Archive for January, 2008|Monthly archive page
Politics & Policies: Bush’s last hurrah
There was no mention of the “axis of evil” in U.S. President George W. Bush’s final State of the Union address Monday night, although the president did made a point of singling out Iran and al-Qaida as continuing to threaten the advance of democracy in the Middle East.
Like the trumpets of Jericho
Filed under: Egypt, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, refugees |
Leave a Comment By CLAUDE SALHANI (Editor, Middle East Times)
Who said history doesn’t repeat itself? Well, sort of. In the Biblical battle of Jericho it was trumpets that pulled down the walls. In modern day Gaza it was explosives and a bulldozer that pulled down part of the seven-mile barrier erected by Israel to keep Gazans confined and to prevent weapons and munitions from entering the Strip.
With his recently found interest in the Middle East U.S. President George W. Bush may have watched some of the news footage beamed into the White House from the Egyptian-Gaza border. The president would have watched, perhaps with a sense of horror, maybe with a hint of remorse, as about 60,000 Palestinians oozed over the border into Egypt on Wednesday in search of food and other basic goods.
What Bush would have seen is what happens when a territory of 1.5 million people — make that 1.5 million desperate people, who are treated to daily doses of humiliation, threatened with starvation and severed from the rest of the world, and forced to live in what basically amounts to the world’s largest prison — are finally pushed to the limits.
Sarkozy’s risky Mideast chess game
Filed under: Iran, Islam, Lebanon, military intervention, terrorism |
Leave a Comment By CLAUDE SALHANI (Editor, Middle East Times)
While the world focused on President Bush’s much publicized tour of the Middle East last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy scored a major tactical victory against Iran as the political tug-o-war between the Islamic republic and the West takes on a new dimension.
As Bush tried — some would say unsuccessfully — to garner support from the Gulf states in the U.S.’s face-off with Iran, Sarkozy managed to sign an agreement with the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi giving France a military base in the United Arab Emirates, a mere 150 miles from the coast of Iran.
Inside Iran’s secretive Qods Force
By CLAUDE SALHANI (Editor, Middle East Times)
Since 2003 Iran has spent billions of dollars in Iraq, mobilized vast government resources and unleashed the Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, all in an effort to spread its hegemony and the Islamic revolution, according to sources in the Iranian resistance.
Bush tries to ’sell’ democracy
By CLAUDE SALHANI (UPI Contributing editor)
After spending the last few days trying to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, President Bush continued his tour of the Middle East, this time flaunting democracy to the oil-rich Gulf countries the way traders in this business-minded society flaunt their wares along the Dubai waterfront or in the old market place in Abu Dhabi.
Bush’s Gordian knot
Filed under: Democracy, Iraq, Middle East, War, military intervention, terrorism |
Leave a Comment President George W. Bush is about to embark on a tour of several Middle Eastern countries starting next week as his presidency rounds the corner heading for the final stretch of its second and final term at the White House. Bush, who started out his presidency wanting largely to ignore the Middle East and its perpetual conflicts, found himself dragged into the crux of the Arab-Israeli dispute despite his initial intention of staying well away from a problem of Gordian proportion. If Alexander the Great is said to have circumvented the dilemma of the Gordian knot by using his sword to slice through the rope, thus eliminating the knot, Bush (wrongly) believed he could cut through the Gordian knot of Islamist-driven terrorism by invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
Political predictions for 2008
Filed under: Democracy, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Mercenaries, military intervention |
Leave a Comment There are multiple areas of conflict or potential conflict in the world today with several of those conflicted areas having real potential to erupt into full-scale war, civil war, or a combination of both.
