A few days ago – on February 3 – this news item appeared: TAMPA, Florida (Reuters) – A military strike on Iran could have the unintended consequence of stirring nationalist sentiment to the benefit of Tehran’s hard-line government, U.S. General David Petraeus told Reuters…. “It’s possible (a strike) could be…
Sabrina Tavernise reports in today’s New York Times — a story that begins on the front-page, and continues at great length inside — about the rape and beating to death of a 12-year-old Pakistani girl by her employer, a rich and prominent member of the Lahore bar. The story is…
At Jihad Watch, less than a week ago, on January 28, a YouTube video of Awadh A. Binhazim, Ph.D., was put up. The tape shows one Awadh A. Binhazim being subject to questioning by a persistent questioner. The tape received a good deal of comment (a heinzian 57, at last…
Those who have read the previous articles that have appeared here under the title “Arabia Petraea, or General Petraeus’s Middle East,” (Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here), may possibly not be quite so impressed either with T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, nor with his “Twenty-Seven…
Part 1 is here, and part 2 here. In 1918, T. E. Lawrence set down some advice for his fellow British military men (and civilians) on Understanding and Dealing with the Bedu for “beginners in the Arab armies.” Given that Lawrence had been working with the Sharifian forces for less…
Part 1 is here. T. E. Lawrence thought of himself as a great expert on the Arabs, and he managed to convince others to share in that belief. And he met a felt need, in Great Britain in the 1920s, after the Great War, for a hero, and a hero…
“According to the Mufti, the conflict between Israel and its Arabs neighbors has nothing to do with an Islamic war against Judaism.” – from this story about the Mufti of Syria Of course he would say that. Muslims are deeply worried that as people all over the Western world who…
Ever since the “surge that worked,” I’ve been wondering about General Petraeus, and even more about those Leavenworth colonels, the ones of whom so much was made as the army’s intellectuals. These were the people who, during the “surge,” discovered and used lessons offered by previously overlooked “experts” on insurgency…
Dubai is a place, and a symbol. As a place, it has no claim on our attention. Voltaire once described French Canada as “quelques arpents de neige.” Dubai, like the rest of the Emirates, like Saudi Arabia, could with more justice be dismissed, as “quelques arpents de sable.” It also…
Many continue to believe that if we argue that Islam itself is the problem, this will leave the West with no solutions. The word “solution” leapt out at me. I have written about it many times before, in regards to those who speak of a “two-state solution” to the Arab…
