... history. As Francis Fukuyama famously noted in “The End of History,” the end of the Cold War marked the end of thousands of years of ideological struggle, and the spread of Western Democratic capitalist ideals all around the world was inevitable ... ... humbled New Orleans, a great American city, and did nothing to prevent the onset of the greatest global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression (barely managing to address it in time to prevent a possible total meltdown of the global financial ...
... alliance against their mutual enemy: Maliki’s anti-Sunni government. Using Anbar as a base within Iraq, ISIS was able to advance and take large amounts of Iraqi territory, much of which it still holds today. Thus, it was Maliki’s absolute refusal to compromise with and accommodate Iraqis Sunnis and others that created the current crisis with ISIS. The sad truth is that if Maliki had treated the Sunnis and Kurds more fairly, the Iraqi government—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds united against terrorism as they were back in 2007—would have been in a strong position to fend off ...
... el-Sisi. The gamble here is that Egypt’s restive population will tolerate an Egypt aligning itself with Shiite-led Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and that Egypt’s own explosive and volatile domestic security situation with its own people and an ISIS franchise running amok in the Sinai (one which apparently was able to blow up a Russian airliner) will not be major liabilities. Egypt has a large population but is mainly devoid of resources that Russia would find useful. Sure, Russia can increase ...
... work on your similes and metaphors before inflicting your lack of erudition on others.
To the militant pro-Snowden anti-NSA crusaders: I’m not going to tell you that what Snowden did had no positive effect; it clearly did. But there are also negative ... ... escalation in Syria by France (and maybe Russia, in relation to the airliner attack) and maybe even by others if it turns out ISIS had something to do with it; Yemen could be a focus if the attack involves the al-Qaeda affiliate operating there. Whatever ...
... you and you slaughter well over 100,000 of your own people (Assad's government forces have killed more Syrians than ISIS by far); this may possibly help Russia gain more allies in the region and/or spark the realignment of some nations towards ... ... many of the parts in which they are operating). It’s not like all of Catholic Europe will be sending holy warriors in a crusade to fight Orthodox Russia’s attempts to annex the ethnic Russian, Orthodox Christian sections of Ukraine.
Which brings ...
... maintaining the financial military assistance at practically the same level, which implies the reluctance to have a major brawl. Resumption of deliveries was conditioned by establishment of a democratically elected government. However, successes of the ISIS in Syria and Iraq and jihadists in Libya and the Yemen crisis, propped up by Cairo’s promises to hold parliamentary elections before the end of 2015, have accelerated the reconciliation process.
Washington keeps blasting Cairo for violation ...
... Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part I
4.) Dealing with Syria’s Civil War
AMMAN — Amidst a sea of Middle Eastern conflicts, the civil war raging in Syria is currently the largest and deadliest. Here, as in other situations, we have a crisis in which we must be careful not to blame Obama too much but must also note the missed opportunities where his substantive leadership could have made a huge difference, though not without some risk involved. So, right from the start, it must be acknowledged ...
... granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.
Israeli/Palestinian Peace
Here,... ... Israel announced the construction of 1,600 settlement housing units to be built on illegally occupied, disputed land in East Jerusalem (which was occupied in 1967 along with the West Bank and Gaza and which Israel has held in defiance of multiple binding ...
... itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our money going into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support for ISIS and other Islamic extremists and terrorists from very wealthy individuals motivated by the Saudi state-sponsored and ever-present-throughout-the-Gulf religious cult of Wahhabism/Salafism streams out of the Gulf like an oil spill, polluting the entire ...
... allies. In addition, the Kurdish people in northern Iraqi Kurdistan had been allies with the U.S. for decades and they were under threat. And world oil markets and production were being threatened. Finally, and certainly not least among the reasons, ISIS was murdering and abusing thousands in ways that even al-Qaeda thought went too far. Christians, Yazidis, Shiites, other minorities, and even Sunnis that were not subscribing to ISIS’s rule and extreme, murderous, barbaric interpretation of Islam have been and could still be ...
