While Obama has shamelessly pandered (along with the rest of them) for the American Jewish vote, he has at the same time demonstrated a grasp of Middle Eastern realities that I have not heard from any other candidate. And while he has made some errors (in my opinion), he got it right on the big …
Category: History
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/05/18/i-beg-to-disagree/
May 13 2008
A century of willful ignorance
A friend of mine just sent me an interesting article by Ramzy Baroud, about Johns Hagee and McCain: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13720 Here’s the first paragraph from Baroud’s article: A memorable quote in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) still carries a wealth of relevance. He writes, “They own the [holy] land, just the mere land, and that’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/05/13/a-century-of-willful-ignorance/
May 11 2008
Memories
Either Prime Minister Siniora studied at the George Bush – John McSame School of Diplomacy or he is suffering profound memory loss. According to Haaretz, he has today branded Hezbollah as worse than Israel, saying “even the Israeli enemy never dared to do to Beirut what Hezbollah has done.” http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/982080.html According to Wikipedia, it is …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/05/11/memories/
Feb 27 2008
Warning: this is obscene!
Next month America will have been in Iraq for five years – longer than it spent in either world war. Daily military operations (not counting, for example, future care of wounded) have already cost more than 12 years in Vietnam, and twice as much as the Korean war. America is spending $16 billion a month …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/02/27/warning-this-is-obscene/
Nov 10 2007
Who would Jesus water-board?
This is one of those rare occasions where I agree with some of what Dershowitz had to say. Water-boarding IS torture. The real question is not whether or not a particular technique is torture, but whether or not torture harvests useful intelligence or is just indulging the sadistic impulses of some of our freakier interrogators. The …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/11/10/who-would-jesus-water-board/
Sep 16 2007
Pathological stupidity
On September 6th, there was an op-ed piece in the New York Times by L. Paul Bremer (the 3rd) titled “How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army.” I trust you already know this, but in case our national obsession with OJ and Britney has lapsed your memory, Bremer was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/09/16/pathological-stupidity/
Sep 11 2007
A Moment of Silence
A poem for 9-11 By Emmanuel Ortiz, September 11, 2002 Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. I would also like to ask you to …
Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/09/11/a-moment-of-silence/