Foreign Affairs
I have to say that P.J. O’Rourke manages to make Afghanistan seem like a nice place to visit and converse with the locals. Of course, it’s not true that the world is populated by near-Americans, but neither is it true that people can be entirely foreign to each other. Bridging a language barrier and making…
I’ve got to agree with David Pryce-Jones: … [President Obama] admits we are in a fight and the reason we’ll win “is not simply the strength of our arms — it is the strength of our values. The democracy we uphold.” This in the week he’s just been rejoicing about imminently in Cairo removing the…
Last night Monique and Tony Cornetta talked, on the Matt Allen Show, about Iran, teachers’ unions, and partisan ethics. Stream by clicking here, or download it.
Frida Ghitis highlights evidence that a nuclear Iran is a concern not just to the West and Israel: [United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-]Otaiba, whose country lies less than 100 miles from Iran’s coast, noted that Iran is much more of a threat to the UAE than to the United States. If countries “lack the…
In a lengthy essay for First Things, George Weigel seeks to begin the fashioning of a foreign policy that moves forward from the United States’ tendency to swing back and forth between two guiding approaches. During some periods of our history, a progressive Protestant idealism has prevailed: It set a high value on motive or…
Reviewing the background of hate-speech policies at the international level, Jacob Mchangama notes an interesting dynamic that one encounters in other areas of human interaction: Human-rights agencies are sympathetic to hate-speech laws partly because international human-rights conventions at the United Nations were instrumental in globalizing and mainstreaming them. The U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and…
It would presume too much to site the latter as disproof of the former, but in close proximity, last week, commenter Russ asserted that Iran has no designs on nuclear weapons and the following story broke into the news: An Iranian scientist sought refuge in the Pakistani Embassy compound and asked to go home, an…
In the context of addressing the prior activities and positions of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Andrew McCarthy takes up the distinction between radical Islam and moderate Islam: To hear progressives tell it, we can do nice, clean, friendly sharia, just like we do nice, clean, friendly Islam. “Lapidations,” [or stonings,] they will tell you,…
In response to folks who insist on seeing Iran’s leadership as rational actors, Mark Steyn makes the somewhat obvious point that even a rational response to the pressures — the “stimulus,” if you will — that the United States is bringing to bear for Iran leads to a very dangerous place: But let’s flip Dr…
Andrew McCarthy takes the radicalization of Turkey as an opportunity to trace Islamists’ strategy for cultural hegemony (subscription required). That Turkey has been a partner to the West, he notes, was a result of efforts by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Ataturk) to keep Islam out of government, an intention that appears now to have been circumvented.…