MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2010) Abisaab, Malek. Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010). Backmann, René. A Wall in Palestine (New York: Picador, 2010). Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). DiMaggio, Anthony. The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Fred Halliday The death of Fred Halliday, a contributing editor of this magazine since 1977, leaves an enormous void in the lives of many of us who were part of MERIP’s first decades. He also served on the editorial board of New Left Review from 1969-1983, and taught international relations at the London School o Joe Stork • 5 min read
MER Article Willful Blindness Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Harvard, 2010). Chris Toensing • 6 min read
MER Article Investing in Inequality Beginning in the late summer of 2008 teachers in Egypt have waged a series of public protests against new assessment exams that would determine whether they would receive pay increases or not. In protest teachers argue that the exams are humiliating, questioning their ability to teach regardless of performance or Marion Wood Dixon • 12 min read
MER Article BDS in the USA, 2001-2010 On April 26, 2010, the student senate at the University of California-Berkeley upheld, by one vote, an executive veto on SB 118 -- the student body resolution endorsing divestment of university funds from General Electric and United Technologies, two companies that profit from the Israeli occupation Noura Erakat • 19 min read
MER Article Drawing the Wrong Lessons from Israel's 2006 War For many military critics of COIN, the future of war is not to be found in the steamy jungles of Vietnam but rather on the rocky hillsides of southern Lebanon, where Israel was fought to a standstill by the guerrilla army of Hizballah in the summer of 2006. Israel possesses one of the world’s most p Steve Niva • 11 min read
MER Article The Problem with "Hearts and Minds" in Afghanistan US strategy in Afghanistan sits upon a precipice. Eight years after the United States invaded the Taliban-controlled portion of Afghanistan in response to the horrific events of September 11, 2001, Washington and its allies find themselves waging a war of unknown character, for unclear purposes, against an ill-defined enemy. As B. D. Hopkins • 13 min read
MER Article The New (and Old) Classics of Counterinsurgency Two weapons today threaten freedom in our world. One -- the 100-megaton hydrogen bomb -- requires vast resources of technology, effort and money. It is an ultimate weapon of civilized and scientific man. The other -- a nail and a piece of wood buried in a rice paddy -- is deceptively simple, the wea Laleh Khalili • 21 min read
MER Article "Culture as a Weapon" At the fourth Culture Summit of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in April 2010, Maj. Gen. David Hogg, head of the Adviser Forces in Afghanistan, proposed that the US military think of “culture as a weapon system.” [1] The military, Hogg asserted, needs to learn the culture of the l ROCHELLE DAVIS • 19 min read
MER Article Iraq Moves Backward The easiest way to understand the dramatic changes in Iraqi politics from 2009 to 2010 is to look at shifts in the discourse of politicians belonging to the Da‘wa Party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Reidar Visser • 16 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Summer 2010) During his second term, his approval rating heading stubbornly south, President George W. Bush was fond of comparing himself to Harry Truman. The dour Missourian, too, was “misunderestimated” -- lightly regarded when thrust onto the world stage and then raked over the coals for strike breaking and a The Editors • 5 min read
