Juan Cole

What is remarkable to me about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press was its sincerity and the form of its reasoning. He addressed issues, not personalities. He engaged in analysis, not demonization. After the Rove years of Goebbels-like propaganda, guilt by association, and innuendo, Powell’s appearance brought fresh air into the […]

Is McCain a far Right extremist? When McCain calls Obama a “socialist,” is he Red-baiting? Republicans back in the 1950s through the 1980s routinely accused Democrats of being “Communists” or hinted around that they were fellow travelers or ‘soft on communism.’ Richard M. Nixon, the grand dragon of dirty tricks, described the Democratic standard bearer […]

Muqtada al-Sadr called Saturday for Iraqi parliamentarians to reject the draft security agreement proposed by the Bush administration and PM Nuri al-Maliki. Tens of thousands of Iraqis rallied against the agreement. Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Saturday: ‘ * SAMARRA – A mass grave containing 11 bodies was found in the northeast of […]

Although Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has approved a draft agreement on US troops in Iraq, it faces severe opposition from many parliamentarians and may not actually be enacted into law. A major stumbling block is immunity for US troops from Iraqi law. Meanwhile, al-Maliki said Friday that Gen. Ray Odierno may have lost his position […]

John McCain returns to David Letterman’s Late Show in an attempt to redeem himself after his erratic behavior and earlier cancellation. It is the oddest thing, that entertainment show hosts such as Letterman ask harder and more persistent questions about questionable campaign techniques than do the hard news interviewers. The McCain appearance on Letterman had […]

Nir Rosen reports on ‘How we lost the War We Won’ in Afghanistan: ‘ Until recently, Ghazni, like much of central Afghanistan, was considered reasonably safe. But now the province, located 100 miles south of the capital, has fallen to the Taliban. Foreigners who venture to Ghazni often wind up kidnapped or killed. In defiance […]

The third and final debate again went to Obama in the instant polls done by organizations such as CNN. Independents told CNN they generally thought Obama won. CNN’s real-time tracking of opinion among viewers in its studio showed that independents especially disliked the smear tactic of attempting to link Obama to prominent Chicago educator Bill […]

The Republican Party that Nixon invented melded the moneyed classes of the Northeast with the white evangelicals of the South. This odd couple went on to simultaneously steal from and oppress the rest of us. The moneyed classes were happy to let the New Puritans impose their stringent morality, since they could always just buy […]

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistan will apparently depict that country as ‘on the edge,’ with ‘no money, no energy, no government.’ The fear is expressed that an unstable Pakistan will become a center for al-Qaeda plotting against the US. The situation in Pakistan for ordinary people is indeed tough. Fuel and wheat prices […]