Parker and Pete Moore have one of the most informative articles on Iraq that I have read in a while. “The War Economy of Iraq,” not surprisingly, looks at the development of Iraq’s economy since the US invasion in 2003. Much of the discussion of the insurgency in [...]
11 June 2007
New Blog – News from Gaza
Charles Levinson has a new blog called Conflict Blotter that looks informative. He’s based in Jerusalem, so most of the early posts deal with Israeli and Palestinian topics. In his most recent post, Levinson gives an up close view of the fighting going on in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Technorati [...]
11 June 2007
America’s uneasy relationship with Sudan
In today’s LA Times, there is an intriguing article about America’s relationship with Sudan. Despite President Bush’s recent call for sanctions against Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur, it seems that the U.S. is relying on the Sudanese Mukhabarat intelligence service. The U.S. is turning to Sudan for information on al-Qaeda and Iraq, since
“There’s [...]
9 June 2007
The World of Football
The US National Team had another victory in the Gold Cup. They now have two wins and are already through to the quarterfinals. Bradley fielded an entirely different lineup from the one that beat Guatemala on Thursday. The only holdover was Feilhaber, who is the US midfielder of the future. In the second half, the [...]
9 June 2007
Who says that there isn’t an Israeli lobby?
DePaul University’s decision to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein is a good reminder of the power of the Israeli lobby in the United States. Alan Dershowitz led a smear campaign against Finkelstein to get DePaul’s President to deny Finkelstein’s tenure after his colleagues in the political science department and the College of Liberal Arts and [...]
5 June 2007
Summer Reading
Although there are still two weeks left of school before I head off to Lebanon, I began my summer reading over the weekend. I picked up Mohsin Hamid’s new novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist at the Strand. I only read a couple of chapters on Sunday, but I couldn’t resist finishing the book today. The story [...]
