Iraq

16165725884_2c1560309f_o
President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the UNGA Climate Summit 2014 in the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations in New York, N.Y., Sept. 23, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
Barack Obama delivers remarks at the UNGA Climate Summit 2014. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

The Great Obama Retreat

Just before he was elected president in 2008, Barack Obama declared, “We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He may not succeed in his aim to transform the domestic landscape. Instead his legacy may be a different transformation entirely: a tectonic shift in America’s position in the world, diminishing America’s status abroad to Read More ›

Honoring a True Martyr for Freedom in Iraq

Gamal al-Alusi was born to Iraqi exiles in Germany and grew up in Hamburg. One of his longtime German friends described Gamal as an intelligent young man who liked to play basketball and take flying lessons. He was also social and humorous, and served as a peacemaker among his friends.

Like other teenagers, he sneaked around with his girlfriends behind his traditional parents and had future plans that changed from week to week. As is also fashionable among many European youths, his political views during early years were characterized by the friend as being “radical” and even “anti-American.”

Nevertheless, Gamal apparently felt having a “normal” job in Germany would not give him the satisfaction of having done something meaningful with his life. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, he left Germany and went to Iraq with his father, Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi native who had been a vocal critic of the Ba’ath regime.

Read More ›

Bringing a Turbulent Land Into Focus

Editor’s Note: The following is a review of In the Red Zone by Steven Vincent (Spence) We’ve all heard of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified district in Baghdad where the American embassy is housed and all manner of diplomats, aid-workers and support-staffers live and go about their busy days, assuming the fortifications hold firm. But what about everything outside Read More ›

Liberation Online

Original Article Basking in the sun by the Al Hamra Hotel swimming pool, a Spanish journalist complained to me that “all my editors want is blood, blood, blood. No context. No politics.” Such editors are cruising to be scooped by such local Iraqi blogs as Iraq the Model, which last summer debunked a Los Angeles Times story on the departure Read More ›

Iraq a Year Later

During World War II, when the 1944 presidential election came around, Republican candidates targeted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s competency and motives. They unearthed government procurement scandals and corporate “war profiteering.” Some even hinted that FDR was complicit in the war’s outbreak. But they could not oppose the war they had voted for and the public approved. They whooped up political excitement, Read More ›

Saving Iraq… from the U.N.

Last Saturday, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin “proposed a radically new approach” that would take control of Iraq from the U.S. (surprise) and give it to the U.N. He demanded that an Iraqi provisional government be established within a month, a constitution written by the end of the year, and elections held by the spring of 2004. Iraq does Read More ›

Info-War Invades Iraq

On a single horrific night in March 1945, more than 300 B-29 Superfortress bombers saturated Tokyo with napalm and incendiary explosives. The resulting firestorm devoured a quarter of the city, leaving at least one hundred thousand civilians dead and countless others hideously wounded. Read More ›

Scripting Iraq’s Future

Should Americans write the new Iraqi constitution? Should Americans determine how Iraq is governed in the future? We Americans have a legitimate interest in making sure the new Iraqi constitution will protect the liberties of the people, and result in their future prosperity and a successful state. To those ends, we should insist on certain constitutional standards and safeguards before Read More ›

Coming Battle to Restore Iraq’s Economy

As the military battle for Iraq comes to an end, a new battle is beginning – how to rebuild Iraq. On one side are those who believe that, by establishing the proper institutions and rules, the Iraqis will be able to rather quickly rebuild their own economy without placing a burden on U.S. taxpayers. The other side, primarily led by Read More ›

Bush and Blair Will Be Redeemed

Critics of George Bush’s Iraq policy have bemused themselves with anti-war demonstrations and public opinion overseas, plus the pronouncements of France, Germany and Russia. They conclude that America has suffered diplomatic rejection by “the whole world.” The war is about to recruit new waves of terrorists, they say, and at last precipitate the downfall of the American “empire.” But while Read More ›