Chemical Imbalances

A senior Syrian government spokesman has confirmed that his nation possesses chemical weapons and might employ them against a "€œforeign aggressor."€ Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime just managed to shoot itself in both feet, ...

The Turd World

Every time Islam pokes its head out of its towel, I get nostalgic. Oh, women in Egypt were sexually assaulted for protesting sexual assault last week? Ahh, that takes me back to the halcyon days of the Wild West. Pardon? Did you say a ...

Syria’s False Revolution

A couple of weeks ago I wrote in this here mag about Syria. I played it safe. My point was that Assad was not as bad as what may come after him. I now know better. In the long sweep of history, those who play it safe are more often than ...

On to Tehran—or Is It Damascus?

Our War Party has been temporarily diverted from its clamor for war on Iran by the insurrection against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Estimates of the dead since the Syrian uprising began a year ago approach 6,000. And ...

Why Assad Has Survived

As I watched last week’s Western posturing after the Russo-Chinese veto of the UN Security Council’s resolution against Syria, Captain Renault of Casablanca fame kept coming to mind. Like the good captain, who was shocked to ...

Mahmoud Abbas

Mr. Abbas Goes to the UN

The protracted Mideast “peace process” has finally hit the Iron Wall. The Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, has wandered off the reservation and is taking the Palestinian question to the UN. It’s about ...

The Two-State Solution

Try to see it from the other guy’s point of view. He may be wrong. He may be, at least partly, right. Today, I am trying hard to see life from the point of view of an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank. I have known a few, ...

Syed Saleem Shahzad

Another Dead Journalist

The first email came on May 31 from London’s Pluto Press, saying that one of their authors was missing and believed to be imprisoned. The author was forty-year-old journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, whose reporting on Pakistan and ...

T.E. Lawrence

Leave Syria to the Syrians

This is not a good time to be running the Middle East desk at the State Department. If you happen to be him or her, take my advice: Do nothing. Especially in Syria. Let all the think tanks and lobbyists submit their recommendations. Ask ...

The Middle East for Dummies

Let's play the "€œWhat If?"€ game for a minute. What if I had written this column in October 2002 and some eagle-eyed aide to George W. Bush had noticed it and shown it to his moron boss? Had the moron read it and taken what ...

Spirit of 1848

It began when Mohamed Bouazizi, a twenty-six-year-old fruit seller, set himself alight last December 17th in provincial Tunisia. Bouazizi was not demanding fair elections, free speech, equitable wealth distribution, or free medical ...

Ideology vs. the National Interest

When a nation fights for its life, ideology goes by the board. Gen. Washington danced a jig when he heard King Louis XVI had become a fighting ally in our Revolutionary War against the Mother of Parliaments. In our Civil War, Abraham ...


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