Archives for 2010

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said at Columbia U. that a military strike on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities would be his ‘last option.’ He makes an excellent point, too often overlooked. In some instances the price of doing something is just about as high as the price of doing nothing. […]

David Sanger of the New York Times gets the scoop– that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sent the White House a memo last January observing that the US has no real developed policy for dealing with Iran should Tehran achieve ‘nuclear latency’ (where a country has the ability to construct a nuclear weapon but […]

The USG Open Source Center translates the speech on Saturday of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the attendees of a nuclear security conference in Tehran. Iranian Supreme Leader Criticizes US Nuclear Policies Message by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i to the Tehran international nuclear conference “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None” — […]

Satire alert. Time magazine’s publicists inform me that there is a duke-out going on between Lady Gaga fans and those of Iranian Green Movement leader Mir Hosain Mousavi. So, below, I offer the top ten differences between the two. First the announcement: ‘Lady Gaga fans are protesting the results of TIME.com’s TIME 100 online poll, […]

Attacks in Afghanistan left 13 dead and many more wounded on Thursday. A suicide car bombing near an Afghanistan National Army base in Qandahar left 6 dead, three of them military and the other three civilians. Qandahar, a city of 1 million (i.e. slightly larger than Detroit), is a hotbed of Taliban radicalism. It is […]

The Florida Times-Union has an editorial today on the US and the Muslim world (and American Muslims) that draws on my most recent book, Engaging the Muslim World

President Barack Obama acknowledged Tuesday that despite the expenditure of substantial political capital by his administration it may be that no progress will be made on Israel-Palestine peace. AP says he replied to a question as to whether his recent successes in negotiating nuclear arms reduction with Russia and getting 48 nations to sign on […]

Tom Engelhardt on Americans fighting their wars ‘from on high.’ Alas, it isn’t American, it is just industrialized warfare. Pakistan is bombing its own people, and a recent airstrike on militants appears to have killed a lot of innocents. The only way not to commit atrocities and war crimes is not to fight wars.