Korean Quagmire – Following negative reaction to North Korea’s planned satellite launch, China’s Communist Party-linked Global Times defends Beijing’s approach towards Pyongyang — under the headline “Why China Can’t Persuade …
Terror
Baghdad Bloodbath Threatens Sectarian Chaos in Iraq: Will Iran Stoke or Douse the Fires?
A series of deadly bombings across Baghdad that killed at least 63 people and wounded hundreds on Thursday underscored the political and security peril facing Iraq amid rising sectarian tension. Officials said four car bombs and …
Kenya Invades Somalia. Does It Get Any Dumber?
If the history of war teaches us anything, it’s that invading a foreign country is dicey. Storming across too many borders was the undoing of many of the world’s great conquerors, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon to the Nazis. The last few decades of US foreign policy – Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq – only underline how tricky …
Obama’s Iran Dilemma: How to Respond to a Plot Seemingly Designed to Provoke Escalation?
The fact that President Barack Obama on Thursday found himself insisting that the facts support his Administration’s efforts to hold Tehran accountable for a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington suggests that the world is not yet rushing to fall in line with his call for “the toughest sanctions” on Iran.
The “toughest …
Will the Washington Bomb Plot Force Obama into War with Iran?
“We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other,” outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last month. “If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right — that there will be miscalculation, which could be extremely dangerous …
Militant Groups Would Benefit if Pakistan is Blamed for Latest Mumbai Attacks
There’s no reason yet to believe the latest Mumbai terror attacks bear the same signature as the 2008 massacre that left 164 people dead. Wednesday’s multiple explosions appear from early reports to have involved small-scale and relatively crude bombs, even though they appear to have inflicted substantial casualties. That might point …
Why Ba’asyir’s Sentence Doesn’t Spell the End of Extremism in Indonesia
He says he’s just simple preacher. But on Thursday, Abubakar Ba’asyir, the man widely considered the grandfather of Islamic militancy in Indonesia, was convicted on terror charges and sentenced to 15 years. Ba’asyir, 72, was charged with founding and financing a militant group that ran a terrorist camp in Aceh, northern Sumatra. The …
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 …