Friday  2003-03-07   World

Jaw jaw or war war

"Casuistries of Peace and War" dispatches tired arguments for and against US/UK invasion of Iraq away.

 
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Thursday  2003-03-06   World

Stalin has been dead for 50 years

On 1953-03-05 Stalin died. Arts & Letters Daily lists many essays and articles on this anniversary.

Joseph Stalin died as he lived: filled with hatred and paranoia, cursing the world... Johann Hari ... Jonathan Freedland ... Anne Applebaum ... Stefan Wagstyl ... Andrei Zolotov ... Vitali Vitaliev ... Jan Dalley

 
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Saturday  2003-02-08   World

Watch your language

Veteran Korean watcher Aidan Foster-Carter is no softie -- he sparred with Bruce Cumings over the latter's lax treatment of North Korea in "Korea's Place in the Sun" and he frequently pokes fun at often rambling and hysterical sounding North Korean news bulletins while providing useful analysis of them. Unfortunately ever since current nuclear crisis of North Korea started last October, Western coverage of North Korea has begun to resemble shrillness and viciousness of official North Korean press, betraying the writers' ignorance and self-righteous pomposity as Forster-Carter points out.

 
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Friday  2003-02-07   World

The chosen one?

Does President Bush suffer from messiah complex? Yes or No?

 
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Monday  2003-01-20   World

How to end the war with Iraq

One end game presented by "ultra-realists" John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argues that "Both logic and historical evidence suggest a policy of vigilant containment would work, both now and in the event Iraq acquires a nuclear arsenal." And "[t]his war would be one the Bush administration chose to fight but did not have to fight." In other words, no new expedition is necessary.

Fouad Ajami claims otherwise and urges America to take up the challenge of modernizing the Arab world starting from Iraq: "For Pax Americana, Iraq may be worth the effort and the risks." This new Wilsonian quest will make everybody including the Arabs better off whether they like it or not.

Either way, the Iraqis have no say whatever despite the potential price in life they have to pay. Neither do American voters as their Congress gave away war game last October.

 
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Tuesday  2003-01-07   World

Suicide non-solution

In "The Suicide Bombers" Avishai Margalit provides detailed accounts of Palestine suicide bombers and their devastating effects:

The members of the Israeli center-left, the only people who could secure for the Palestinians a state alongside Israel, used to believe in two propositions. First, the occupation since 1967 has been a moral and social disaster for Israel, let alone for the Palestinians, and it has to end. Second, if Israel withdrew to pre-1967 borders this would end the conflict. The second intifada convinced more and more Israelis, including many on the right, of the truth of the first proposition; the occupation cannot go on. On the other hand, the suicide bombers have convinced more and more Israelis, including many in the center-left, that the end of the occupation would mean neither an end to the conflict nor, more important, an end to the terror.

 
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Saturday  2002-08-17   World

Iraq: In all but name, the war's on

Marc Erikson reports "Iraq: In all but name, the war's on". If we count a decade of bombing runs as war, this is one of the longest wars US has fought - twelve years and counting from the day Kuwait fell 1990-08-02.

 
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