Current Analysis Chosen People Ideology Mitchell Plitnick got [http://www.lobelog.com/gop-officially-endorses-one-state-solution/#more-11164] a Republican National Committee spokeswoman to confirm that the body passed a resolution “recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis Price Tag Journalism The Washington Post today features a hit piece [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/center-for-america-progress-group-tied-to-obama-accused-of-anti-semitic-language/2012/01/17/gIQAcrHXAQ_story.html?hpid=z3] on the Center for American Progress, the largely Clintonite think tank whose Middle East d Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis The Siren Song of Ron Paul Say Ron Paul were actually elected president. Say that, in his proverbial first 100 days, he used his bully pulpit to push for two things: deep cuts in aid to Israel and other US allies, and elimination [http://www.grist.org/article/paul1] of Federal subsidies for alternative energy research. Which Chris Toensing • 2 min read
MER Article The September 11 Effect on Anthropology Conventional wisdom among scholars of the Middle East is that the September 11, 2001 attacks left behind a threatening professional environment. Graduate students and faculty alike speak of hostile infiltrators in their classrooms, inevitably bitter tenure battles and the self-censorship that both c Lara Deeb, Jessica Winegar • 5 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Winter 2011) A question nagged at Occupy Wall Street and its myriad imitators, the most exciting social movement to emanate from the United States in more than a decade, for much of the fall. “What are your demands?” journalists persisted in asking. “What do you want?” The Editors • 9 min read
Current Analysis Debunking the Iran "Terror Plot" At a press conference on October 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a plac Gareth Porter • 19 min read
Current Analysis The Rites and Rights of Citizenship On Tuesday I became a citizen of the United States. Almost ten years ago, I was granted permanent residency. Between my Green Card and my naturalization certificate lies the seemingly endless decade of the “war on terror.” Moustafa Bayoumi • 8 min read
MER Article Shoring Up the National Security State Many expected the Obama administration to slow or altogether stop the growth of the national security state that its two predecessor administrations brought into being, but just the opposite has occurred. Prisoners are still held without charge at Guantánamo Bay; the Patriot Act is still the law; t Nina Farnia • 10 min read
Current Analysis Of Principle and Peril Reasonable, principled people can disagree about whether, in an ideal world, Western military intervention in Libya’s internal war would be a moral imperative. With Saddam Hussein dead and gone, there is arguably no more capricious and overbearing dictator in the Arab world than Col. Muammar al-Qadd The Editors • 10 min read
Current Analysis Getting It Wrong in Guantánamo I was at Guantánamo Bay prison on Halloween. In a ghoulishly fitting coincidence, that was the same day a former child solider was convicted for war crimes for the first time since the end of World War II. Eight years and one day after Omar Khadr arrived at Guantánamo, his military commission case c Lisa Hajjar • 2 min read
MER Article Enloe, Nimo's War, Emma's War Cynthia Enloe, Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). War is usually presented as all about hard power and weaponry. In school, students are taught about generals, battlefields, advances in armaments and innovations in milita Lauren Geiser • 4 min read
