When U.S. President Obama called Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari to tell him the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. citizens in a lightening raid not far from the Pakistani capital last night, he also instructed his team to similarly inform their Pakistani counterparts. The question is, who was surprised when they …
Terrorism
Why Bin Laden’s Death No Longer Really Matters
Before leaving for a vacation in South Africa in December of 2001, my editor asked me to prepare an obituary for Osama bin Laden for TIME.com on the assumption that he might well be killed in Afghanistan while I was on the beach in Cape Town. Almost ten years later there was finally a reason to call up the old file: President Barack …
Great Game 3.0?
Rival empires vie for supremacy in a central Asian nation peopled by warring tribes. Sound familiar? If the Great Game was about England and Russia duking it out in the mountain passes of Afghanistan, the second iteration could be said to have taken place in the 80’s, when the United States took on the Soviet Union through its proxies, …
Death of a Terrorist: Orlando Bosch Outclassed by Cuban Dissidents
Something quite unusual happened in Cuba last week. Dissident lawyer Wilfredo Vallín, who last year filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the island’s communist government, was told by its highest court that the suit can proceed. Coincidentally, the news reached veteran Cuba reporter Juan Tamayo in Miami yesterday, April 27 – the …
The Good Life During Wartime: Israel ranks 7th in Global Happiness
Talk all you like about the “troubled Middle East” but yet another survey is out showing Israelis, at least, quite like their lives. Israel ranks 7th in the entire world in the new Gallup Global Wellbeing report, which covers more than 150 countries. Residents were asked questions based on the splendidly named Cantril Self-Anchoring …
In Little Iran, There’s No Mistaking the Stakes
You really could be in Iran, traveling the roads of Lebanon’s south. The billboards of the martyrs look newer, the young men honored by them having perished not in the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq fought to the death, but just five years ago, when Israel launched an assault on the stronghold of Hizballah, the Lebanese Shiite militia …
Iraq’s Assault on Camp Ashraf: The Tenuous Life of a Fringe Iranian Faction
Update: The U.N. reported on April 14 that 34 people were killed during the raid on Camp Ashraf last week.
Was ever there a stranger lot than the Mujahedin-e-Khalk Organization? Today its military arm stands braced for the worst in Camp Ashraf, a dusty military base tucked into a corner of a once-welcoming host nation, Iraq, that …
Why Posada Carriles Should Still Be Tried For Terrorism
Now that an El Paso, Texas, jury has acquitted Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles of perjury, the buzz back in Miami is that at least he got the fair trial that people in communist Cuba are usually denied. Now, say Cuban exile leaders, it’s time to put the whole ugly Posada drama to rest. But Friday’s verdict only throws into sharper …
Were the Israelis Behind the ‘Mystery’ Air Strike in Sudan?
About ten hours before a warplane roared down the Red Sea, crossed into Sudanese airspace and let fly a missile at a sedan, killing both of the people inside, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Gilad offered a piece of advice about secret military actions to audience of diplomats and journalists in a Jerusalem hotel.
“Never boast,” Gilad said. “Be …
The Murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis, an Artist Caught Between Two Worlds
As cosmopolitan as his name, Juliano Mer-Khamis was the son of a Jewish mother who had fought with the elite Palmach force during the 1948 war that created Israel, and a Christian Arab prominent in the Israeli Communist Party. When he was shot and killed by masked men on Monday, he was sitting in his car outside the theater he had …
Goldstone reconsiders his findings against Israel in Gaza war
In an op-ed shocker, the author of the Goldstone Report withdraws his harshest conclusions against Israel for its conduct in the three-week Gaza War that ended in January 2009. Richard Goldstone uses an opinion piece in the Washington Post to credit the Jewish state for investigating many of the incidents that led his U.N. fact-finding …
China’s National Defense White Paper: How to Look Tough, but Not Too Tough
For Beijing, managing perceptions of the country’s military modernization program is no easy task. On one hand, it is important for China’s leaders to show, both to citizens at home and potential rivals abroad, that they are cultivating a capable and powerful fighting force. At the same time, too enthusiastic a display of armed …
Al Qaeda Goes Glossy
And you thought print was dead. The latest contender in the current-affairs magazine market carries the innocuous title Inspire, and the cover art of its fifth edition, Spring 1431 (or 2011 if you follow the infidel calendar) would not look out of place on the New Age self-help shelves of your news agent. But its publisher, al-Malahim …
