Iraq

Many Americans, not to mention our European allies, may be shaking their heads over President Bush's defiant speech at the United Nations yesterday. With the coalition forces under daily attack and billions being spent to rebuild Iraq, shouldn't Mr. Bush have been more conciliatory in an effort to get other countries to send troops?

Actually, Mr. Bush was right to refuse a rushed transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government as the price to pay for greater international participation… more

George W. Bush is on to something when he argues that the United States and Israel face a common enemy in the Middle East. However, insight is not the same as good news; if Bush is correct, then the United States can look ahead to years, if not decades, of conflict in the area.

In his Saturday radio address, the president linked the two suicide bombings, in Baghdad and Jerusalem, taking scores of lives on Aug. 19.

Both acts were committed, he… more

The ultimate test of success in Iraq will be the creation of a stable constitutional democracy: government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. If the Iraqis emerge from the coalition occupation with the building blocks of just and effective self-government, the war and occupation will be forgiven. The presence -- or absence -- of weapons of mass destruction will become a historical footnote. Muslims who today remain deeply skeptical of U.S. motives will grudgingly have to acknowledge that the… more

Please join us as Bruce Stokes and Mary McIntosh discuss current attitudes toward the United States based on a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. They will discuss what bounce internationially and domestically, if any, the Bush Administration received as a result of the Iraq War, attitudes around the world toward the challenges ahead including the war on terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian situation, Iran, Syria and North Korea, the global public's view of American unilateralism and the future… more

Dear Colleagues:

Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed a ground-breaking idea for the reform of Iraq put forth by my colleague Steve Clemons, Executive Vice President of the New America Foundation and Co-Director of the American Strategy Project.

In the April 9th edition of the New York Times, Steve suggested that the Alaska Permanent Fund, which provides a share of state oil revenues directly to Alaskan citizens, could be a model for a similar program… more

Though most Americans don't believe this war is about oil, much of the rest of the world does. How the United States handles Iraq's oil after the war is therefore crucial. For guidance, America might look to its experiences in Japan after World War II and -- perhaps more surprisingly -- in Alaska in the 1970's.

Most revolutions that produce stable democracies expand the number of stakeholders in the nation's economy. America's occupation of Japan succeeded not just because the United… more

In his state of the union address President Bush returned to one of his favourite themes: Saddam Hussein "aids and protects" al-Qaida. Yet the evidence for this claim is somewhere between tenuous and non-existent.

Every year the US state department releases an authoritative survey of global terrorism. According to its 2000 report: Iraq "has not attempted an anti-western attack since its failed attempt to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 in Kuwait". Even after September 11 the heaviest charge made… more

Earlier this month, a group of sixty American public figures issued a statement on the attacks of September eleventh and the conflicts that have followed it. Titled What We're Fighting For, the document was a measured defense of the American war against Al Qaeda and, by implication, its Taliban allies. What we are fighting for, the authors declared, are American beliefs that are also the universal principles of modern societies: all individuals possess equal intrinsic dignity; there are… more

The Bush administration seems determined to take military action against the Iraqi end of the "axis of evil." It's clear enough that we can win the upcoming battle, but if recent events in Afghanistan are any indicator, our prospects for winning the peace thereafter are cloudy.

The report that the aviation minister of Afghanistan was murdered at Kabul airport was disturbing enough, but then came the accusation from Afghan leader Hamid Karzai that the culprits were fellow senior officials in… more

Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden is an extraordinary, in-depth account of Osama bin Laden and his global network by CNN?s terrorism analyst, Peter L. Bergen. One of only a handful of western journalists to have met and interviewed bin Laden, Bergen has done an exhaustive job of researching the man and the Jihadist network of al-Qaeda-the prime suspects in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11.

Over the… more