News Abroad

Obama’s Inaugural and the Danger of an Iran War

by Juan Cole

President Obama, Air Force chief of staff General Mark A. Welsh III, and Vice President Joe Biden talk during the inauguration. Credit: Flickr/DoD.Originally posted on Informed Comment.President Obama addressed the big issues of war and peace in his inaugural address, and despite the vagueness of some of his pronouncements, they contain strong clues to his foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. His announced policy will be one of ending U.S. military engagements abroad, multilateral cooperation with allies to face security challenges, negotiation, and avoidance of further military entanglements in the Middle East. In other words, Syrians are on their own, France can have Mali, and Iran is probably not going to be bombed.

Actually, Women Have Served in Combat Before

by Bradley Craig

Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the leading female Soviet sniper of World War II.After more than a year of planning, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta overturned the ban on women's ability to serve in combat roles in the United States military. Panetta's removal of the ban followed an official recommendation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin E. Dempsey. This decision to allow women to occupy the front lines came yesterday as a formal gesture following the last decade of women's unofficial service in combat positions; since 2001, around 280,000 women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.While the Senate Armed Services Committee may have an opportunity to reverse the decision through legislative means, prospects look hopeful for this shift in the military's stance, which was largely a decision made internal to the military itself. By May 15 of this year, the different branches of the armed services are expected to present specific implementation plans for their integration of women into combat roles, including requests for exceptions to the new policy.

Obama's Anti-Zionism

by Daniel Pipes

Barack Obama in the White House. Credit: Flickr.Originally posted on DanielPipes.orgWere Barack Obama re-elected, I predicted two months before the November 2012 presidential vote, "the coldest treatment of Israel ever by a U.S. president will follow." Well, election's over and that cold treatment is firmly in place. Obama has signaled in the past two months what lies ahead by: 

Why the State Department is Breathing a Sigh of Relief over the Algerian Hostages

by Lawrence A. Peskin

Image via Shutterstock.The State Department is probably very pleased with the outcome of last week's hostage crisis in Algeria, although given the loss of innocent lives it would be impolitic for them to say so.

The Pentagon as a Global NRA

by Tom Engelhardt

Credit: Wiki Commons.

Using Cold War Tactics to Confront Iran

by Daniel Pipes

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.As Americans seek to find an alternative to the stark and unappetizing choice of accepting Iran's rabid leadership having nuclear weapons or pre-emptively bombing its nuclear facilities, one analyst offers a credible third path. Interestingly, it's inspired by a long-ago policy toward a different foe -- the Reagan administration's ways of handling the Soviet Union -- yet this unlikely model offers a useful prototype.Abraham D. Sofaer, a former U.S. district judge and legal adviser to the State Department, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, argues in Taking On Iran: Strength, Diplomacy and the Iranian Threat (Hoover Institution, 2013) that since the fall of the shah during the Carter administration, Washington "has responded to Iranian aggression with ineffective sanctions and empty warnings and condemnations."

“So Many People Died”

by Nick Turse

A U.S. Marine moves a suspected member of the Viet Cong near Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam in 1965. Credit: U.S. Marine Corps.Pham To looked great for 78 years old.  (At least, that’s about how old he thought he was.)  His hair was thin, gray, and receding at the temples, but his eyes were lively and his physique robust -- all the more remarkable given what he had lived through. I listened intently, as I had so many times before to so many similar stories, but it was still beyond my ability to comprehend. It’s probably beyond yours, too.Pham To told me that the planes began their bombing runs in 1965 and that periodic artillery shelling started about the same time.  Nobody will ever know just how many civilians were killed in the years after that. “The number is uncountable,” he said one spring day a few years ago in a village in the mountains of rural central Vietnam. “So many people died.”

Gun Control and Arms Control

by Lawrence S. Wittner

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.In a number of ways, gun control issues are remarkably similar to arms control issues.

How to Fight the Tragedy of Global Hunger this Holiday Season

by William Lambers

The holiday season is a time of giving to loved ones. It can also be a time of giving to those unseen or invisible: the world's hungry. In the winter of 1920-21, with the scars of World War I still fresh, helping an invisible guest became a centerpiece of holiday celebrations.The First World War left destruction far beyond the battlefields of Europe. Food supplies were devastated, and recovery would not come easily. The American Relief Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, provided food aid to Europe's hungry long after the guns fell silent following the 1918 Armistice.In 1920, because Europe’s food production had not rebounded enough for them to feed themselves, Hoover assembled a group of charities, including the Red Cross and church groups, to form the European Relief Council.

Were U.S. Marines Used as Guinea Pigs on Okinawa?

by Jon Mitchell

U.S. Honest John missile warhead cutaway, showing M134 sarin bomblets circa 1960. Credit. Wiki Commons.Newly-discovered documents reveal that fifty years ago this month, in December 1962, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program subjected thousands of unwitting American service members around the globe to substances including sarin and VX nerve gases.

Better Dictators than Elected Islamists

by Daniel Pipes

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.Who is worse, President Mohamed Morsi, the elected Islamist seeking to apply Islamic law in Egypt, or President Husni Mubarak, the former dictator ousted for trying to start a dynasty? More broadly will a liberal, democratic order more likely emerge under Islamist ideologues who prevail through the ballot box or from greedy dictators with no particular agenda beyond their own survival and power?Morsi's recent actions provide an answer, establishing that Islamists are yet worse than dictators.This issue came up in an interesting debate for Intelligence Squared U.S. in early October when Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress argued "Better elected Islamists than dictators," while Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and I argued the counter-argument. Well, no one really argued "for" anyone. The other team did not endorse Islamists, we certainly did not celebrate dictators. The issue, rather, was which sort of ruler is the lesser of two evils, and can be cudgeled to democracy.

Why Don't Americans Like the United Nations?

by Gil Troy

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan speaking against the "Zionism is racism" resolution in 1975. Credit: YouTube.Last week’s United Nations General Assembly vote upgrading the status of Palestine was a dramatic moment, with the United States courageously voting in a small, beleaguered minority. Yet it seemed to evoke one big collective American yawn. Yes, we have our own troubles with the fiscal cliff and the Sandy aftermath, while watching even bigger Middle East threats as Egypt risks imploding and Syria risks exploding. But the national dismissal also reflected the fact that most Americans do not take the U.N. seriously anymore. The great redemptive hopes generated when it was founded in 1945 soured so long ago that, like embittered divorcees, most Americans have forgotten they -- or their grandparents -- were ever in love.

Gaza's Not the Key, Philadelphi Is

by Daniel Pipes

The Philadelphi corridor as it existed in 2005. Credit: Daniel Pipes.The Second Hamas-Israel War of November 10-21 inspired a mighty debate over rights and wrongs, with each side appealing to the large undecided bloc (19 percent of Americans according to CNN/ORC, 38 percent according to Rasmussen). Is Israel a criminal state that has no right to exist, much less to deploy force? Or is it a modern liberal democracy with the rule of law that justifiably protects innocent civilians? Morality drives this debate.

Sucking Up to the Military Brass

by William J. Astore

Petraeus at his retirement ceremony from the military. Credit: Flickr/DVIDSHUB.

“It’s Mostly Punishment…” Testimonies by Veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces From Gaza and the Occupied Territories

by Oded Na’aman

IDF soldiers on patrol in Hebron. Credit: Flickr/megahamama.“There is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” President Barack Obama said at a press conference last week. He drew on this general observation in order to justify Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s most recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip. In describing the situation this way, he assumes, like many others, that Gaza is a political entity external and independent of Israel. This is not so. It is true that Israel officially disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, withdrawing its ground troops and evacuating the Israeli settlements there. But despite the absence of a permanent ground presence, Israel has maintained a crushing control over Gaza from that moment until today.

Morsi’s Second Coup Provokes Mass Protest in Egypt

by Juan Cole

Still of video from protests against Morsi in Tahrir Square on November 24. Credit: YouTube/Lidion Kulla.Egypt’s president Muhammad Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s civil wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, issued a wide-ranging set of decrees [last] Thursday that greatly enhanced his power and would have led to a constitutional crisis if there were a functioning Egyptian constitution. He seems likely, in any case, to have set off substantial social turmoil, on the eve of the second anniversary of the beginning of the movement against his predecessor. He appears buoyed by the close working relationship he developed with U.S. president Barack Obama during the Gaza crisis and by his success in facing down Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the question of an Israeli land invasion of Gaza. Prominent Egyptian liberals and leftists denounced the decrees and pledged to go to the streets to overturn them.

How Morsi Took Power in Egypt

by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2011 on the campaign trail. Credit: Wiki Commons.Earlier this year, most analysts in Egypt assessed Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi as the key figure in that country's politics and President Mohamed Morsi as a lightweight, so it came as a surprise when Morsi fired Tantawi on August 12, 2012.This matters because Tantawi would have kept the country out of Islamist hands while Morsi is speedily moving the country in the direction of applying Islamic law. If Morsi succeeds at this, the result will have major negative implications for America's standing in the region.What happened?

The March of Scandal from Pericles to Petraeus

by Barry Strauss

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.General David Petraeus ended his term as the director of the CIA after it turned out that the world’s leading spymaster had cast discretion to the wind to have an extramarital affair. Nor was the other woman shy and retiring about sharing alleged state secrets (although it appears that no security was in fact breached). For what it’s worth, history offers Petraeus this consolation: he’s in good company.

The Arab Reading of the Petraeus/Allen Affair

by Juan Cole

Holly Petraeus, left, at a party held at the home of Jill Kelley, née Gilberte Khawam (right), who precipitated the Petraeus scandal. Credit: Juan Cole/Alarabiya.The headlines about the Petraeus affair in the Arab world this morning almost universally read something like “Lebanese woman brings down CIA.” The woman who seems to have destroyed three careers and kicked off the FBI investigation of General David Petraeus, ex-director of the CIA, goes by Jill Kelley. But her maiden name is Gilberte Khawam.The Khawam family are Maronite Catholics from Jounieh in Lebanon, and came to the U.S. in the mid-1970s. The father, Hanna (“John”) Khawam, had been a musician in Beirut. His wife is Marcelle, also a Lebanese Christian.

Facing Another Kind of Cliff

by Louis René Beres

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.For newly re-elected President Barack Obama, there will be no more urgent policy concern than U.S. strategic doctrine. In the past, despite growing mega-security threats to the United States, including robust expansions of Russia's nuclear arsenal, the president has not paid such doctrine any conspicuous attention. During the just-finished election campaign, both candidates briefly touched upon certain potential nuclear threats from Iran, Pakistan, and Russia, but all of these off-the-cuff references were to specifically isolated and singular perils.At no time were these references expressed in terms of any systematic and comprehensive American nuclear strategy.Now, Mr.Obama should plainly understand and openly acknowledge that nuclear weapons are not a problem in themselves. In fact, as he may readily learn from documented military history, weapons have never been more or less destabilizing simply because of their capacity to destroy. There is, therefore, no point to a president demonizing nuclear weapons as such.