Republican Party

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The far right would like to impeach Joe Biden, kick him out of the White House, perhaps even throw him in jail. “Lock him up” has been a predictable chant at Trump rallies going back to before the 2020 election. Even Republicans in Congress have joined this chorus. Bipartisanship? […]

China

“We are on the way to a right-wing coup:” Milley secured Nuclear Codes, Allayed China fears of Trump Strike

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As a historian, I am fascinated by the practical appeals to history that appear throughout the story of Gen. Mark A. Milley’s struggles with Trump in the last months of the latter’s presidency. Milley believes that Jan. 6 was just an initial skirmish, sort of like the failed 1905 revolution […]

Bush

The Accumulated Evil of the Whole: That time Bush and Co. made the September 11 Attacks a Pretext for War on Iraq

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Kyle Swenson at the Washington Post reported in 2018 that Floridian Ishnar Lopez-Ramos was in love, but her intended only had eyes for another woman. So Ms. Lopez-Ramos enlisted two 22-year-old accomplices to target the other woman, who worked at the Ross Dress for Less at a shopping Center near […]

Afghanistan

September 11 and the Debacle of ‘Nation-Building’ in Iraq and Afghanistan

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – In one of his interviews before the Taliban retook Afghanistan, John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, blamed the American failure in Afghanistan on a change in Washington’s mission from anti-terrorism to “nation building.” In his view, Washington should just have held strategic […]

al-Qaeda

Think Again: 9/11

Juan Cole

“Think Again: 9/11,” by Juan Cole. Published in Foreign Policy No. 156 (Sep. – Oct., 2006), pp. 26-28, 30, 32. Copyright Foreign Policy, all rights reserved. Not for further reprint. These responses were my assessment of 9/11 and the Bush Forever Wars five years after the attacks. It is perhaps worth revisiting them now, 20 […]

Afghanistan

How Can America Wake Up From Its Post-9/11 Nightmare?

Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies | – ( Code Pink | – Looking back on it now, the 1990s were an age of innocence for America. The Cold War was over and our leaders promised us a “peace dividend.” There was no TSA to make us take off our shoes at airports […]

African-Americans

Southern White Male GOP Voter Suppression, anti-Abortion Laws are ways of reviving Jim Crow and expanding it to White Women

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – African-Americans have complained about the tendency of commentators to compare political suppression and regressive policies of white Republicans to slavery. Nothing, they rightly maintain, is like slavery. But some GOP laws passed by elite white males are very much like Jim Crow-style discrimination. Voter i.d. laws, for instance, are completely […]

Arab World

Don’t Compare Texas Abortion law to Islamic Law: Most Muslims are and have been More Liberal

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Texas “heartbeat law” banning abortion after six weeks has prompted comparisons of Texas evangelicals to Afghanistan’s Taliban. There is a resemblance globally of religious-Right movements on women’s issues, since religious conservatism is usually patriarchal and aims at controlling women. If, however, the comparison is between Christianity and Islam in […]

Donald Trump

The Republican Party’s flirtation with Fascism is becoming a Marriage

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Republicans love to hijack democratic and progressive concepts, such as “free speech,” and apply them in a hyperbolic context that is counterintuitive to the original intent. While this tactic burgeoned in recent years, Donald Trump’s presidency and toxic wake has elevated the issues and urgency to defeat this. […]