1973, 2003, and now 2023. How wars repeat themselves.
Tag: Iraq war
Chronologically-challenged Professor Walt
Stephen Walt has a scoop! Tony Blair says Israel was in on the Iraq war plan from the get-go! Martin Kramer hates to disappoint, but...
Mearsheimer, Walt, and “cold feet”
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt appear at Princeton University tonight, to promote their book The Israel Lobby. I've held back while other critics have had their say, and many of them have done a splendid job. But I don't think anyone has understood the neat sleight of hand the authors performed in moving from article …
Juan Cole loses head
"The American deployment of terror against the Iraqi population has, of course, dwarfed anything the French accomplished in Egypt by orders of magnitude."Juan Cole Juan Cole is busy promoting his new book Napoleon's Egypt, the hook being a comparison between Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt and George W. Bush in Iraq. This could make for an …
Israel and the Iraq war
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt includes a section entitled "Israel and the Iraq War" (pp. 30-31). There they seek to establish that Israel's leaders, intelligence agencies, and public opinion enthusiastically supported a war to remove Saddam. Israel exerted "pressure" on the United States, fed Washington "alarming reports" …
Juan Cole’s noble enterprise
Juan Cole suffers from selective memory when it comes to his position on the Iraq war.
Liberation day in Iraq?
On April 9, 2003, the day Saddam's statue came down in Baghdad, National Review Online asked me for a quick response. In the midst of the exuberance, and the facile comparisons with the fall of the Berlin Wall, I struck this cautionary note: The Iraqis, in the end, did not rise up. They waited to …
Indiana Jones or Inside Job at Iraq Museum?
On Tuesday, directors of some of the world's leading museums met at the British Museum in London. Their mission: salvaging what can be salvaged at the plundered Iraq Museum. Their point man in Baghdad will be Dr. Donny George, research director of the Iraq Museum, who visited London for the meeting. There was much ado …
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America’s Archaeologists: Armchair Savants?
We now have a fairly full account of the efforts made by American archaeologists, professors, and curators to safeguard the "heritage" sites and museums of Iraq. They wrote a lot of letters and e-mails. They placed some op-eds. A group visited Washington, and met with low-level officials at the Pentagon. Their best-known member, McGuire ("Mac") …
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Columbia Prof Plumbs the Shiite Mind
A lot is being written these days about Iraq's Shiites, and the media avidly pursue anyone who seems like an expert. When demand exceeds supply, expect tendentious analysis. Consider, for example, Professor Hamid Dabashi, head of the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) at Columbia. The other day, a correspondent from …
Getting Iraq Right…from Miami…in Ohio
Adeed Dawisha is an old friend with a new book: Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton University Press). It's a searing indictment of Arab nationalism from an insider's perspective. And it's especially relevant now, for the reason I underline in my jacket endorsement of the book: Why does the world …
As the Cheering Starts
This commentary appeared in a symposium (contributors included William J. Bennett and John Derbyshire) at National Review Online. The long-awaited scenes of celebration from Iraq tell us this: Iraq's own people have lost their fear of Saddam. They know that even if he still lives, he will not return. A chapter is closed. But in …
The Ayatollah Who Spared Najaf
At yesterday's military briefing in Qatar, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks announced that the leading Shiite cleric in Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husayni Sistani, had issued a fatwa calling on the city's inhabitants to remain calm and not to interfere with U.S. forces. "We believe this is a very significant turning point and another indicator that …
Baghdad, Babylon, Brandeis
The Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya, who has been working with the State Department on Iraq's "transition," has started writing a "war diary" for one of the weeklies. In one entry, he reports that "there are hundreds—if not more—of Iraqis in America, Britain, and the rest of the diaspora who are quitting their jobs and boarding …
Professorial Pundits Place Iraq Bets
The war is underway, and most of the rationales for and against it are based on predictions. No one reasonably expects professors of Middle Eastern studies to predict military outcomes. But political outcomes, especially in the long term, are supposed to be their forte. And so here, for the record, are the predictions of four …
“The Iraqi People”
Once Saddam is gone, it will fall to America to make Iraq a nation. What would Uriel Dann have thought of that?
Chicago Prof Joins Conspiracy-of-the-Month Club
Leave it to a professor of Middle Eastern studies to infiltrate the crudest interpretation of American motive into Chicago's leading daily. Fred Donner is a professor of early Islamic history at the University of Chicago. Last week, the Chicago Tribune ran a piece by Donner, where he called the idea of removing Saddam a "Likudniks' …
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On Entering Basra and Baghdad, Avoid This Mistake
As war against Saddam looms, military planners should read a very pertinent article by the late Elie Kedourie. Its title: "The Sack of Basra and the Baghdad Farhud." It's the story of how not to occupy Iraq's two principal cities. In 1941, the British sent forces into Iraq to remove a pro-Axis military junta from …
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“It’s noon. Do you know where your UCLA professor is?”
Exactly a week ago, university students around the country walked out on strike at midday, to protest a possible war against Saddam. When students strike, it denies no one a service. The point is self-denial: they're prepared to sacrifice class time, for which they've paid good money, in order to demonstrate a point. When faculty …
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Rashid Redux
Congratulations to Columbia University, for bagging Rashid Khalidi, University of Chicago historian, to fill the new Edward Said Chair of Middle Eastern Studies. The still-anonymous donors must be very pleased. Now that the deal is done, Khalidi has resurfaced, to take a stand on a possible war against Saddam. As it happened, I spent the …
Profs Condemn Israel in Advance
The latest absurdity to emanate from Middle Eastern studies is an open letter suggesting that Israel might exploit a war against Saddam to engage in "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians. (The letter, released last Wednesday, is ostensibly in support of a small group of extreme-left Israelis who issued a letter with the same message back in …
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