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Lies and diversions always pollute official explanations of state policy, and Obama’s talk on Egypt in the past few days is no different. For decades, U.S. policy toward Egypt has consistently supported dictatorship and hasn’t changed with the recent popular uprisings — despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Filed under: foreign policy, world
It is with considerable pathos that I found the following open letter of academics, led by Noam Chomsky, calling on Obama to come out unambiguously on the side of the Egyptian people against Mubarak. Pathos, because this is a case where the lefties, even as they sound suspiciously like the more exuberant neocons, have more [...]
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Reviewing The King’s Speech, Nick Greenslade writes: In the United States, [Churchill’s] wartime leadership was regularly cited as an inspiration and example by those leading “The War on Terror”. George Bush, we were informed after 9/11, kept a bust of him in the Oval Office. It’s almost as if the film-makers have ticked off all [...]
Since I triumphantly declared that at last, the neocon Hitler-Stalin pact moment had arrived, the neocons have rushed headlong into insisting that the global democratic revolution lives. Each example is just such a spectacle to behold in itself that they must be listed one by one: Max Boot: “We’re all neocons now.” One is left [...]
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Many readers no doubt saw my contribution to the TAC symposium on the State of the Union, which included this Daily Show dialogue on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that cannot be repeated often enough: Jon Stewart: Could something like this happen again? John Oliver: No Jon, this was a [...]
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The Forward has a symposium on the legacy of Joe Lieberman now that he’s leaving office, with a contribution by Josh Muravchik of AEI, lamenting the passing from the scene of the last “true Democrat”. There is probably no one more plainly unqualified to identify a true democrat, small d or large, than Josh Muravchik. [...]
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No sooner do I call it out than both the Weekly Standard and National Review abruptly abandon their democratic revolutionism and go far beyond the old dictatorships-and-double-standards standby, sounding an awful lot like Edmund Burke, if not Joseph de Maistre, in warning ominously about the dangers of the mob. But the news comes today that [...]
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As of 11 AM Eastern Standard Time, the only item on the Commentary blog since 7 PM last night is about Amy Chua. The preceding item is a lament for Lebanon by the odd gentile Eustonite Michael Totten. The Weekly Standard only showed last night’s Brett Baier panel discussion on the events in the Middle [...]
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Events in Egypt and elsewhere continue to proceed too rapidly to keep pace. I continue to highly recommend Mondoweiss, which whatever my criticisms of its editorial line has always been second to none in breaking coverage of major stories. There is yet more breaking news here, here, and here. Even so establishment an outfit as [...]
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Long time readers should be familiar with my view that Obama never seriously believed he could dismantle settlements, that it was only a smoke screen to buy time for the inevitable. That inevitable is of course now fast approaching, not just with Israel but across the whole region. And to be sure, the Administration flails [...]
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