Perfect Submission Possible
Michel Houellebecq is a sardonic and iconoclastic French novelist, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, and subject of considerable controversy in Europe these days. He deserves to be controv...
Trotskyism
CIA Bides its Time
The CIA’s Directorate of Operations doesn’t have an acute memory. But it does have durable institutional sentiments. So here’s a guess: In a few years, few operatives in the cla...
Op-eds
Iran’s ‘Moderate’ Icon Unmasked
In Persianised Arabic, Zarif is a word of many meanings, ranging from fine or delicate, discerning and cunning to subtle. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, former ambassador to the United Nations, c...
Op-eds
Syria: The Spanish Civil War All Over Again
History may not quite repeat itself, but the war in Syria — invariably, “the Syrian Civil War” — is eerily similar to the “Spanish Civil War” in the mid-1930s....
Op-eds
Vienna Protesters Call for ‘Death to Jews’
Anti-Israel demonstrators gathered on Friday in the heart of Vienna, protesting Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense and chanting slogans calling for the murder of Jews and bashing the Jewi...
Op-eds
The ‘Bin Trotsky’ Video and the Jihadi Failure in Iraq
Has Osama bin Laden turned into Osama bin Trotsky? As I was watching bin Laden reading carefully from his prepared speech, I couldn't help but notice the dramatic drifting in the rhetoric fr...
Op-eds
A Caliph’s Frustration with his Emirs
Yes, Bin Laden’s latest audiotape aired on al Jazeera is somewhat unique. Not in its ideological party line or in the Salafi doctrinal roots. That hasn’t changed nor is it expected to...
Op-eds
Should Israel Bomb Iran?
There is only one thing that terrifies Washington’s foreign policy establishment more than the prospect of an American airstrike against Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities: an Israeli...
Op-eds
Bin Laden’s Threat Uncovers Jihadist Message for Europe
In an audiotape posted on the Internet, Osama Bin Laden threatened Europe with punishment because of its "negligence in spite of the opportunity presented to take the necessary measures" to...
Op-eds
The Elephant in the Middle East Living Room
Watching Wahhabis.
Op-eds
Galloway Deplores U.S. Probe of U.N.
WASHINGTON - A left-wing member of the British Parliament, George Galloway, named by Senate investigators as having been granted lucrative rights by Saddam Hussein to buy oil under the U.N. oil-f...