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Horrors of War Our Leaders Never Have to Confront
Sep 23, 2008 I'm not sure of this, but I think -- I suspect and feel -- that the Great War, the war of 1914-1918, is beginning to dominate our lives even more than the terrible and infinitely more costly conflict of 1939-1945. The Second World War may haunt our lives. The First World War, it seems to me, imprisons us all.Syria Succeeds by Doing Nothing
Aug 4, 2008 Without a shot being fired, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ensured that anyone who wants anything in the Middle East has got to talk to Syria. He's done nothing -- and he's won.
Dramatic Return for the Living and the Dead
Jul 18, 2008 Yesterday [July 16] was the last day of the 2006 Lebanon war, the final chapter of Israel's folly and Hizbollah's hubris, a grisly day of corpse-swapping and refrigerated body parts and coffin after bleak wooden coffin on trucks crossing the Israeli border, which left old Ali Ahmed al-Sfeir and his wife, Wahde, stooped and broken with grief.Educating the U.S. About the Middle East
Jul 15, 2008 "You in the West have a moral duty in Europe to educate the United States more about the Middle East. If they don't listen to you, they will not listen to us. They will continue with their mistakes." I don't think they're going to listen, I mutter.
Snapshots of Life and Death in Baghdad
Jul 4, 2008 Three bodies lie beside a Baghdad street on a blindingly hot day. The one on the right is dressed in a white shirt and bright green trousers, his hands tied behind his back. Two others on the left lie shoeless, both dressed in check shirts, dumped -- how easily we use that word of Baghdad's corpses -- on a yard of dirt and bags of garbage. They, too, of course, are now garbage.