Turning our backs on the grim prospects for Afghanistan is part of a long tradition. We drew a veil over the struggle against insurgents in the Philippines. A combination of amnesia and speculative might-have-beens disposed of the Korean stalemate and the Vietnam defeat, and it seems likely the Iraq invasion and occupation will suffer the same fate. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: Afghanistan and an unkind God
From Matthew F. Jacobs’ book ‘Imagining the Middle East: Building American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967,’ how consumer culture influenced U.S. foreign policy. Continue Reading Matthew F. Jacobs: Imagining the Middle East – An Excerpt
Obama’s presentation lacks the first element of good policy. It fails to honestly confront the main trends and defining features of the problem confronting us. Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: Obama on the Middle East: Let’s Pretend
It’s ok to feel conflicted over the Libyan intervention. You’re not alone — and you have good reason. The U.S. response to the uprising against the Gaddafi regime raises a welter of issues. Is oil driving decisions? Why the inconsistency if not hypocrisy of acting in Libya but not Gaza? Is Libya just another case of U.S. muscle flexing or… Continue Reading Michael Hunt: Questions that the Libya Intervention Begs
The popular uprisings of the sort now spreading across North Africa to the Persian Gulf were hard to anticipate—but the American response wasn’t. U.S. history is filled with moments like the present one when upheavals abroad generated great hopes for the advance of freedom. Those moments have also evoked deep anxieties rooted in a suspicion that most peoples reaching for… Continue Reading Michael H. Hunt: Caught in Contradictions: The United States and the Middle East
Denial is a well known defense mechanism that keeps unpleasant realities at bay. U.S. policymakers seem well practiced in this common coping device. Heaven knows they have good reason, no matter which direction of the Middle East they turn. Afghanistan seems right now to occasion the deepest denials because the realities are the grimmest. Two reports by the London-based International… Continue Reading A Middle East Policy in Deep Denial
Time for the obvious statement of the day: technology is difficult to keep up with because it changes so much. Let’s take an iPod for example: I bought my most recent player three years ago, and while it continues to faithfully entertain me with tunes, it has become outrageously outdated by newer iPods. New models can both record and play… Continue Reading No, Really! There’s an app for that!
In his newly released book Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land, Shalom Goldman argues that Jewish Zionism was influenced by–and cannot be understood in isolation from–Christian culture generally and Christian Zionist culture specifically. Shedding light on the deep and interrelated roots of Christian-Jewish relations, fraught with tension and ambivalence, he finds that Christian support… Continue Reading The Voices of Israeli Government and Israeli Dissent
“We’re frustrated,” conceded President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on Monday. The U.S. relationship with Afghan president Hamid Karzai is currently strained, to say the least. Offering some historical perspective on the situation, we welcome a guest post today from Michael H. Hunt, whose most recent book, A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives, was… Continue Reading Karzai and the Shadow of Diem
In this first post of the new year, new decade, as concerns over the nuclear programs of countries such as Iran and North Korea continue to make headlines, we welcome the following commentary from Shane J. Maddock, author of Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present (forthcoming March 2010). In his book,… Continue Reading The Delicate Art of Nuclear Jujutsu
Gary R. Bunt, senior lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Wales, was kind enough to share his time and thoughts on the events surrounding the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the protests, and the deeply entrenched tensions between politics and religion. His most recent book, iMuslims, sheds new light on the nature of contemporary Islamic discourse, identity, and community.… Continue Reading Gary Bunt on the 2009 Iranian presidential elections…
We’ve got several authors out there making appearances online in various forms. If you’ve missed some of the live appearances in this busy spring, take a moment to follow-up virtually. In history… Russell McClintock, author of Lincoln and the Decision for War, was interviewed recently by Michael Noirot over at This Mighty Scourge. An excerpt from Amy Wood‘s new book,… Continue Reading Authors speak: interviews, op-eds, and more
As Iran celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, a network of individuals and associations inside and outside of Iran known as Iranians for Peace have written to President Obama to encourage direct dialogue with Iranian authorities to find political solutions to nuclear standoffs. They also call for “a nuclear-weapon-free zone for ALL the countries in the Middle East,… Continue Reading Fatemeh Keshavarz to appear on Just Peace radio show this evening
By now we’ve all seen the clips of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush during a presser over the weekend. And in the aftermath, of course, the media started asking if we should apply some deeper symbolic meaning to the act, as if it were committed with some non-Western kind of anger, a super-duper Arab kind of… Continue Reading Shoe Throwing: it means what you think it means
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