Here we go again. Israeli forces and pro-Palestinian activists clash, leaving nine activists dead and seven Israeli soldiers injured. Israel says it acted in self-defense, while Palestinian leaders charge Israel with launching a pre-meditated attack on an aid mission to Gaza. That the facts surrounding the skirmish on the seas around Gaza are in dispute …
Continue reading “Surprise! Violence erupts, Israel condemned”
Debates about taxes and spending in America are fought on two levels, the ideological and the pragmatic. The first gets far more attention, but the second reflects an equally important feature of the American character. At the ideological level, Americans distrust government, worry when they think it’s growing too big and believe that it produces …
With a headiness nourished by electoral victory, every incoming American president succumbs to “new president’s disease” – the confidence that, with more brains, more effort, and a better staff in and around the Oval Office, he will succeed on longstanding challenges where his predecessors have failed. No challenge has so dominated the time of recent …
What would President Roosevelt, the driving force behind what became the United Nations, and his wife Eleanor, the architect of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, think of what the world is now making of their handiwork? In Orwellian fashion, the United Nations has become its own worst enemy, an obstacle to its professed ends …
Because an Iran with nuclear weapons remains but a prospect for the future, rather than a reality with which to grapple today, the United States and its allies can enjoy the luxury of procrastination rather than feel the urgency of action. Of immediacy, by contrast, is the actual shooting war that’s underway between the United …
At the heart of President Obama’s nuclear weapons policy lies a key assumption – that Iran, North Korea and other “rogue” states are susceptible to threats of isolation and tempted by global acceptance. He may be right – and I hope he is – but history offers compelling evidence to the contrary. Of his new …
Continue reading “Obama’s nuke strategy: Do the rogues really care about “engagement”?”
Great athletes describe how, during moments of success, they feel as if time is slowing down so that – whether they are leading a fast break or awaiting a 95-mile-an-hour pitch – they see the game unfold in a kind of slow motion. In the arena of public affairs, we, too, have the power to …