Obama's Lean, Mean SEAL Machine
By Daniel Klaidman
Early last week, dozens of U.S. national-security officials received a set of classified PowerPoint slides. In October, Somali outlaws had taken two humanitarian-relief workers hostage, including an American woman, and now U.S. commandos were preparing to launch a rescue mission. Officials in Washington were scheduled to review the operation by secure video conference on Tuesday morning. But then word came that the secret meeting was being pushed up to late in the day on Monday. Why the urgency? There were growing concerns about the rapidly deteriorating health of Jessica Buchanan, More..
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Being Part of the Middle East as History is Rewritten
O. Bahadir Dincer
During the last years, there have been a great many developments in the Arab world which proved that the days of the existing authoritarian leaders were numbered. Definite proof that things were changing were provided by a series of events: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003; the elections in Iraq in 2005; demonstrations the same year against Syria in Lebanon; the unprecedented success of the Muslim Brotherhood in winning 88 parliamentary seats in Egypt; and in 2006 Hamas's success More..
Did the Iraq War Take Place?
By Dilek Karal
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true. -Ecclesiastes-
The last American combat troops withdraw from Iraq three weeks ago on December 17, 2011 after eight years of war. Even for the supporters of the war,the reasons as to why the U.S. went into Iraq became vague over the years. The long years of war with a missing victor reminds of Jean Baudrillard's long debated article titled “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place” which was published just before the attack by American and British forces on Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War. Although the expectation of war was clear and the direct statements of leaders were alarming, at time More..