Category: Current Affairs

So I’m reading Jeff Jacoby’s op-ed in the Boston Globe today and he’s talking about anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, (I’m ignoring the fact for a second that the idea of an Arab world, like Arab street, is Orientalist, and that using Egypt as an example for over two dozen countries is just bad writing.) when I run across this paragraph: It was Al-Akhbar, another regime-sponsored daily, that declared in August: “The Statue of Liberty . . . must be destroyed because of the idiotic American policy that goes from disgrace to disgrace in the swamp of bias and…

So one of the arguments against being able to prevent 9/11 is that no one could have imagined such a scenario. I remember at the time there was much made of the fact that an author (Tom Clancy? Sorry, I just don’t remember enough of the details.) had written a book describing a similar situation, and that the idea had also been mooted for a Hollywood movie script. Granted these are not official sources of government information, so I’m willing to cut them some slack. However, I’ve linked previously to another article that would be considered an official government source.…

Crown Prince (of Darkness?) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia speaking after a car bomb destroyed a building in Riyadh on 21 April 2004 said "God is on our side and will help us punish the perpetrators." I am sure that the planners of the bombing said exactly the same thing before they unleashed their destruction. Bush has said that God wanted him to be in the White House. Following that logic, God wants Bush and America to wage war in Iraq and recent battles in Fallujah suggest that America is fighting a real war not skirmishes. While those in Fallujah and…

Some of you may have heard of a country called Afghanistan. The US invaded in 2001 because the country was the home base of Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The reason we believe AQ moved there is because Afghanistan was considered a failed state, which made it a haven for illegal activities, including planning terrorist attacks. To me the logical response to such a theory is that we should not let another state fail, least of all a state over which we have control.

On March 12-14, a conference entitled “Arab Reform Issues: Vision and Implementation” was held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt. This was a semi-secret conference in which participants were invited only three days before the start. It was closed to the public and the press. The outcome and final declaration were not widely distributed. Here is what the delagation had to say in its final statement. If this was implemented and had some weight behind it, there may be hope for the Middle East.

I dislike the House of Saud. I hate the hypocrisy of the country. I wish Muhammad bin abd-el Wahhab never existed and that Saudi Arabia had no oil so that the petro-dollars could not be used to wipe out Islamic cultural expressions around the world. I do not like my Islam defined by these characters. I, however. like Slate, the online journal. Read it quite regularly, I do. Today, however, I was not happy to read the an article on Slate entitled: “Stop Scapegoating the Saudis, Maybe They’re Not Responsible for Everything That Ails Islam”, by Lee Smith. I like…