Current Analysis Killing Live 8, Noisily The organizers of Live 8, the week-long, celebrity-driven musical campaign for increased aid and debt relief for poverty-stricken nations, plugged their July 6 concert in an Edinburgh stadium as “a celebration of the largest and loudest cry to make poverty history the world has ever seen.” By rush hour the Sheila Carapico • 8 min read
Current Analysis US Stays with Egyptian Dictator “America will stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” With these soaring words in the 2005 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush swore to overturn the long-standing US polic Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Mahmoud Abbas’ Mission Improbable Renewed, if somewhat less euphoric talk of a historic opportunity for Middle East peace accompanied Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas both heading to and returning from his May 26, 2005 summit with President George W. Bush at the White House. Yet the opportunity, of which much has been written since Mouin Rabbani, Chris Toensing • 10 min read
Current Analysis Beating a Slow, Stubborn Retreat at Guantanamo Bay Just under a week after the collapse of the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush issued Military Order 1 to establish principles for the “ detention, treatment and trial of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism.” The order, promulgated on November 13, 2001, was the fir Charles Schmitz • 21 min read
Current Analysis For Arab World Peace, More Voices Need Attention Pundits on the right have been quick to say the Bush administration deserves credit for sparking democratic rumblings across the Middle East. They note the popular protests against Syrian influence in Lebanon and Egyptian President Husni Mubarak ’s pledge to allow multiple candidates to run in the p Waleed Hazbun, Michelle Woodward • 2 min read
Current Analysis Dictatorship Remains OK for our Allies President George W. Bush likes to associate his administration’s goals with the will of the Almighty. Witness the stirring coda of the 2005 State of the Union address: “The road of Providence is uneven and unpredictable yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom.” As in many previous speeches, Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Hypocrisy Doesn't Win Arab Friends A prominent liberal Arab journalist who strongly supported the war in Iraq, has a long record of outspoken opposition to Islamic extremism, and has a deep appreciation for American values recently told me that he has never been more depressed or more alienated from the United States. Why? He was abs Marc Lynch • 3 min read
Current Analysis Scandals of Oil for Food Rep. Ralph Hall opened a set of Congressional hearings on July 8 with a dramatic flourish, denouncing "the deaths of thousands of Iraqis through malnutrition and lack of appropriate medical supplies." "We have a name for that in the United States," the Texas Republican told a subcommittee of the Hou Joy Gordon • 10 min read
Current Analysis The Imperial Lament Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). There is something refreshing about British historian Niall Ferguson’s argument “not merely that the United States is an empire, but that it has always been an empire.” For a certain kind of American liberal, t Joel Beinin • 18 min read
Current Analysis Torture and the Future There is a popular belief that Western history constitutes a progressive move from more to less torture. Iron maidens and racks are now museum exhibits, crucifixions are sectarian iconography and scientific experimentation on twins is History Channel infotainment. This narrative of progress deftly b Lisa Hajjar • 24 min read
Current Analysis Military Families Feel Betrayed by Administration For everyone except George W. Bush and his entourage, the recent siege of Falluja and the standoff with the militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave occasion to rethink the conventional wisdom about the US-led occupation of Iraq. Chris Toensing • 4 min read
Current Analysis Lost in Our Own Little World Two days after a lethal car bomb exploded outside the Mount Lebanon Hotel in downtown Baghdad last month, I sat down for tea with an Iraqi poet near the capital’s famous open-air book market. In between jokes delivered with a mock Egyptian accent, he laid out his theory of the hotel bombing: the US Chris Toensing • 4 min read
