I’d like to highlight three significant effects of the bin Laden killing. First, as I noted last week, some people view the operation as precedential. The first one I caught was from Knesset member, Shaul Mofaz, who took the opportunity to call for similar strikes on Hamas leaders. Additionally, as David Karl of the FPA […]
Beware of arguments like those offered in Jonathan Schanzer’s Weekly Standard article, “The Hamas-al Qaeda Alliance.” The article was a response to the statement earlier this week from senior Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who condemned the bin Laden killing. Schanzer essentially attempts to conflate al Qaeda and Hamas, writing that “over the course of two […]
The debate about whether the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden was legal is on. It was legal, says John Bellinger, justified under the same rationale as U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. Though there’s a pretty fierce debate about the legality of the drones program, thrust to a new level of complexity after Pakistan withdrew […]
One of the most important dimensions of this development is the extent to which Pakistan was involved, both in harboring bin Laden and in executing the operation that killed him. The Pakistan section of Obama’s Sunday night speech jumped out at me: But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead […]
From ABC News: Syrian army units have clashed with each other over following President Bashar Assad’s orders to crack down on protesters in Daraa, a besieged city at the heart of the uprising, witnesses and human rights groups said Thursday… “There are some battalions that refused to open fire on the people,” Monajed told The […]
I want to highlight a story from a week and a half ago that I don’t think has received the attention it deserves: the decision of Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court to dissolve the National Democratic Party (NDP). As Christian Science Monitor reported: …[M]any in Egypt had feared that the party of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak […]
There may seem like there’s a big debate about NATO’s policy in Libya, especially after last weekend’s State of the Union episode, in which Lindsey Graham advocated a “cut the head of the snake off” policy. John McCain and Joe Lieberman also appeared on the program to make similar statements. But if we actually look […]
As I’ve written of Passover and Chanukah, Easter too is, ultimately, a story about the oppressed becoming the oppressors. One can interpret the Gospels to mean that Jesus advocated violence. After all, he did say “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), though many disagree on the meaning of the […]
Earlier this week Stephen Walt drew the wrong lesson from the Arab uprisings: So let me get this straight: one former dictator ultimately decides not to unleash massive force against anti-government demonstrators, and eventually leaves power more-or-less peacefully, if not exactly voluntarily. His reward? He winds up in jail (maybe deservedly). Another dictator responds by […]
The UN Security Council should not have referred the Libya situation to the ICC, claim many on the Right, because now Qaddafi has no incentive to step down. If potential prosecution awaits after his ouster, they say, he has every incentive to hold his ground. The ICC referral, the argument goes, is a barrier to […]
Once again I respond to a post by FPA Israel blogger Ben Moscovitch. Not to pick on him. But because we disagree on many things and it seems worthwhile to me to discuss them. Hopefully he agrees. Ben’s most recent post criticizes Obama for drawing a parallel between the Passover story and the protest movements […]
I stand with the FPA Israel blog’s Zev Wexler, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and the three Goldstone Report co-authors who are not Richard Goldstone in thinking that Goldstone’s recent recantation is “bizarre,” as Cohen put it. Goldstone asserts that Israeli military investigations “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of […]
Pakistan has told the United States to halt drone strikes on Pakistani territory. Thus, the debate about the legality of the U.S. drones program has taken a new turn. (For background, see my analysis of the Wittes-O’Connell debate on this issue from last year.) How does one determine whether the United States can legally continue […]
I wrote a review of a book called Peace: A World History, by Antony Adolf, for The Mantle. Check it out here. While I had some problems with the book, as you’ll read in the review, I still think it’s worth a read. Here’s the first paragraph of my take: As implied by the title […]
Eric Holder’s announcement earlier this week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and several other 9/11 plotters will be tried in military tribunals represents another step in Obama’s ‘close Guantanamo’ saga. The saga began in Obama’s first week as president, when he signed the infamous Close Guantanamo executive order (you can read the executive order here). […]