Iraq War

CNN’s Arwa Damon reports from Baghdad on the sense of hopelessness among even upper-class Iraqi teens today. AFP gives support to Ms. Damon’s findings: a 2011 poll of Iraqi men under 30 found that 89% of them wanted to emigrate from the country. A more upbeat treatment by the Associated Press turns out to depend […]

Iraq War

Falsity of Nuclear Accusation against Iraq Was Known before Bush’s Invasion

Juan Cole

As we approach the ten year anniversary of the launching of George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, it is worth my pointing out that I concluded even before the war began that the main rationale then given for it, Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program, was a fiction. I was following the inspectors which Bush had […]

Iraq

Mission Accomplished: Iraq as America’s biggest Blunder (Van Buren)

Juan Cole

Peter van Buren writes at Tomdispatch.com I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness — and oh yes, it was […]

Iran

Hagel Confirmed, but Bloodied by American Nationalists Seeking Wars & World Dominance

Juan Cole

The GOP senators have their own foreign policy, and it isn’t the same as that of President Obama or Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. For them, the US is a 900 pound behemoth that can boss the world around with its high-tech military at will. Their foreign policy is to shoot first and ask questions […]

Iraq War

New Pope has Opportunity to Improve Christian-Muslim Relations

Juan Cole

Pope Benedict XVI’s suprise announcement on Monday that he plans to resign at the end of this month marks a potential generational change in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. His successor has an opportunity to revive the breakthroughs of the Second Vatican Council in promoting inter-religious dialogue, and repairing the Church’s troubled relationship […]

Arab Spring

Will a declining America Start Having to Obey the same Rules as Everybody Else? (Chomsky)

Juan Cole

Noam Chomsky writes at Tomdispatch.com: [This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire, Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.] Does the United States still […]

Iran

Chuck Hagel Mauled in Bizarro World of US Senate

Juan Cole

The confirmation hearing in the Senate for Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, was painful to watch because it displayed the tomfoolery, pretense, self-righteous know-nothingism, and embarrassing lack of contact with reality that dominate the landscape of America’s broken democracy. It was like watching a Nebraska ordinary Joe set upon by circus […]

Afghanistan

How Torture Misled the US into an Illegal War: What Zero Dark Thirty Really Leaves Out

Juan Cole

An important problem with the narrative line of “Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the Central Intelligence Agency’s quest for Usama Bin Laden, is not just that it comes across as pro-torture but that it ignores the elephant in the room: Bad intelligence elicited by torture almost derailed that quest to put down al-Qaeda […]

Iraq War

Psy of “Gangnam Style” attacked Bush’s Iraq War, not America

Juan Cole

Korean pop star Psy (Park Jae-sang ) is apologizing for performances in 2004 in which he condemned the Iraq War. At one point he sang another songwriter’s lyrics about US soldiers killing and torturing Iraqis and the need to fight back against them and their family members. This is the purported video of Psy, protesting […]