January 23, 2013 – 8:02 pm
If, like most folks, you’re a bit fuzzy on the historical context of that Algerian hostage-taking affair, here’s an excellent article.
January 22, 2013 – 11:25 pm
Can anyone explain to me why the United States is giving Egypt two hundred tanks and sixteen F-16s? The answer should not be that “we signed an agreement that we are now honoring”. We signed that agreement with Hosni Mubarak, a man we could rely on to maintain a stable peace with our principal ally […]
December 24, 2012 – 12:50 pm
According to this report, the Assad regime has deployed poison gas in Homs, killing 7 and injuring others. The quoted source is “opposition activists”, by way of al-Jazeera, so the story may not be veridical. But if so, in we go, I’d imagine.
December 20, 2012 – 6:17 pm
I’m working today, with no time for writing — so here are NightWatch‘s comments on the Benghazi report: Special NightWatch Comment: The most important finding of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) on the Benghazi tragedy is that al Qaida is alive and well and living in Benghazi. The rest is pretty much well known, with […]
December 14, 2012 – 12:50 pm
Laura Wood, the Thinking Housewife, brings to our attention France’s newest public institution: the National Observatory of Secularism. Its function is to train the State’s benevolent and watchful Eye upon “religious pathology”. Whether secular pathology will be detected as well is left to the reader’s intuition.
November 30, 2012 – 11:08 am
For those of you with any lingering interest in the pestilential viper’s-nest we like to call the “Mideast” — that blasted, slippery-edged sinkhole of human misery that manages always to be going straight to Hell without ever actually getting there and leaving the rest of us in peace — I reprint below two items from […]
October 28, 2012 – 2:49 pm
With a hat tip to Bill Keezer, here’s a look at the Obama administration’s increasingly routine use of kill lists and drone strikes to prosecute foreign policy. I excerpt two notable quotes from this post. The first is by its author: Benghazi illustrates the problem of the President having the authority for everything and the […]
October 28, 2012 – 12:08 pm
Kevin Kim gives us a memorable visual recap of the recent execution by mortar round of a tippling Nork military bigwig.
October 27, 2012 – 10:25 pm
Here’s a story that’s making the rounds today. I have no way of assessing its veracity.
October 24, 2012 – 11:52 am
As we all know by now, the “Arab Spring” has led not to a flowering of pro-Western secular democracy, but instead has brought about a profound shift toward Islamist government throughout the region. Barry Rubin examines the President’s influence on this process, here. Hat tip: VFR.
October 20, 2012 – 11:23 am
Here’s a gloomy piece about my genetic homeland. It contains this priceless quote from P. G. Wodehouse: “It is never difficult to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grievance.’
October 18, 2012 – 3:29 pm
I wouldn’t want anyone reading the previous post to think I’m particularly stoked about Mitt Romney; he’s a total squish on many issues of importance to conservatives, and just another democracy-exporting dreamer when it comes to foreign affairs. Speaking of which: in this weeks Radio Derb, John Derbyshire zeroed in on the same comment from […]
October 11, 2012 – 10:40 am
From Danger Room, here’s a damning summary of the runup to the assault in Libya (thanks to Lokilinkster for the link). An excerpt (emphasis added): The security situation in Benghazi was “a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,’ (.pdf) said Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, the State Department’s Site Security Team commander in […]
October 10, 2012 – 10:41 pm
You’ve probably heard people mentioning Lara Logan’s blunt talk about Afghanistan last week, but you should take twenty minutes and actually watch it. It’s here. If you are informed enough, and wise enough, not to be taken in by the steady diet of lies and self-serving propaganda this administration feeds us about our Mideast adventures […]
October 10, 2012 – 11:16 am
From the Heritage Foundation, here’s a sharp video on the Obama administration’s deceitful, ass-covering response to the Benghazi attack. But hey, look  —  Big Bird!
October 4, 2012 – 10:40 am
Mind-boggling, suicidal socialist insanity in France. Here.
October 2, 2012 – 1:01 pm
In the days following the lethal attack on our diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, the Obama administration doggedly clung to its story that the assault, in which a United States Ambassador was killed on U.S. soil, was an unforeseeable and spontaneous eruption of anger, caused by an unflattering video about Mohammed. This story was false, and […]
September 15, 2012 – 2:26 pm
Foggy Bottom: no more questions about Benghazi, please. CNN: State Department was warned three days in advance of Benghazi attacks that the security situation was deteriorating fast; did nothing. WH press secretary Jay “Baghdad Bob” Carney: worldwide protests “not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at U.S. policy…” CT […]
September 14, 2012 – 10:07 am
There is something downright surreal about President Nero, who according to reports skipped his daily intelligence briefing on September 12th so he could sashay off to Vegas, tweeting about the Paralympics right now. Oh, and sweatshirts, too! “Winter is coming”. You got that right, pal.
September 13, 2012 – 10:35 pm
In keeping with our time-honored tradition of spreading unsubstantiated rumors, I’ll mention that a little bird just whispered in my ear that we have killed Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban. I have no way of confirming this yet. We’ll see… Update: Looking doubtful. That’s just as well: they’d be spiking that football all […]
September 13, 2012 – 12:38 pm
Now this: a Lebanese report (I have no way as yet of confirming it) claims that Ambassador Stevens was raped before he was murdered. In our previous post we noted that Egyptian ambassador Anne Patterson forbade the embassy’s Marine guards to carry live ammunition. What is it in the modern Western mind that makes us […]
September 13, 2012 – 10:35 am
In its most recent posting, NightWatch has issued extensive and pertinent comments on the attacks in Egypt and Libya. I reproduce them here: Egypt-US: The day after the storming of the US Embassy, all day and night on 12 and 13 September, mainstream media aired footage of obviously unemployed Egyptian young men gathering and milling […]
September 12, 2012 – 9:51 pm
Reuters live stream: police vs. demonstrators in Cairo. Here.
September 11, 2012 – 11:47 am
Writing at Via Meadia, Walter Russell Meade comments on Europe’s accelerating slide into toothless decrepitude. As an example, he gives us France, who would like very much to intervene in Syria, but lacks the military oomph to do so. This is of course due to Europe’s having had, under the postwar U.S. security umbrella, the […]
August 19, 2012 – 4:39 pm
Andrew McCarthy comments on recent developments in Egypt.
August 12, 2012 – 12:08 pm
The inevitable showdown between the Brotherhood and the military in Egypt has arrived: Mohamed Morsi has sacked generals Tantawi and Anan. The military were the last bastion against the complete Islamization of Egypt, and were the real managers of the national convulsion that naifs in the West called the “Facebook revolution”. Now the newly elected […]
A year and a half ago, as the West enjoyed a collective thrill up the leg over the flowering of democracy in Tahrir Square, I suggested that the real beneficiary of the “Facebook revolution” would be the Muslim Brotherhood — an outfit our leaders apparently figured they could do business with, despite its mortal and […]
Here’s an update on the situation in Syria, from John McCreary’s latest NightWatch newsletter: Opposition fighters attacked the provincial police headquarters in the Qanawat district of old Damascus, news services reported on the 19th . Gunfire was intense for an hour, a Qanawat resident said. Rebels also claim to have attacked and seized three border […]
Insurgency being centripetal, the lethal attack against the Assad family in Damascus marks a strategic tipping point in Syria. Assad is now said to have left Damascus for Latakia. No cheering, please. There is no good outcome here, no matter what happens.
My, so many interesting things afoot in the Gulf and environs lately! Much to think about: — The ongoing game between AQAP and the Saudis… — …in particular, between Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri and Mohammed bin Nayef (little brother Abdullah Asiri having already sacrificed his life in vain on that score); — That Fahd al-Quso was […]
Well, it appears that Marine le Pen will be the kingmaker in France this time around, having attracted fully a fifth of French voters to her National Front party in today’s election. This was nearly double the turnout for her opposite number on the Socialist far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Assuming that National Front supporters will […]
Armed with weapons purloined from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal, Tuareg fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb give us what I think is referred to around Washington these days as a “teachable moment”. Today’s lesson? The law of unintended consequences.
March 31, 2012 – 10:36 pm
Oh, my. For a truly startling, completely unforeseeable turn of events, check out this item from the Times: Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt CAIRO ”” The Muslim Brotherhood nominated its chief strategist and financier Khairat el-Shater on Saturday as its candidate to become Egypt’s first president since Hosni Mubarak, […]
February 29, 2012 – 10:04 pm
It took a year, but it seems reality is finally beginning to impinge upon Thomas Friedman, who, of all people, should have known better all along. Beginning to impinge, I say, because there is one reality — the elephant, as they say, in the room — that he, and most of the academic and political […]
February 29, 2012 – 1:49 pm
AP is reporting that “Israeli officials say they will not warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations with U.S. officials, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and in […]
February 24, 2012 – 4:19 pm
Now that President Obama has made his apology to Hamid Karzai for those Korans that got burned the other day, a concerned American woman expresses her own regrets in this video clip. Update: And here’s Newt Gingrich, explaining things to Piers Morgan.
February 9, 2012 – 11:57 am
The fragrant efflorescence of the Arab Spring is, as the old song goes, “busting out all over”. A particularly lovely blossom is the one we so carefully nurtured in Libya, where, as the Times reports today, the nation is descending into sanguinary chaos. Our love’s labour there is done, it seems; we are busy gardeners, […]
February 7, 2012 – 7:30 pm
For those of you with an interest in strategic security and geopolitics, here are two items just in that I think are worth your time: first, a surprising comment from NightWatch on the situation in Syria; second, an analysis by George Friedman of the stalemate in Afghanistan. See also this overview of the “Arab spring” […]
January 30, 2012 – 9:15 pm
How wonderful it is to see democracy flowering at last in the Maghreb! It would be too much, though, to expect everything to be put right all at once, after so many years of ruthless oppression. Even though Egypt’s newly elected political leaders have now consolidated their parliamentary power in the wake of last year’s […]
January 12, 2012 – 11:13 pm
With a hat tip to Dennis Mangan, here’s a provocative item: Israel Upholds Citizenship Bar for Palestinian Spouses Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld a law banning Palestinians who marry Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship. Civil rights groups had petitioned the court to overturn the law, saying it was unconstitutional. “Human rights do not prescribe national […]
January 9, 2012 – 2:19 pm
With a hat tip to VFR, here’s the Jerusalem Post’s latest report on the Islamist renaissance that is coalescing in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’. Meanwhile, DEBKA reports that in Egypt, General Tantawi and the SCAF grow weary of their burden, and are negotiating an early handover of the reins of power to the […]
January 2, 2012 – 5:21 pm
Nearly a year ago, as the uprising in Egypt was gaining traction, I wrote: The Muslim Brotherhood (or “Ikhwan’) differs from militant Islamist factions like al-Qaeda not in its goals, which are more or less the same, but only in its strategy: it has no moral or philosophical aversion to violent jihad, but considers it […]
December 23, 2011 – 7:02 pm
Diana West comments here on the dismal verdict in the Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff trial in Vienna. Her crime, if you haven’t followed the case, was to comment disapprovingly on Mohammed’s deflowering of his nine-year-old wife Aisha. Well, tolerance is paramount in a decent society, I guess. Meanwhile, Christmas masses have been canceled in Iraq due to […]
December 22, 2011 – 2:28 pm
For you strategic-security wonks, John McCreary has published a substantial post on events in North Korea today at NightWatch — complete with a parting jab at the Times. I’ll reproduce it here. North Korea: North Korea is demanding that foreigners either remain in their homes or leave the country. Pyongyang authorities ordered some foreigners to […]
December 18, 2011 – 10:30 pm
Kim Jong Il has died. This is going to be interesting.
December 18, 2011 – 12:40 pm
Horrifying images and video from Egypt, here. One of the consistent lessons of history, from Aristagoras to Gorbachev, is that authoritarian systems place themselves at great risk when they attempt to liberalize. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is learning this lesson today; they have unleashed forces that they have no idea how to […]
December 15, 2011 – 7:05 pm
Here are a couple of recent items on the dawa-jihad front: First: you may have heard about the kerfuffle that arose recently when the home-improvement chain Lowe’s decided to yank its sponsorship of the “anti-Islamophobic” television series All-American-Muslim. (Dozens of other sponsors soon joined them; all are now predictably being tarred as “racists” by the […]
December 14, 2011 – 8:42 pm
The British New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has registered, in this recent item, his condescending disapproval of David Cameron’s rejection of the EU’s fiscal-union proposal. It is regrettable, opines Mr. Cohen, that the “pinstriped effluence” of the ancient British nation should wax so mawkishly sentimental over its silly old sovereignty, which is at this […]
December 9, 2011 – 11:44 pm
David Cameron is getting plenty of heat from the EU for standing up for his people, for once. Well, good for him, I say, for refusing to surrender England’s ancient sovereignty to a lot of unelected Eurocrats as their doomed continent falls under the all-too familiar shadow of coalescing German dominance. To quote Winston Churchill: […]
December 8, 2011 – 10:23 pm
In a recent STRATFOR article, George Friedman uses the example of the “Arab Spring” uprising in Egypt as a case study in what he calls “an inherent contradiction in Western ideology and, ultimately, of an attempt to create a coherent foreign policy.” At the root of this ideological confusion, says Friedman, is a tension between […]