Archives for 2009

Wednesday witnessed a new round of deadly violence in Afghanistan. In Khost to the east, a roadside bomb incinerated a civilian vehicle, killing 10. It was probably intended for the new Afghan army. In Uruzgan, the home province of Mulla Omar, a blast wounded 3 Australian soldiers and their interpreter. End/ (Not Continued)

The Obama administration is so discouraged by the poor performance of the government of Afghan president Hamid Karzai that it is contemplating appointing a prime minister who would do the serious work that Karzai appears to avoid. The plan raises questions of constitutionality in Afghan law, and has a “great man theory” that what is […]

Thanks so much to Steve Clemons and the New America Foundation for hosting my talk regarding my new book on Tuesday afternoon. It was live streamed, and I will post links when it is available as a clip. Engaging the Muslim World Here is a response to a point I made in my talk at […]

McClatchy reports that four bombings around Iraq killed 37 and wounded 60 on Monday. A bombing at a mechanic’s shop in Abu Ghraib to the west of Baghdad killed 9 and wounded 27. There were also bombings in Mosul and near the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar. But most worrisome of all was an […]

Listen to my interview with Steven Inskeep of National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” on myths about Saudi Arabia’s puritanical and hyper-Protestant Wahhabi branch of Islam. I argue that there is no statistical or social scientific evidence that Wahhabis are more prone to violence or terrorism than other branches of Islam. Note that it is a […]

President Barack Obama on 60 Minutes Sunday night: ‘ Commenting on former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent assertion that the closure of Guantanamo will make America more vulnerable to attack, Obama said, “I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a […]

The editor-in-chief of The New Republic, Martin Peretz, attacked Jim Lehrer and Nicholas Kristof over the weekend for having had anything to do with me. I’m not important, but I really must come to the defense of Lehrer and Kristof. Peretz blames Jim Lehrer for having me on the Lehrer News Hour on PBS and […]

Check out the good discussion we had at the Firedoglake Book Salon on Saturday evening of my new book Engaging the Muslim World. Many thanks to Robert Farley for good hosting and Beverly Wright, FDL’s book review editor, for the kind invitation to appear. Engaging the Muslim World End/ (Not Continued)

The USG Open Source Center translates Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s response to the Persian New Year’s message of US President Barack Obama. For a canny reading of this text, see the blog posting of Iran expert Farideh Farhi. See my own first impressions in my Sunday comments, as well as Michael Jensen’s article in the […]