In today’s Daily Beast, Leslie Gelb opines that what the West is doing with sanctions and threats against Iran is “drawing ‘red lines’ that are backing leaders into untenable and dangerous corners… what not doing is leveraging these economic and military pressures with a negotiating proposal that can curtail Iran’s nuclear-bomb-making...
Want to get the inside skinney on Iran? Here are six books to get you there. First, not surprisingly, is The House That War Minister Built. Learn that what really goes on in the harem is not sex, but intrigue. See how modern Persians reconcile their legacy from Cyrus the Great, conqueror and...
Gen. Michael Hayden in an interview with the Wall Street Journal warns that Iranian nuclear proliferation is approaching a danger point and the US is faced with only two options, both bad. However, if the Arab spring tells us anything it’s that reform can come from within. Yes, it can productively be encouraged and or...
In a deceptively fawning article in Newsweek, A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistan bomb, embraces classic Orwellian doublespeak starting right out with the title, “I Saved My Country From Nuclear Blackmail.” Immediately there follows the boot-licking subtitle, “The ‘father’ of the Pakistani bomb on why we shouldn’t be afraid.” Khan then praises the...
President Obama in his weekly radio address said he wants to promote more oil exploration in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. If he wants to cave into conservative cries of, “Drill, baby! Drill!” he could do so in a way that would actually help the economy. Big Oil begs for more oil exploration rights every...
In the Daily Beast, Salman Rushdie lambasts Pakistan for knowingly harboring Bin Laden and other anti-western terrorists as well as anti-Indian jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad.* He points out that Pakistan has been playing a double game for many years, largely because, “India, as always Pakistan’s unhealthy obsession … Pakistan is...
In today’s Wall Street Journal Matthew Rosenberg reports that, “Pakistan is lobbying Afghanistan’s president against building a long-term strategic partnership with the U.S., urging him instead to look to Pakistan—and its Chinese ally—for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy, Afghan officials say.” Personally I think this is...
In an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Rose McDermott, a professor at Brown, decries the sins of polygamy. Polygamy certainly has its detractions and certainly can be misused and turn oppressive (so can monogamy), but the practice of polygamy by no means causes, “higher rates of HIV infection … more domestic violence,...
In an OP-ED piece in today’s Wall Street Journal Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the US, makes the point that in the face of a real or implied threat of military intervention by the US, a “rogue” nuclear power should find it more secure to abandon nuclear weapons, rather than develop them. He further...
Iran is happy to cast the US as a colonial evil seeking to take advantage of revolution in Libya to grab more oil while they (the Iranian leadership) voice support for the Libyan rebels (conveniently ignoring the oppressiveness of their own leadership and the internal opposition to it). Since the US loses this skirmish...