THUS WE BOMB Iran.
The administration does not give consistent reasons for the attack on Iran: some say we war to change the behavior of the Iranian regime; others say the aim of the war is to end that regime outright. Many officials, including the president himself, endorse both aims.
How to make sense of this?
βAlas, I am a wretch! Because of the terrors I have sufferedI bring pleasure to my enemies and toil to my friends.β βTheogenis of Megara ιε²Έθ§η« βγδΈεε θ¨γ The President’s statement on U.S.-Saudi relations has caused understandable upset and predictable uproar. Most of these reactions are explicitly framed in terms of values. They need not be. […]
Image Source. Nibras Kazimi, who blogs at Talisman’s Gate, has a long essay out for the Hudson Institute that you ought to read. It’s focus is on the ideological contest being waged between Saudi Arabia and ISIS over who can claim to be the true defender of the Sunni faith in the face of Shi’a […]
Major religions in the Middle EastImage Source: Columbia University’s Gulf 2000 Project I am not a specialist in arms control or nuclear technology. I must rely on the judgement of others with relevant expertise to assess the viability of the new agreement with Iran. This makes things difficult, for the opinions of experts I trust […]
Perhaps the most predictable fall-out of Graeme Wood’s influential cover article for The Atlantic, “What the Islamic State Really Wants,” is another round of debate over whether or not the atrocities committed by ISIS and other armed fundamentalist terrorist outfits are sanctioned by the Qur’an, Hadith, and other Islamic texts, and if not, whether these […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. This is the first “Notes From All Over” I have written this month, so this list is a long one. TOP BILLING When We Lose Antibiotics, Hereβs Everything Else Weβll Lose TooMaryn McKenna. Wired. 20 November 2013. If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance […]
A Taureg nomad in the Sahara. Photograph by Carsten Peter, National Geographic. Β© “The nomadic strategy is one means by which people adapt to thinly spread resources and to the variability of the resources across space and over time. It is also a strategy for avoiding other deleterious environmental conditions, such as extreme heat […]
I usually label posts about Iran with the tag ‘Persia.’ This week it occurred to me that this label is a tad inaccurate. Iran is a lot less Persian than you may think.Here is the CIA World Factbook’s [1] break down of the Iranian population by ethnic identity: Persian 61%Azeri 16%Kurd 10%Lur 6%Baloch 2%Arab 2%Turkmen […]
Last week Prospect Magazine published a significant essay written by Boston University professor of international relations Stephen Kinzer. The ideas contained inside are more than reasonable, though they will be deemed radical by most who read it. If you can only read one article today, I ask that it be this one: The Next Power […]
The nuclear fuel-swap deal between Turkey, Brazil, and Iran has been received with quite a bit of hostility in America. Yet few sources (save perhaps the New York Daily News) have reacted with as much hostility to the deal as the White House. Take a few choice words offered by Secretary Clinton at a recent […]
