News Abroad

What the 9-11 Report Left Out

by Ivan Eland

Although the 9/11 commission’s investigation has won praise in the media for being bipartisan, on balance it has not made us safer. The commission discovered new information to rewrite the history of the Sept. 11 attacks, uncovered government incompetence that should make Americans wonder if those attacks could have been prevented and made some useful recommendations. But the panel avoided the most important question surrounding the attacks—their cause.The commission showed

Why the World Court Decision on the Israeli Fence Is too Important to be Forgotten

by Howard N. Meyer

An important lesson for Israel, America and the world will be seen in a comparative examination of two separate votes of the United Nations General Assembly, addressed to a single problem. The first was on December 8, 2003; the second was July 9, 2004, half a year later. First question voted on was whether to ask the International Court of Justice (commonly called the World Court) to render an Advisory Opinion on whether it was legal for Israel to construct a barrier (a wall or fence) outs

George "Woodrow Wilson" Bush

by William Loren Katz

As more U.S. soldiers are buried in the shifting political sands of occupied Iraq, President Bush has claimed his invasion and occupation were justified, and that U.S. citizens are now safer. Speaking in front of a “Protect America” sign, he clinged to flawed rationales and failed policies, admited no deceptions nor costly errors, and failed to mention the thousand dead U.S. and coalition troops, the thousands wounded, and the death and suffering inflicted on innocent civilians.

Does the World Court's Condemnation of Israel Matter?

by Chris Pettit

As the World Court issued its verdict, the Israeli government rapidly mobilized its representatives in Tel Aviv and Washington to present a united front criticizing the judgment and, in the case of the Israelis, stating that the judgment will be ignored. The Israeli government is now counting on the US to veto any resolution providing for sanctions and reparations to correct the atrocities that have already taken place. We have seen a debate ensue in periodicals and on news show

Now Bush Saber-Rattling Is Unnerving China

by Chalmers Johnson

Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan. This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our twelve carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster. At a minimum, a single carrier str

Why 2004 Will Be Remembered as the Year World Oil Production Peaked

by Keith Miller

Mr. Hubbert, we should have listened. In 1957 M. King Hubbert (1903-1989) predicted in a publication of the American Petroleum Institute, Drilling and Production Practice (p. 17), that the peak of world oil output would come "about the year 2000." And it has. As Richard A. Kerr stated in "The Next Oil Cirisis Looms Large--and Perhaps Close," Science 281 (21 August 1998): "the gush of oil from wells around the world will peak at

Why Peace Liberals in Israel and Ariel Sharon Suddenly Find Themselves on the Same Side

by Neve Gordon

Two weeks after 60,000 Likud Party members voted against a pullout from the Gaza Strip, about 150,000 Israelis filled Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, calling on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government to proceed with the withdrawal plan. Those opposing the pullout from Gaza support the vision of a Greater Israel, while those favoring the pullout support the state of Israel. The first group believes that without Gaza, Israel will be destroyed; the second believes that with it, Israel will be destroyed

The Philippines, Redux

by Michael D. Richards and Jeffrey E. Key

Let's stop looking to Vietnam in the 1960s for clues about what to do in Iraq. If the Bush administration wants a little help from history, it should instead examine U.S. policy in the Philippines in the first years of the twentieth century. In Vietnam, the United States supported the losing side in a civil war. In the Philippines, the United States supported the Filipino independence movement by toppling the colonial Spanish government. Then, however, it insta

Why Muslim Countries Treat Women Differently

by Daniel Pipes

The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq touched such a nerve in the Muslim world that one analyst said that the rape pictures"would equal a nuclear explosion" if seen in Muslim countries. Such extreme reactions raise the delicate topic of sex in Muslim-Western relations. The West and the Muslim world entertain vastly different assumptions about female sexuality. (I draw here on the ideas of Fatima Mernissi in her 1975 book, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Mus

We Aren't Close to Doing for Iraq What We Did in Japan

by Mark Selden

President George W. Bush has repeatedly presented the American occupation of Japan as the model for Iraq's democratization. Does the Japanese occupation really illuminate contemporary reconstructions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other contemporary war-torn societies? Certain similarities do stand out: as in Japan half a century earlier, the U.S. has proclaimed its intention to return "sovereignty" to a democratic Iraq while preserving a dominant American military presence. Yet beyond t

Why Barcelona Is One of the Most Inspiring Cities in the World

by Lawrence S. Wittner

In late June 2004, I returned to my home in Albany, New York from Barcelona, a city located in the Catalonian region of Spain and immortalized by George Orwell's powerful Homage to Catalonia. First published in 1938, the book recounts Orwell's searing perso

Iraq and Other Pseudo-States

by Adam Hochschild

Some fifteen years ago, while writing about apartheid-era South Africa, I visited one of its nominally independent black"homelands." This crazy quilt of territories was a control mechanism the white regime had come up with in a country where whites were vastly outnumbered by South Africans of other colors. For the most part rural slums, the homelands, also known as Bantustans, made up about 13% of the nation's land. I was driving across miles of veldt where blacks were trying to scratch a liv

Column: What I Like About America (Letters from Japan, Part 10)

by William Thompson

This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the tenth of his"Letters from Japan." The car culture descended upon the entire American

Can History Help Us Understand What's Happening in Iraq?

by James I. Matray

"History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain reportedly once advised, "at best it rhymes." On 21 May 2004, four professors sought to find assonance between the Iraq War and previous American conflicts during a roundtable at the 2004 Policy History Conference near St. Louis, Missouri. Joining me as presenters were Michele Angrist of Union College, Mark Lawrence of the University of Texas at Austin, and Chester Pach, Jr., of Ohio University. During the two-hour sessi

Torture Didn't Work for the French in Algeria Either

by Shawn McHale

"We all had the same reaction. We tried not to see it. We were shocked, but powerless. At first, revolted; by the end, indifferent. It has to be said, it's shameful." These are the words of a French soldier, Raymond Dumas, who witnessed torture during France's war in Algeria in the 1950s. They could, however, be the words of torturers everywhere and in every era. The French case provides eerie parallels to today, when we are faced every day with new allegations about the

Why the Neocons Get an "F" For Failure

by Murray Polner

When an off-Broadway show opened a few seasons ago with the deliciously relevant title, "Now That Communism is Dead My Life Feels Empty," it made me think of the bright, clever neoconservatives I have known. Looking back, many of their prominent publications and groups were far too inflexible to accept that the USSR was no longer an invincible fifty-foot military monster incapable of change. By then many neoconservatives (though the term was and remains somewhat imprecise)

Before We Move on, Let's Remember Ronald Reagan's First Victory Against Terrorism

by Daniel Pipes

The first American victory in the war on terror was won by Ronald Reagan, and it happened on Jan. 20, 1981, the first day of his presidency.That was when the jihadists running the Islamic Republic of Iran released 52 American hostages precisely as Reagan took the oath of office. After 444 days of humbling Jimmy Carter, the rulers in Tehran decided to conclude their drama at the U.S. embassy before they had to face the new president. This marke

Why We Should Celebrate the Resignation of Latin American Envoy Otto Reich

by Max Paul Friedman

In the halcyon days of his first presidential campaign, George W. Bush often spoke of wishing to mend fences with Latin America. His first gesture was not promising: appointing a right-wing extremist to the key post of Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, then Special Envoy to Latin America, who had a record of supporting terrorists and whose tenure markedly worsened U.S.-Latin American relations. The departure of Otto J. Reich offers an opportunity, but only if President Bush does not repeat the mistake.Otto Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela, was never known for his diplomatic finesse. He has compared Cuba to Nazi Germany and said that when the Baltimore Orioles played baseball in Havana, it was “like playing soccer in Auschwitz.” In his post in Caracas, he worked for the release of two terrorists who had blown up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 people.During the Central American wars of the 1980s, Reich headed a secret operation not seen in the United States since the days of Richard Nixon, Watergate and COINTELPRO: a concerted effort to spread propaganda from the White House to American citizens.

Why I Intend to Vote for John Kerry

by Chalmers Johnson

The United States faces a real crisis. It's not just the military failure of Bush's policies in Iraq or the discrediting of our armed forces and intelligence agencies as corrupt, incompetent, and criminal. It is above all our international isolation and disgrace because of our contempt for the rule of law. Article six of the U. S. Constitution says, in part,"all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." The Geneva C

When Foreign Adventures Go Bad: The Case of America's Intervention in Russia During World War I

by Robert L. Willett

In July 1918 World War I continued on the Western Front, with American doughboys now in the trenches.. The Russian Czar had abdicated, been arrested and executed; the Russians had abandoned the Eastern Front and withdrawn from the war; the Soviet Revolution was in full swing and civil war raged across the land. Into this turmoil President Woodrow Wilson, bowing to the request of his Allied friends, agreed to send American troops to Russia. The 339 th Infan