“So let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.”
Philip Graham,
Former President & Publisher
The Washington Post
Much has been written about the ahistorical nature of Donald Trump, the first U.S. president with no experience in government or the military. After his first one hundred days, history is reasserting itself. James Kitfield…
Geneva II: Is it Always Better to “Jaw Jaw” than to “War War”? Winston Churchill’s adage is being sorely tested this week in Switzerland at the peace conference on Syria. To avoid the perverse outcome…
By James Kitfield The unsettling news in recent days that Al Qaeda in Iraq (newly renamed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) has captured the strategic crossroads town of Fallujah, Iraq, was…
No one should doubt that Iraq is sliding back towards the abyss. Already a resurgent al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has killed more than 5,000 civilians in 2013, making it the worst year for violence…
Critics of the United States’ hands-off approach to Syria’s civil war have long warned that the costs of doing little to shape the conflict’s outcome would one day outweigh the risks of doing more. The…
With the Obama administration now pushing talks to try and end Syria’s civil war as early as next month in Geneva, a major complicating factor is the black flag of Al Qaeda that now flies…
A new report by Human Rights Watch gives an unsettling glimpse of the sectarian slaughter that could attend the collapse of the Syrian government if recent gains by Islamist extremist groups are not checked. According…
The announcement that 11 of the largest armed factions among the Syrian rebels have united under an Islamist umbrella held aloft by Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, represents a potential game-changer. The unlikely…
Along with the leaves changing color and the return of football, it became a rite of fall for former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to arrive in New York City for the U.N. General Assembly’s gathering…
When the U.N. General Assembly gathers in New York next week, Iran will present a new face to the world. Whereas former Iranian president and notorious ideological firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was famous for using the…