By Anwaar Hussain President Obama’s decision to surge the troops’ level in Afghanistan is understandable. That is the only thing America can do in fact. They cannot just pack their bags and go home. They are losing the war with the present troop strength. All other conventional tactics have been tried out. The troop surge [...]

By Anwaar Hussain Strange title, eh? Wait a bit please. Hoh is the surname of a former Marine who fought in Iraq and became a diplomat in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan and who on September 10 this year resigned in a high-profile protest of the Afghan war. In so doing, Matthew Hoh became the [...]

by Milton Bearden As the United States settles into its eighth year of military operations in Afghanistan, and as plans for ramping up U.S. troop strength are under way, we might reflect on an observation made by the Chinese military sage, Sun Tzu, about twenty-five hundred years ago: In military campaigns I have heard of [...]

By Bill Noxid The most disturbing consequence of the election of the first African-American president is the delusional rush to pretend that this country that was founded ( and continues to function ) on genocide and slavery, is somehow “past” racism.  Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth, and the fact that society as [...]

By David Cole The story of America’s descent into torture in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been told now by many writers. Mark Danner, Jane Mayer, and Ron Suskind have written brilliant expositions of the facts, showing how the drive to prevent the next attack led the administration’s highest [...]

By Rowan Wolf I come from a varied background which has taken me on a winding a somewhat tortuous trail throughout my life. There are a series of threads that tie me to Judaism and hence Israel, and to the Palestinians. I come from what is sometimes referred to as “humble” beginnings. In my case [...]

By Daniel Luban The U.S. State Department fiercely denied claims made by Ehud Olmert about his influence over President George W. Bush, in an incident that has stirred up old debates about the role of the Israeli government and the so-called “Israel lobby” in formulating Middle East policy in Washington. On Monday, Olmert claimed that [...]