News Abroad

What Should We Make of Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad’s “Letter to the Noble Americans”

by Timothy R. Furnish

On November 29, 2006 the dubiously-elected President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad, had published in his name an epistle to the people of the United States.  Herewith is an analysis of, and commentary upon, this letter1 (with relevant quotations of Ahmadinezhad’s reproduced):  Right after opening with the bismillah, invoking Allah the Merciful and Compassionate, Ahmadinezhad prays that God will “

Is the Fifth Time a Charm? The Election of Daniel Ortega and the Frente Sandinista  

by Jeffrey L. Gould

Recent articles in the mainstream media on Daniel Ortega’s victory in the Nicaraguan presidential elections have emphasized his opportunism. Some dissident voices have protested the Bush administration’s efforts to interfere in the elections. Both arguments are worth making, but they overlook key aspects of the Nicaraguan political situation and recent history. Over the past two decades, Ortega has run in five presidential elections; he won the first in 1984 and then lost the n

Remembrance of Wars Past

by Robert S. McElvaine

The past three weekends have been a time for remembrance of wars past—and what they can tell us about war present. First there was the annual day of remembrance, Veterans’ Day, commemorating the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, when World War I ended. A week later, President Bush was concluding his first visit to Vietnam, inevitably bringing to the fore questions about parallels between the American war there and the war in Iraq.

Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam

by John Paul Rossi

Although President Bush has long denied that the Vietnam and Iraq wars are in anyway comparable, his mid-November visit to Vietnam forced him to confront the issue anew.[1]  While Press Secretary Tony Snow and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice were busy deflecting questions about the relevance of the U.S.’s experiences in the Vietnam War to th

An End to Interventionism in Venezuela

by Nikolas Kozloff

With the Dec. 3 presidential election in oil-rich Venezuela, the time has come for an overhaul of the Bush administration's catastrophic policy in that South American country. The U.S. channeling of millions of dollars to Venezuelan organizations, many of which are critical of President Hugo Chavez's regime, is hugely destabilizing and will foster great acrimony and distrust between the two nations. U.S. meddling has stirred up resentment left over from April 2002 when Chavez was briefly overthrown in a coup. Prior to the coup, U.S. policymakers met with the plotters and funneled money to the opposition through the U.S. taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy. Chavez has accused his electoral opponent, Manuel Rosales, the governor of the western state of Zulia, of fostering a separatist movement, together with "Mr. Danger" (Chavez's name for President Bush). The Venezuelan attorney general has initiated an investigation to determine whether one right-wing organization is guilty of treason. The group, Rumbo Propio ("Our Own Path"), has placed banners in oil-rich Zulia state advocating regional separation.

Reflections on War and Its Consequences

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The shift of the Iraq War from what its early proponents claimed would be a cakewalk to what most current observers—including the small group of neocons who originally championed it—consider a disaster suggests that war's consequences are not always predictable.Some wars, admittedly, work out fairly well—at least for the victors.  In the third of the Punic Wars (149-146 B.C.), Rome's victory against Carthage was complete, and it obliterated that rival empire from

Why the U.S. Loses ‘Small Wars’

by Larry Kahaner

If history is any gauge, the US will lose the current conflict in Iraq. Since the end of World War II, major US use of force against substantially weaker enemies – Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, for example – have ended poorly. The last remaining superpower is not alone in this phenomenon of strong armies losing to lesser foes: the American colonists beat the British, the Vietnamese forced France to leave Indochina and Afghanistan’s Mujahadeen drove  the Soviets from their

Why It's Time to Dump the UN

by Dino E. Buenviaje

For the last 60 years, the United Nations has been one continual story of missed opportunities. In that respect, the UN eerily resembles the League of Nations of the 1920s and 1930s. By allowing North Korea to flout international nuclear norms, permitting genocide in Darfur, and watching Iraq crumble into chaos, the UN's record is as ineffective as the League's. Given the UN's record, any other organization would be better than the one we have.  At

What a Freshly Discovered Einstein Letter Says About Turkey Today

by Arnold Reisman

On October 29, 2006 Turkey celebrated the 83rd anniversary of its founding as a Republic. In its commemoration the Hürriyet, a high-circulation Turkish daily, carried a first page article “A REQUEST FROM THE GREAT GENIUS TO THE YOUNG REPUBLIC” by Murat Bardakçij. The request refers to a September 17, 1933 letter from Einstein to Prime Minister İsmet İnönü. In his article, Bardakçij juxtaposed Turkey’s current b

Will Turkey Seize Northern Iraq?

by Hakan Ozoglu

The fate of Northern Iraq or Iraqi Kurdistan promises to be one of the most sensitive issues that will affect the stability of the region. The political future of these Kurdish districts is of grave importance for the Turks. The Turks suspect a hidden agenda of the Iraqi Kurds and the Coalition Powers, an agenda that might ultimately culminate in the creation of a Kurdish state. The Turks would consider this ill fated, for such a state would “indisputably” endanger the national

Lessons from Iran, 1977-78

by Henry Pelifian

During my time in Iran from 1977 to 1978 there were between forty and fifty thousand Americans, many of them working in the military-industrial complex. The Shah of Iran with the approval of the U.S. government had signed a contract with a U.S. manufacturer of helicopters worth $250 million dollars for the purchase of helicopters, parts and the training for pilots and mechanics. Before departing for Iran the sub-contractor showed a documentary film of Iran with the narration stating that th

Déja vu All Over Again? 1968 and 2006

by Robert Buzzanco and James Carter

A difficult and unpopular war gets worse; the public increasingly turns against the conflict and the ruling political party is renounced in the voting booth; an unpopular secretary of defense is finally fired and a group of wizened consultants which includes an influential past secretary of state calls for a reorganization of the war effort and eventual deescalation; and the military, fearful of being blamed for the coming failure, pressures for a change in strategy as well. Are we

Indoctrination Parading as History at Andover High

by Richard L. Cravatts

In a country where high school students cannot even correctly identify the century in which the American Civil War was waged, and who are able to name more of the Seven Dwarfs than sitting Supreme Court Justices, at least students in Andover High School will be very familiar with the historical term “ethnic cleansing,” and how the world’s singular and most egregious example of its continued practice is, of course, found in the “apartheid Zionist regime” of Israel

Who Will Pay for Iraq and When?

by Jonathan Coopersmith

In all the heated words about the Iraq war, we've heard little or nothing about paying for it. Regardless of how you feel about the war, you must concede that it is going to cost us all dearly. The Iraq war is consuming over $1.4 billion a week -- or $200 million a day. In the time it takes you to read this article, the American government will have spent $700,000 on the war. The war has cost $200 billion already. Economists have estimated the war's ultimate bill will be $1-2 trilli

God's Terrorists

by Charles Allen

There is a widely held view in the West that the violence perpetrated by Muslim jihadists is a response to Western imperialism: a defence of Islam that will cease as soon as the US and its allies pull out of the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan (taking the Israelis with them). As a student of South Asian history I am bound to take a more sanguine view: that this violence has its roots in the perceived failure of Islam to achieve its destiny as a global religion, resulting in attempts to rene

Interview with William R. Polk: Out of Iraq Now

by Rick Shenkman

Mr. Polk taught at Harvard from 1955 to 1961 when he was appointed a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US State Department. He is the author most recently (with George McGovern) of Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006), which advocates the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq by the end of June 2007. This interview was conducted by email. First, how did you come to write this book with George McGovern?I have lo

Reflections on the Anti-War Documentary, Sir! No Sir!

by Jerry Lembcke

The new documentary about the Vietnam-era GI anti-war movement, Sir! No Sir!, opened in theaters during the spring and summer of 2006. The film compiles the historical record of the rank-and-file rebellion that grew during the war years and reached the level of mutiny in Vietnam by the war’s end. It recounts that history through the stories of people like Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan, Dr. Howard Levy, Navy Lt. Susan Schnall, and infantryman David Cline, all of w

Did the Bush Administration Take History into Account Before Attacking Iraq? What Woodward's Book Suggests

by HNN Staff

A thorough review of Bob Woodward's account of the Iraq War, State of Denial, suggests that the Bush administration rarely thought to consult historians or to consider how history might shape the outcome. These, according to Woodward, are the limited number of occasions when they did.Run-Up to WarTo help shape the administration's response to 9/11 Paul Wolfowitz gamely assembled an outside group of pundits and scholars to "tackle the biggest questions."

Restoring Russian Support for the War on Terror

by Jeffrey Mankoff

In the hours after the planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush to express sympathy for the victims of the attack was the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Putin's phone call and promise to support the United States in crushing Islamic terrorism appeared to herald a new era in U.S.-Russian cooperation. Now, five years after the terrorist attacks, ties between Washington and Moscow are increasingly frayed

Democracy's Vital Ingredient -- Food

by William Lambers

It was George Marshall, architect of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II, who observed that "democratic principles do not flourish on empty stomachs." Marshall's words ring true today as a lesson for the fledgling democracy of Afghanistan, where over eight million people are at risk from hunger and malnutrition.   The Bush administration would be wise to heed Marshall's warning and rally the international community to increase food aid to