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Turkey's Military Capitulation Hits Home

April 16, 2012

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"Retired Gen. Çevik Bir jailed in postmodern coup case" reads the headline in Today's Zaman, complete with a picture of a policeman accompanying Bir as he left a courthouse after being arrested.

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[Symposium on] The U.S. and Israel

March 6, 2012

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Two premises shape my preferred U.S. policy toward Israel.

Negatively, the two countries have the same enemies and suffer from the same problems coming out of the Middle East, notably WMD, wars, terrorism, piracy, anarchy, tyranny, refugees, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, oil and gas disruptions, extremist ideologies, conspiracy theories, etc. More than that: they share enemies. Anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are first cousins, with one usually leading to the other.

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Why I Am Not Writing About Iran

March 6, 2012

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The president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel each gave major speeches on the Iranian nuclear threat and then they met for a two-hour meeting yesterday, with attendant statements – and yet my column today is on a book that appeared in 1962.

Usually, I use my column to address major news of the moment, but obviously not in this case. Here's why:

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Claiming Jerusalem is in the Koran

February 29, 2012

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Apologies for only learning of Jerusalem in the Qur'an by Imran N. Hosein, 2d ed. abridged (Long Island, New York: Masjid Dar-Al-Qur'an, 2003) nearly a decade after its publication, but it nonetheless bears notice, for two main reasons.

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Resettling the Mujahedeen-e Khalq of Iraq

February 28, 2012

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Tragedy looms as Iraqi authorities threaten by April 30 forcibly to expel 3,400 Iranians, members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. MeK members rightly fear for their lives if pushed across the border for the Iranian regime criminalizes membership in the MeK and abominates the organization, its determined foe.

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Syria: Arguing for U.S. Inaction

February 25, 2012

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Some thoughts on U.S. policy toward Syria on the occasion of the just-ended "Friends of Syria" meeting in Tunisia:

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahya, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the "Friends of Syria" conference.

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Four Down: Saleh No Longer Yemen's President?

February 25, 2012

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Three Arab dictators-for-life lost power in 2011: Ben Ali of Tunisia on January 14, Mubarak of Egypt on February 11, and Qaddafi of Libya on October 20. Now, the first Arab dictator of 2012 seems to be down: Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen.

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Obama a Muslim? Tales from the Campaign Trail

February 20, 2012

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The issue of Barack Obama's religion flared up before the 2008 presidential election and seems likely to do so again in anticipation of the one in November 2012. This weblog entry keeps an eye on the discussion, in reverse chronological order:

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Reflections a Year after Hosni Mubarak's Resignation

February 11, 2012

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1. Dewy-eyed predictions of democracy within the year proved to be as silly as they appeared to be back then. Instead, a power-hungry military leadership shows it will do whatever necessary to remain in the saddle.

2. The real action has yet to come. The Syrian regime seems destined to fall and that could have destabilizing repercussions in the Middle East's most important country, Iran.

3. Do not confuse Arab regimes with Arab peoples. One of my consistent themes for years has been "if you are pro-Arab, you must be anti-Arab regimes." Events in Libya and Syria have emphatically made this point.

4. The Realpolitik regimes in Moscow and Peking will pay a price for their backing police states, and especially the Syrian one. Likewise, the pathetic Turkish foreign policy slogan of "zero problems" turned out to mean zero problems with police states.

5. Islamists are pursuing the age-old Middle Eastern habit of splitting just as they attain success: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis find cooperation difficult in Egypt. Hamas now boasts the Haniyeh and Meshaal factions. When Islamists take over in Damascus, they will break with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ankara and Tehran are often at odds.

6. My favorite statement summing up the past year's complexities: The IDF has prepared humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees in a buffer zone between Syrian- and Israeli-controlled territory, including thousands from the ruling Alawite sect, prompting Israel's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, to muse: "I am not sure all the Alawites will run toward Israel," but many will do so.

(February 11, 2012)

Blame the UN's Power on George H.W. Bush

February 7, 2012

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Future U.S. president George H.W. Bush in 1971, at the start of his U.N. ambassadorship.

From about 1950 to 1990, the United Nations Security Council was essentially toothless, as the Soviet and U.S. governments disagreed on issue after issue. As a result, anyone wanting to get things done generally by-passed this forum, from the Berlin problem to the Vietnam War to Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 constituted the first post-Cold War crisis. The great powers could have handled it any number of ways – in NATO, with a "coalition of the willing," or with a new organization – but Bush (himself a former U.S. ambassador to the UN) took the matter to the Security Council for decision making.

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