The CIA should do well by John Brennan, the President’s trusted counterterrorism adviser who’s just been tapped as director. …
Mideast
Obama’s Long Game on Middle East Peace
With their powers of persuasion fading in Congress, second-term U.S. Presidents often look abroad to cement their legacies.
Diplomatic Efforts Yield Prospect of Tenuous Cease-Fire in Gaza
Tensions are still running high in the Middle East, and the potential for hostilities to reignite in the coming weeks remains
How Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula Figures in the Gaza Turmoil
Why some experts fear the Egyptian territory–now a playground of smugglers and terrorists–may be help trigger broader conflict.
Netanyahu at the U.N.: Bibi Makes Nice with Obama
In a departure from his recent icy statements aimed at the Obama Administration, Netanyahu took a friendlier approach in his speech at the U.N.
How Libya Makes Obama Vulnerable — and the GOP Knows It
Rally-around-the-flag time is over. For the most part, Republicans — with the exception of Mitt Romney — had held their fire in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which claimed the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. But as …
Will the Arab Spring Rain on Obama’s Re-election?
Until now, the Arab Spring has felt like a wash in domestic political terms. Conservatives have charged Obama with “losing” Egypt to the Islamists after mishandling the region’s politics. Just last month, Mitt Romney complained …
Enter Bibi
Neoconned
The illustrious patriots over at the Commentary blog have, predictably, taken me to task for defending Peter Beinart’s fine book about the crisis in Israel. They have done so in a predictably specious way. So I’d like to make my position, and theirs, perfectly clear: the argument against West Bank settlements is not merely a demographic …
And, er, What About the Settlements?
The neoconservative assault on Peter Beinart’s fine book, The Crisis of Zionism, continues. It has taken many forms–ad hominem attacks usually and now, mocking his sales figures. Indeed, it has taken many forms but one: there still is no coherent response to Beinart’s argument that the West Bank settlement policy is a long-term …
Israel’s Rule of Law
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against the Netanyahu government and order an unsanctioned Israeli settler outpost on the West Bank to be shut down by August. Netanyahu had wanted the outpost to remain open for business in perpetuity–or close to perpetuity, 2015, by which time the government would have argued the permanence of the …
Netanyahu Signals Determination on Iran, But War Will Have to Wait
Had he been speaking Hebrew in a dramatic TV broadcast back home, parts of Benjamin Netanyahu’s fire-and-brimstone speech Tuesday night might have been mistaken for the words of an Israeli prime minister about to launch a fateful war. He painted Iran’s nuclear program as an apocalyptic extermination threat redolent of the Nazi …
Four Ways the U.S. Could End Up at War with Iran Before the Election*
Most political analysts in Washington believe that war with Iran is unlikely, especially before the November U.S. elections. Politically it would be hard for President Obama to engage in another Middle Eastern war given the
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