from Wikimedia Commons Vice presidents from robust democracies don’t normally get involved with religiously-motivated gangs. Yes, it is an absolutely terrible and absurd scenario. But this week one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, was sentenced to death in absentia for his role in organizing death squads that targeted the country’s majority Shia Muslim population. Al-Hashemi fled the country weeks ago and has s...
...ificant support to various groups across the Middle East. The immediate origin of Iran’s renewed attempts to export its revolution lie in its rather awkward and precarious strategic position. During the American occupation in Iraq, Tehran faced the reality that “the Great Satan” had military forces on both borders. Across the Gulf lies Saudi Arabia, another ideological and geopolitical rival. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are enemies of the United...
...conducted by CBS News/The New York Times two weeks after the election asked what the most important problem for government to address was over the coming year, and the like-minded combination of defense, foreign policy, war, Iraq/Osama Bin Laden and “terrorism general”, took 40 percent of the pie. Similar amalgamations like jobs, economy, budget deficit, social security, and healthcare (27 percent) or moral values and abortion (5 percent, or 19...
...aid, “I take full responsibility.” Americans have learned to take a Presidential apology seriously when they hear one. In a recent interview, Barbara Walters asked Bush whether he believed the American invasion of Iraq was “worth it” despite inspectors’ failure to discover weapons of mass destruction. The President’s answer was an unhesitant “absolutely.” Since then, and in all the time America has...
Illustration by Mark Clements Iran wants nuclear weapons, and it is about to get them. If not seriously deterred, Iran will undoubtedly (really, this time) possess nukes within the next two to three years. It is universally regarded— even by the French—that Iran’s nuclear program is much more advanced than Iraq’s ever was, and, even though Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, leaders in Tehran refused to ratify the treat...
...eet and Main Street this election season, President Obama’s first term has been rather eventful on the foreign policy front. Looking back to 2002, a young Illinois senator gave a stirring speech at a Chicago rally against the Iraq War: “I don’t oppose all wars. … What I am opposed to is … a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” Obama’s speech advocated a policy of reason in which only necessary battles are fou...
...lly places American lives at risk.” In his defense, Goss had yet to take over the CIA when the President and Vice President Cheney allegedly authorized Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to leak a the claim that Iraq had tried to acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, Goss was ostensibly appointed to help Bush rid the agency of “soft leakers and liberal Democrats,” according to remarks of a former CIA official widely quoted at the time of...
...militant nonviolent. I would suggest that you ask this same question about collateral damage and the safety of innocents to the war planners and generals in Washington DC who are murdering thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as we talk. The French writer Jean Genet once said, when asked about the Weathermen, “The Weathermen have little bombs, the U.S. has big bombs.” Berkeley Political Review: Looking back at your...
...the first time the news media misreported a story. In June 2012, CNN falsely reported that the United States Supreme Court had declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. In the days leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, wrote front-page articles that confirmed Iraq’s nuclear capability. Her headline story, published on September 8, 2002, erroneously pushed the Bush administration’s war...
...alliance. Initially, Blair’s promise to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the U.S. post-9/11 proved highly popular. However, his previously unassailable popularity began to wane when he proceeded to lead Britain into a war in Iraq that was, from the outset, not supported in the U.K. Given the extent to which he had come to embody the Labour Party as a whole in the preceding years, it was little surprise that the demise of Blair also spelled the s...
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