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Iraq on the Edge

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Joost R. Hiltermann - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - For the occasional visitor such as myself, various methods exist to measure America's standing in Iraq, Iraqi suspicions and aspirations, and progress in the transfer of power, but none prove as illuminating as the checkpoints into and throughout Baghdad's Green Zone, that diminishing symbol of the Bush administration's ambitions.

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Which Way for Hamas?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Nicolas Pelham, Max Rodenbeck - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - Amid the wreckage of Gaza, Hamas's officials struggle to sound upbeat. The burly interior minister, Fathi Hamad, whose predecessor was killed by an Israeli bomb, defiantly shuns security precautions at his makeshift office in Gaza City's main police station. "Claims that we are trying to establish an Islamic state are false," says the minister, who says his preference would be pursuing a degree in media studies. "Hamas is not the Taliban. It is not al-Qaeda. It is an enlightened, moderate Islamic movement."

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The Afghanistan Impasse

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Ahmed Rashid - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - Pakistan's safe havens for the Afghan Taliban have been to a large extent responsible for their revival and growing dominance across Afghanistan and for the rising death toll among NATO forces. But the Taliban were not the major cause of the political crisis that enveloped Afghanistan after the August 20 presidential elections.

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Health Reform: The Fateful Moment

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Theodore R. Marmor, Jonathan Oberlander - Jul. 21 (Special Report) - Barack Obama has long emphasized the importance of reforming American medical care, both as a candidate in the 2008 election and as president. During the month of June, however, he dramatically increased his efforts to secure major reform legislation by the end of the year.

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'The Unencumbered Man'

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Michael Tomasky - Jun. 23 (Special Report) - After Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election last November, the question arose whether the result should be seen as a realignment—a fundamental shift in party dominance that would continue for a good many years. That the era of conservative supremacy was over seemed clear. Beyond that, observers were divided. My view, expressed in these pages, was that such talk was premature and that any notion of Democratic dominance "would depend on what President Obama and the congressional Democrats did with their power."

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Pakistan on the Brink

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Ahmed Rashid - May. 15 (Special Report) - The army has always defined Pakistan's national security goals. Currently it has two strategic interests: first, it seeks to ensure that a balance of terror and power is maintained with respect to India, and the jihadis are seen as part of this strategy. Second, the army supports the Afghan Taliban as a hedge against US withdrawal from Afghanistan and also against Indian influence in Kabul, which has grown considerably. Containing the domestic jihadi threat has been a tactical rather than a strategic matter for the army, so there have been bouts of fighting with the militants and also peace deals with them; and these have been interspersed with policies of jailing them and freeing them—all part of a complex and duplicitous game.

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The Need to Roll Back Presidential Power Grabs

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Arlen Specter - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - In the seven and a half years since September 11, the United States has witnessed one of the greatest expansions of executive authority in its history, at the expense of the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. President Obama, as only the third sitting senator to be elected president in American history, and the first since John F. Kennedy, may be more likely to respect the separation of powers than President Bush was. But rather than put my faith in any president to restrain the executive branch, I intend to take several concrete steps, which I hope the new president will support.

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The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Mark Danner - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - What is needed is not more disclosures but a broadly persuasive judgment, delivered by people who can look at all the evidence, however highly classified, and can claim bipartisan respect on the order of the Watergate Select Committee or the 9/11 Commission, on whether or not torture made Americans safer.

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ICRC Report

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

International Committee of the Red Cross - Apr. 07 (Special Report) - [this is the leaked confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross]

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US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Mark Danner - Mar. 20 (Special Report) - We think time and elections will cleanse our fallen world but they will not. Since November, George W. Bush and his administration have seemed to be rushing away from us at accelerating speed, a dark comet hurtling toward the ends of the universe. The phrase "War on Terror"—the signal slogan of that administration, so cherished by the man who took pride in proclaiming that he was "a wartime president"—has acquired in its pronouncement a permanent pair of quotation marks, suggesting something questionable, something mildly embarrassing: something past. And yet the decisions that that president made, especially the monumental decisions taken after the attacks of September 11, 2001—decisions about rendition, surveillance, interrogation—lie strewn about us still, unclaimed and unburied, like corpses freshly dead.

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The Thirty Days of Barack Obama

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Review of Books - By Elizabeth Drew - Mar. 05 (News Analysis) - Obama takes particular care to avoid getting caught in traps (a lifetime trait)—some see this as avoiding taking a position—and as he began his presidency he was determined, as he had been in the campaign, not to refight the culture wars of the Sixties. He put off fixing the benighted "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays serving in the military that Clinton had been forced to adopt after he clumsily allowed it to come up just as his presidency began. In his first week in office, Obama lifted the restrictions on funding for abortion counseling by family planning groups working overseas—but not until the day after the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, as opposed to the day itself, so as not to seem to be rubbing his decision in the face of abortion foes. He said that it's time "to move past this stale and fruitless debate," and that his administration would initiate a "fresh conversation" on the subject. He invited labor leaders to a White House ceremony—they hadn't been there for a long time—in which he announced the revoking of several Bush anti-labor policies, buying time before taking on labor's number one demand, the highly controversial proposal to make it easier to form unions (the "card check").

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Google & the Future of Books

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Review of Books - By Robert Darnton - Jan. 28 (Special Report) - How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright. For the last four years, Google has been digitizing millions of books, including many covered by copyright, from the collections of major research libraries, and making the texts searchable online. The authors and publishers objected that digitizing constituted a violation of their copyrights. After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?

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Pakistan in Peril

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Review of Books - By William Dalrymple - Jan. 23 (Review) - The Taliban have reorganized, advanced out of their borderland safe havens, and are now massing at the gates of Kabul, threatening to surround and throttle the capital, much as the US-backed Mujahideen once did to the Soviet-installed regime in the late Eighties. Like the rerun of an old movie, all journeys out of the Afghan capital are once again confined to tanks, armored cars, and helicopters. Members of the Taliban already control over 70 percent of the country, up from just over 50 percent in November 2007, where they collect taxes, enforce Sharia law, and dispense their usual rough justice; but they do succeed, to some extent, in containing the wave of crime and corruption that has marked Hamid Karzai's rule. This has become one of the principal reasons for their growing popularity, and every month their sphere of influence increases.

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Eyeless in Gaza

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Review of Books - By Roger Cohen - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - Israel has the right to hit back at Hamas when attacked—but not to blow Gaza to pieces, or deprive people of food, water, and medicine. In at least one appalling incident at Zeitoun, on the east of Gaza City, where children were found next to their mothers' days-old corpses, the International Red Cross has accused Israel of an "unacceptable" failure "to meet its obligation under international law to care for and evacuate the wounded." Israel denies targeting civilians, accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, and says it works in "close cooperation" with international aid organizations. But at some point—and I would say a couple of hundred dead children in Gaza are already well past that point—such denials become pointless: the facts speak for themselves. No invocation of collateral damage or legitimate defense can excuse such wanton killing. As Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations and former soldier in the Israeli army, has observed, the Gaza offensive "seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash."

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How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Hussein Agha, Robert Malley - Jan. 05 (Review) - The three books offer sharp, at times unyielding critiques of the last two presidents. Yet none of the authors was a passive spectator during their terms in office. Miller, Kurtzer, and Indyk all had prominent parts in shaping or executing US policy. Kurtzer, who served as ambassador in Cairo and Tel Aviv between 1997 and 2005, held positions from which it was difficult to shape critical policy decisions and, in fairness, he constantly raised questions from afar.

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What to Do

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Review of Books - By Paul Krugman - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - the spread of the financial crisis to emerging markets makes a global rescue for developing countries part of the solution to the crisis. As with recapitalization, parts of this were already in place during the autumn: the International Monetary Fund was providing loans to countries with troubled economies like Ukraine, with less of the moralizing and demands for austerity that it engaged in during the Asian crisis of the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Fed provided swap lines to several emerging-market central banks, giving them the right to borrow dollars as needed. As with recapitalization, the efforts so far look as if they're in the right direction but too small, so more will be needed.

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Without God

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Steven Weinberg - Sep. 22 (Review) - In his celebrated 1837 Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard, titled "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that a day would come when America would end what he called "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands." His prediction came true in the twentieth century, and in no area of learning more so than in science. This surely would have pleased Emerson. When he listed his heroes he would generally include Copernicus and Galileo and Newton along with Socrates and Jesus and Swedenborg. But I think that Emerson would have had mixed feelings about one consequence of the advance of science here and abroad--that it has led to a widespread weakening of religious belief.[1]

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The Perilous Price of Oil

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By George Soros - Sep. 08 (Special Report) - The public is asking for an answer to two questions. The principal question is whether the sharp oil price increase is a speculative bubble or simply reflects fundamental factors such as rapidly rising demand from developing nations and an increasingly limited supply, caused by the dwindling availability of easily extractable oil reserves. The second question is related to the first. If the oil price increase is at least partly a result of speculation, what kind of regulation will best mitigate the harmful consequences of this increase and avoid excessive price fluctuations in the future?

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The Democrats and National Security

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Samantha Powers - Aug. 04 (Review) - Since the Vietnam War the Republican Party has developed a reputation for having a superior approach to national security. Americans have long trusted the views of Democrats on the environment, the economy, education, and health care, but national security is the one matter about which Republicans have maintained what political scientists call "issue ownership." Partly, this is for particular historical reasons. President Eisenhower initiated US involvement in Vietnam, and President Nixon escalated the war in 1969 and kept US troops on the ground in a manifestly unwinnable mission until 1975. But John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were tagged as the primary culprits. President Carter was widely seen as having bungled the Iran hostage rescue mission and having responded ineffectually to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Although he substantially increased US military spending, he was never forgiven for his claim that Americans had "an inordinate fear of communism."

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Obama and the Black Church

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Darryl Pinckney - Jul. 06 (News Analysis) - Black people in general have a high tolerance for militant or fringe expression just because it comes from another black person's sense of racial grievance, even when they do not necessarily agree with it. Historically there has always been the feeling that freedom of speech had to be defended on the black side of town because of what black people were pressured into not saying elsewhere.

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Embedded in Iraq

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Michael Massing - Jul. 05 (Special Report) - The embed had proved surprisingly easy to arrange. No one had objected to the three New York Review articles I had sent in as samples of my work. On the application form, I had written that I wanted to visit a typical Baghdad neighborhood to see how the surge was working and to get a sense of what more had to be done before the US could begin to draw down its forces in any significant number. Though I didn't say it, I also wanted to see what the embedding process itself was like.

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Iran: The Threat

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Thomas Powers - Jul. 05 (News Analysis) - Iran...with a population of 70 million and a big income from oil which the world cannot afford to lose....[is]believed to have the ability to block the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf through which much of the world's oil must pass on its way to market.n its way to market. Keep in mind that the rising price of oil already threatens the world's economy. Iran also has a large army and deep ties to the population of Shiite coreligionists next door in Iraq. The American military already has its hands full...And yet the United States for five years has repeatedly threatened it with military attack. These threats have lately acquired a new edge.

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The Reign of Thuggery

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Joshua Hammer - Jun. 10 (Special Report) - Mbeki's inaction is hardly surprising. Since Mugabe initiated his catastrophic "land grab" in January 2000, turning over four thousand white-owned farms to putative veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war and to cronies, the South African president has failed to address forthrightly both Zimbabwe's subsequent economic collapse and Mugabe's many human rights abuses. Clinging to an ineffectual policy of "quiet diplomacy," Mbeki stood by as Mugabe accelerated his violent land reform program. He then said and did little as the dictator unleashed thugs to intimidate voters and stuffed ballot boxes to guarantee electoral victories for Mugabe's ZANU-PF.

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Who Is John McCain?

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Michael Tomasky - May. 30 (Editorial) - His rhetoric about Iran--which inevitably will be a factor in any solution--has been belligerent. He calls it a "rogue state" and has spoken often of "rogue-state rollback," deliberately invoking a word favored by the hardest-line cold warriors; he recently said he never meant by the phrase "that we should go around and declare war." On the Middle East, he said in late April that "people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare." On health care, McCain's plan is built around tax credits ($5,000 for families) that would cover less than half the cost of today's average family plan and lead to high deductibles and much greater risk. His economic policies would, if enacted, combine Bush's tax cuts with far more severe spending cuts in a way that could ultimately destabilize Social Security and Medicare, a goal fiscal conservatives have sought for decades; and he recently announced that he would nominate Supreme Court judges like John Roberts and Samuel Alito. So there's plenty for the opposition to work with. Whether these matters will carry more weight than lapel pins or pastors or the ghosts of Hanoi may well be the question of this year's campaign.

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The Question of Global Warming

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Freeman Dyson - May. 27 (Review) - Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling's wiggles prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world's forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by half in about fifty years.

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