The war the United States cannot allow to end In analysing foreign policy, no doubt the first mistake is to assume that policymakers know what they are doing. The recent announcement by the Pentagon that a new 30,000-strong 'border security' force is being trained in north-eastern Syria was immediately contradicted by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for whom 'the entire situation has been mis-portrayed, mis-described, some people mis-spoke. We are not creating a border security…
A war is being waged in and on Syria. Protecting the people from the dictator is no more than the usual pretext for attacks on Middle Eastern countries.
Jeremy Salt The roots of the current middle-east conflict were laid long before Israel was founded. The last, best hope for a just peace is that the Israeli people will come to terms with the problematic history of Zionism.
Identifying revolutionary potential in Syria is a false moveMuch of what Firas Massouh, Yoni Molad and Steve Pascoe write in response to my article is based on assumptions about how I think and how I frame events which have no relationship to how I do think or frame events. Let me deal with a few specific points in their critique, beginning with Syria. In no way did I suggest that Syria was an 'autonomous and…
Fostering sectarian warfare and devolution of Middle Eastern states into ethno-religious statelets underlies US involvement in the Syrian conflictA war is being waged in and on Syria. Protecting the people from the dictator is no more than the usual pretext for attackson Middle Eastern countries. The real target is not Bashar but Syria itself. It is Israel's visceral enemy; it has got in the way of the West virtually since its emergence as an independent…
How, why and when it would happen no one could have said, but that it would happen was never in any doubt. No people can live indefinitely in the conditions the Arab people have had to endure, and the assumption that somehow they could, that they would never rebel, that they were different, that they did not understand modernity, or did not want it or could not adapt to it, was inherently racist. Yet this…
The American tactics of turning Sunni and Shia Muslims against each other in Iraq, and Israel's similar plans in its conflict with Palestine are discussed. It is suggested that these plans would only further destabilize the Middle East region and create havoc, along with diminishing the credibility of the United States and Israel.
