Call them juxtapositions, call them contradictions — Israel overflows with them. Three examples from my recent six week-long visit there:During a week in which international attention was focused on events in Rafah in southern Gaza, the attention of Israelis was divided. The destruction in Rafah was impossible to avoid, and the controversyRead More
Last week’s Aipac convention, where President Bush spoke to calls for “four more years,” left the impression that many of America’s Jews are moving away from their traditionally Democratic preferences to rally around a president whom they see as a strong friend of Israel. But is it really the case that American JewsRead More
President Bush’s not quite prime-time address on Monday at the Army War College had four vital audiences: the American people, the international community, the Iraqi people and the American military. But the president could not or did not tell any of his audiences what they needed and deserved to hear.At a critical moment for the future of Iraq,Read More
It seems that issues central to the American foreign policy agenda today are unequivocally and insistently pursued everywhere — except in Latin America.As Secretary of State Colin Powell stated at a briefing to Congress last February, America’s “top” priorities of a “more serious nature” — the consolidation of democratic regimes, theRead More
A few days ago, in a conversation with a retired senior officer in the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, I dropped a derogatory remark about the now infamous posing of naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.“We learned it from you,” the DIA man retorted.“Not the taunting women and theRead More
Once again, Jews are fighting for their place in German society. This time, however, the battle is internal — Jew vs. Jew, with the identity of the world’s fastest growing Jewish community hanging in the balance.In one corner stands the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the longtime champion of communal interests and officialRead More
Is it really so snobbish to ask, “What did you expect?” when it comes to the soldiers who behaved so inhumanely, so outrageously, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?After all, who are they? Six, at least, come from the 372nd army reserve unit, many of whose members live in Appalachia.Read More
The way some of my fellow conservatives have been discussing the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, in which American military guards snapped photos of naked Iraqis being humiliated in various ways, calls to mind a rule of rhetoric known to all writers. If you’ve got a pair of sentences linked by a word like “but” or “however,”Read More
The Democratic establishment is concerned about where presumptive presidential candidate John Kerry stands as his campaign moves toward summer. The Bush re-election effort has spent some of its fortune establishing a formidable field operation in the battleground states, where in some cases the Kerry campaign has yet toRead More
Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s address to the Anti-Defamation League on May 3 was interesting, both in what he said and what he did not say about Israel, the Middle East and the war on terrorism. It reflected his by now familiar practice of vague assurances and lack of clarity and consistencyRead More
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