Scott Ritter, The Guardian, December 16: It would be very difficult for anyone to articulate that life today is better in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra or any non-Kurdish city than it was under Saddam. Ask the average Iraqi adult female if she is better off today than she was under Saddam, and outside of a few…
Showing all posts tagged Bush administration
How should we feel about Obama?
The recently released Verso book, A Time to Speak Out, in which I contribute a chapter about progressive Jewish thought, has just launched a blog. My first post is the following: As one of the contributors to this important new book, currently in Sydney, Australia, the issue of Jewish identity in the 21st century is…
Feeding the beast
What is the real legacy of the Bush administration in the Middle East? Rami G. Khouri writes: Major Arab allies of the United States – such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan – are in more precarious condition now than they were eight years ago. They find themselves uncomfortably perched between their own reliance on U.S.…
President Bush’s legacy of torture will outlive him
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Antony Loewenstein, on a US book tour, writes from New York: Outgoing US President George W Bush has a few regrets. “The fight in Iraq has been longer and more costly than expected”, he said last week. But he has never apologised for his administration’s use…
Refusing the hand of a menace
Leading Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, who features in my book The Blogging Revolution, recently refused a meeting with outgoing US President George W. Bush: I owe Bush nothing and he owes me nothing and even if he has something that I might want, I no longer want it. I am inherently against any American involvement…
What they think of us
The artist’s statement from the Pictures of You: Images of Iran project: One day, while photographing on the streets of Isfahan, Iran, I spotted a young Persian man wearing a Dixie Chicks t-shirt. I introduced myself, and I inquired whether his t-shirt was intended to signify his dislike for the American President Bush. He smiled,…
The Blogging Revolution and voices of crisis
Juan Cole runs one of the finest and most popular US-based Middle East related blogs. It’s been a beacon of rationality during the Bush years. My following piece appears on his site today: During last week’s terror attacks in Mumbai, new technology reacted to the news faster than traditional media services. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and…
Accountability starts here
Blogger Andrew Sullivan proposes a sensible way for Barack Obama to manage the Bush administration’s use and abuse of torture over the last eight years: So perhaps the sanest way forward is a truth commission, modelled on those in Chile and South Africa that maintained governmental continuity for a while but set up a process…
The need to respect the other
The Saudi Arabian based Arab News – not always known for its nuanced understanding of the Middle East – gets it right in a recent editorial: The five Palestinians convicted Monday of channeling $12 million to Hamas via the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation are indeed guilty under US law. The reason is that since 1995…