Obama's Syria policy is fundamentally one of contradictions. Back in 2011, the president called for Bashar al-Assad to step down and proceeded to gradually support the armed rebellion. As Joshua Landis, professor at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on...
Seconds before the bell rings in a professional boxing match, the two contenders meet in the center of the ring and touch gloves. Imagine what would happen if one of them used that brief opportunity of goodwill to headbutt the other. Everyone would call foul and the...
As politicians and Washington policy wonks talk glibly of the "dual track" policy towards Iran, in which we dangle the prospect of substantive diplomacy in front of Tehran as it is crippled by harsh economic sanctions, ordinary Iranians continue to suffer. Over at...
"Publicly, we say one thing. Actually, we do another." So said Richard Nixon, the man who ushered in one of the most secretive and criminal presidential administrations in American history. Surprisingly for some, President Barack Obama is ably following in Nixon's...
Lots of people are asking good questions about the veracity of the Obama administration's claims regarding this latest terrorist attack that they foiled by intercepting electronic communications between Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of core al Qaeda, and Nasir al...
Shimon Gapso, an Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, recently said that Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and "will be Jewish forever." In response to this, and in consideration of anti-Arab statements Gapso allegedly made in the past (and, say, his opposition to the...
The Cato Institute's Justin Logan at POLITICO argues "Washington’s war hawks are gearing up to scare you with another phantom devil: isolationism." ...“isolationist” was designed as a slur and remains one. No one calls himself an isolationist. It’s always intended to...
From the Guardian's letters section: More than 150 civil society organisations from around the globe are asking President Barack Obama to end the prosecution of Edward Snowden (Activists stage second national day of protest against NSA's domestic spying, 4 August)....
The news today is that Guantanamo Bay’s head jailor William Lietzau, "in charge of the indefinite detention of a lot of people long-since cleared for release," writes Jason Ditz, has condemned the lack of due process, saying we should "have called them prisoners of...
Last week, in a piece I wrote for The Huffington Post on the hypocrisy in the Bradley Manning trial, I argued that "The law is for the powerful to defy with impunity, and for the weak to be punished with." As evidence, I mentioned several high crimes committed by the...
