The UN Security Council should not have referred the Libya situation to the ICC, claim many on the Right, because now Qaddafi has no incentive to step down. If potential prosecution awaits after his ouster, they say, he has every incentive to hold his ground. The ICC referral, the argument goes, is a barrier to […]
Once again I respond to a post by FPA Israel blogger Ben Moscovitch. Not to pick on him. But because we disagree on many things and it seems worthwhile to me to discuss them. Hopefully he agrees. Ben’s most recent post criticizes Obama for drawing a parallel between the Passover story and the protest movements […]
I stand with the FPA Israel blog’s Zev Wexler, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and the three Goldstone Report co-authors who are not Richard Goldstone in thinking that Goldstone’s recent recantation is “bizarre,” as Cohen put it. Goldstone asserts that Israeli military investigations “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of […]
Pakistan has told the United States to halt drone strikes on Pakistani territory. Thus, the debate about the legality of the U.S. drones program has taken a new turn. (For background, see my analysis of the Wittes-O’Connell debate on this issue from last year.) How does one determine whether the United States can legally continue […]
I wrote a review of a book called Peace: A World History, by Antony Adolf, for The Mantle. Check it out here. While I had some problems with the book, as you’ll read in the review, I still think it’s worth a read. Here’s the first paragraph of my take: As implied by the title […]
Eric Holder’s announcement earlier this week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and several other 9/11 plotters will be tried in military tribunals represents another step in Obama’s ‘close Guantanamo’ saga. The saga began in Obama’s first week as president, when he signed the infamous Close Guantanamo executive order (you can read the executive order here). […]
UN Security Council Resolution 1973 (which you can download here) authorizes a no-fly zone in Libya, as well as some other things. The scope of those other things, though, is the source of much contention. The no-fly zone, as far as I can tell, is pretty straight forward. Paragraph 8 authorizes member states “to take […]
I’ll be away this week, so despite all that’s going on in the world, I’ll have to wait until next week to write about it. Good thing the rest of the FPA-o-sphere is doing such a good job of covering everything! Until next week…
Accusations abound that the West’s intervention in Libya is all about oil. Qaddafi has painted Western intervention as imperialist from the start of no-fly zone talks. “The colonialist countries are hatching a plot to humiliate the Libyan people, reduce them to slavery and control the oil,” he has said. But the Left is exploring this […]
“Violence produces violence,” said Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in his initial statement following last weekend’s Itamar attack, in which five Israeli settlers were murdered. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack except for Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who no one seems to believe actually did it because they have claimed responsibility for things they […]
In the PBS Newshour segment to which I linked last week, Richard Haas said: Why are we so confident that we know enough about the tribal structure of Libya, about the various clans that are competing for power, that if we intervene, that the guys we want are going to win, that we’re not, for […]
Last year I coined a phrase: getting 527-ed. It comes from the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Bush was asked whether he would condemn the Swift Boat ads against Kerry, and instead, Bush condemned all ads made by 527 organizations. Bush 527-ed Kerry. This, apparently, is also what Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, did over the weekend. […]
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