Foreign Policy In Focus, September 28, 2007, by Stephen Zunes.
I was among a group of American religious leaders and scholars who met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. In what was billed as an inter-faith dialogue, we frankly shared our strong opposition to certain Iranian government policies and provocative statements made by the Iranian president. At the same time, we avoided the insulting language employed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger before a public audience two days earlier. The Iranian president was quite unimpressive. Indeed, with his ramblings and the superficiality of his analysis, he came across as more pathetic than evil…
Category: Middle East
Middle East Overview
Annotate This… President Bush’s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq
Foreign Policy In Focus | September 14, 2007
By Erik Leaver, Stephen Zunes
Instead of charting a new direction for U.S. policy in Iraq, President Bush’s speech to the nation last evening was an impassioned plea to the American public to stay the course. But much of Bush’s argument for staying the course was based on spin instead of reality. In this edition of Annotate This… Stephen Zunes and Erik Leaver analyze Bush’s statements and offer an alternative interpretation of the situation on the ground. [source]
The U.S. Role in the Gaza Tragedy
Foreign Policy In Focus | June 26, 2007
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Stephen Zunes
There is much blame to go around regarding the tragic turn of events in the Gaza Strip. While Hamas is the most immediate culprit, responsibility also rests with Fatah, Israel – and the United States… [source]
The Peace Movement Addresses Israel-Palestine (Finally)
Foreign Policy In Focus | June 14, 2007
In my Inbox last Friday was an email from Peace Action, the country’s largest peace group, encouraging its members to join the thousands of peace and human rights activists from across the country in the June 10 march in Washington against the Israeli occupation. This otherwise unremarkable letter served as an important reminder that U.S. support for the Israeli occupation is finally becoming an issue for the mainstream of the peace movement… [source]
Jerusalem: Endorsing the Right of Conquest
Foreign Policy In Focus, June 8, 2007, By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes
Also at Antiwar.com, lucistrust.org, and TheSaker.si
In a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory in the June 1967 war…
The Democrats’ Support for Bush’s War
Foreign Policy In Focus | May 31, 2007, By Erik Leaver, Stephen Zunes
The capitulation of the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership to the Bush administration’s request for nearly $100 billion of unconditional supplementary government spending, primarily to support the war in Iraq, has led to outrage throughout the country. In the Senate, 37 of 49 Democrats voted on May 24 to support the measure. In the House, while only 86 of the 231 Democratic House members voted for the supplemental funding, 216 of them voted in favor of an earlier procedural vote designed to move the funding bill forward… [source]
U.S. Role in Lebanon Debacle
Foreign Policy In Focus | May 18, 2007, by Stephen Zunes
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert continues to resist pressure that he resign following the publication late last month of the interim report by a special Israeli commission on Israel’s war on Lebanon last summer. Military chief Dan Halutz has already been forced to step down and Defense Minister Amir Peretz has announced he will also be resigning shortly…
The Democrats and the “Human Shields” Myth
Foreign Policy In Focus, May 17, 2007, by Stephen Zunes
Also at Common Dreams and TheFreeLibrary.com.
Israelis from across the political spectrum, emboldened by the interim report from the government’s Winograd Commission, which investigated Israel’s ill-fated assault on Lebanon, are expressing regrets over last summer’s conflict with their northern neighbor. Uproar over the way a relatively minor border incident managed to escalate into a full-scale war is leading to demands for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s resignation…
Bring ‘Em Home, Bring ‘Em Home
Foreign Policy In Focus, May 14, 2007
by Emily Schwartz Greco, Stephen Zunes
Bruce Springsteen belts out an old peace movement standard. I first heard it while driving home from work on a college FM station. It was a song I had forgotten about but had known, with slightly different opening lyrics, in my childhood…
Washington Takes Aim at Syria
Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, May 2, 2007
While Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s willingness to meet with Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallim during last week’s conference on Iraq is a welcome sign, most signals coming out of Washington in recent months are far more ominous. Indeed, the strident opposition by the Bush administration of the visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic members of Congress to Syria last month is not just another indication of the administration’s pathological opposition to engaging in dialogue with governments it doesn’t like. It may be a sign that the Bush administration is considering military action against Syria, either directly or through its proxy Israel.
U.S. Blocks Israel-Syria Talks
Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, May 1, 2007
By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes [source].
Even as American officials reluctantly agreed last month to include Syrian representatives in multiparty talks on Iraqi security issues, the Bush administration continues to block Israel from resuming negotiations with Syria over its security concerns. In 2003, President Bashar al-Assad offered to resume peace talks with Israel where they had left off three years earlier, but Israel, backed by the Bush administration, refused. Assad eventually agreed to reenter peace negotiations without preconditions, but even these overtures were rejected…
Iraq: The Failures of Democratization
Foreign Policy In Focus | March 9, 2007,
by John Feffer, Stephen Zunes [source]
The failures of Iraqi democratization as advocated by the Bush administration should not be blamed primarily on the Iraqis. Nor should they be used, to reinforce racist notions that Arabs or Muslims are somehow incapable of building democratic institutions and living in a democratic society. Rather, democracy from the outset has been more of a self-serving rationalization for American strategic and economic interests in the region than a genuine concern for the right of the Iraq people to democratic self-governance…
Iran in Iraq?
Foreign Policy In Focus, April 14, 2007
By Stephen Zunes [PDF & source]
Faced with growing public opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, the Bush administration has been desperately trying to divert attention to Iran. Washington has gone so far as to make a series of dubious and unfounded charges that blame the Iranian government for the difficulties facing American forces fighting the Iraqi insurgency. Despite the absence of any credible reports of Iranian involvement in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, President George W. Bush last month formally authorized U.S. forces to “kill or capture” suspected Iranian agents in Iraq…
Annotate This: Escalation in Iraq
Foreign Policy In Focus | January 11, 2007, By Stephen Zunes
On January 10, George W. Bush finally delivered a speech on his new Iraq policy. Originally planned for before Christmas, the plan’s chief element—an increase in U.S. soldiers on the ground—received much criticism and was therefore postponed. The speech has already drawn negative responses from senior House Democrats, who have vowed to block funding for the increase in troops, from the American public, 61% of whom oppose the build-up, and was skeptically received by some key Republicans. The Arab world, too, has voiced doubts about the plan…
Saddam’s Execution
Foreign Policy In Focus | January 2, 2007,
By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes
The execution of Saddam Hussein, though he was undeniably guilty of a notorious series of crimes against humanity, represents a major setback in the pursuit of justice in Iraq. The trial and the sentence were both problematic. The opportunity for future trials, and to present evidence of U.S. complicity in some of Saddam’s crimes, has been lost. And the overall message — that leaders face justice only if they run afoul of U.S. authority – undermines international legal norms…
The United States and Lebanon’s Civil Strife
Foreign Policy In Focus, December 6, 2006
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Stephen Zunes
The ongoing popular challenge to the pro-Western Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora marks yet another setback in the Bush administration’s attempt to impose a new order on the Middle East more compatible with perceived U.S. strategic interests…
The Democrats’ War
Foreign Policy In Focus, November 29, 2006
By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes
With power comes responsibility. Once they take over both houses of Congress on January 3, the Democrats will have the responsibility to get American troops out of Iraq as soon as practicable…
Falling In Line on Israel
TomPaine.com Nov. 15, 2006, by Stephen Zunes
[Source link is no longer available]
The election of a Democratic majority in the House and Senate is unlikely to result in any serious challenge to the Bush administration’s support for Israeli attacks against the civilian populations of its Arab neighbors and the Israeli government’s ongoing violations of international humanitarian law…
Operation Enduring Freedom: A Retrospective
Foreign Policy In Focus, By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes | October 17, 2006
It has become a given, even among many progressive critics of Bush administration policy, that while the U.S. war on Iraq was illegal, immoral, unnecessary, poorly executed, and contrary to America’s national security interests, the war on Afghanistan–which was launched five years ago last week–was a legal, moral, and a necessary response to protect American national security in the aftermath of 9/11…
Afghanistan: Five Years Later
Foreign Policy In Focus, October 13, 2006
By John Feffer, Stephen Zunes
On the fifth anniversary of the launch of the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the offensive, much of the countryside is in the hands of warlords and opium magnates, U.S. casualties are mounting, and many, if not most, Afghans are actually worse off now than they were before the U.S. invasion…