There is something pretty wrong about framing countries as “failed states” and ripe for photo shoots, but that’s what Foreign Policy has done. Places like Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan are on the list and it seems that the magazine has taken a perverse pleasure in doing so. And what kind of credibility does a…
Showing all posts tagged neo-conservatives
Urging Israel to bomb Lebanon and soon
Smell the disappointment from the neo-con class: In Washington the assumption is that it’s only a matter of time before Israel and Hezbollah will be at war again. But what’s worse is that, according to policymakers and analysts I’ve spoken to, the United States is sharply opposed to Israel finishing the work it failed to…
The last thing Iran needs is American “assistance”
I write extensively about the web in repressive regimes but I remain skeptical (to put it mildly) when neo-conservatives talk about democracy promotion. Take Reuel Marc Gerecht in today’s New York Times: The democracy movement also needs a large supply of digital-video broadcasting cards, which function much like prepaid telephone cards and allow downloading and…
Melanie Philips, unplugged
A very helpful “digested read” in the Guardian of the latest work by Melanie Philips: This book arose from a sense of perplexity that almost everyone in the world thought I was clinically mad. Everywhere I looked there were people who believed boarding a humanitarian aid convoy in international waters and murdering nine people was…
The reasons most Israelis have no real interest in giving up the West Bank
While America’s neo-conservatives begin a full-fledged campaign of hatred directed at Turkey, this is how one of the United States’ major (war-supporting) Jewish writers, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, frames the debate; Israeli fear, paranoia and belligerence: Last night Mrs. Goldblog and I went to a dinner at which The Situation was the main topic of…
Waiting for President Palin
The increasingly vocal liberal Zionist Peter Beinart on the fear, loathing and anticipation gripping the Israeli government and its American backers: Netanyahu’s response to the Gaza blockade crisis shows just how out of touch he is with America. Peter Beinart on why Israeli leaders—and their U.S. defenders—need to join the age of Obama. This week,…
More bombing and killing, please
Here’s some solid advice from an American neo-con who worries that America just isn’t aggressive enough anymore in the Middle East: We need to return to an old paradigm for understanding the region: Reward our friends, and punish our enemies.
Don’t worry friends, Washington protects us all from harm
I can sleep well now; a neo-con writes: America is still the best guarantor of freedom and prosperity
I just know that Israel is a democratic paradise, hopes neo-con
Debate over the recent Peter Beinart article on Zionism and American Jewry in the New York Review of Books continues. Here’s Beinart, the sensible Zionist liberal debating neo-con Eli Lake, almost comically defending the democratic credentials of the Jewish state despite the mass evidence against it:
The confused identity of those Jews (and fellow travellers) who rather like occupation and bombing
Following the publication today of Overland’s smackdown of Zionist attempts to silence alternative views on the Middle East in Australia, leading Australian academic Scott Burchill – we like him on this site – sent me the following response: Political apostasy is rampant amongst the Australian intellectual class. Overseas too. Think of Robert Manne (former right…