Category Archives: Situation Report

Behind the Fall of “Fox” Fallon

Guest Column: Mark Perry. When Admiral William “Fox” Fallon resigned, or was forced out, of his position as head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, responsible for Iraq and Afghanistan, and for Iran if there were any conflict with Iran, much of the speculation hinged over Fallon’s very public opposition to Washington’s saber-rattling at Tehran. It struck me, though, that there was something misleading and melodramatic in the media reports suggesting, like the Esquire piece that proved his undoing, that Fallon was somehow a lone voice of opposition, a singular hero obstructing a march to war with Iran, like the man putting his body in the path of the Tiananmen-bound tank from 1989’s most famous news photograph. The opposition to war with Iran being expressed by Fallon is shared, as far as I know, by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by Defense Secretary Gates himself. So, for some explanation of the dynamics at work, I turned to my friend Mark Perry, longtime defense and security analyst in Washington with his ear to the ground in the U.S. capital.
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Posted in Guest Columns, Situation Report | 31 Comments

How Chavez Eats and Keeps His Cake

The surest sign of the relative decline of U.S. power is the fact that regimes that are militantly at odds with Washington — think Chavez in Venezuela, or even the Islamic Republic of Iran — are able to routinely defy the U.S. because they have something to offer that Washington needs. (Oil, in the case of Venezuela, and in Tehran’s case, the prospect of stability in Iraq.) And that suggests that for a host of more powerful and less ideologically committed regimes in the developing world — from Turkey to Brazil, Indonesia to South Africa — there is an unprecedented opportunity to advance their own interest by refraining from aligning themselves with any single bloc, but instead cutting deals with various power centers.
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Posted in Situation Report | 7 Comments

U.S. Pours Gasoline on Gaza Fires

Once upon a time, Israelis and Palestinians looked to the U.S. to intervene at moments of heightened confrontation to mediate between the two sides and contain the damage. The Bush Administration, however, has proved entirely incapable of playing this role, because its own interventions are hidebound by the illusion that it can marginalize and destroy Hamas, the party that represents at least half of the Palestinian population Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report, Unholy War | 43 Comments

Israel in Deadly Denial

Guest Column: Uri Avnery As dozens of Palestinian civilians are killed in Israel’s fierce retaliation for the latest round of rocket fire, the veteran Israeli peace campaigner Uri Avnery discusses the inevitable — it may take the death of hundreds or even thousands more Palestinians, and scores more Israelis, but in the end, Israel will talk to Hamas.

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Posted in Situation Report | 106 Comments

Obama and the ‘Jewish Vote’

The problem with Obama, for the Zionist establishment, is that they can’t be sure he hates the Palestinians enough. The deeper problem for the Zionist establishment, of course, is that Jewish Americans are flocking to Obama despite their coded warnings Continue reading

Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report | 81 Comments

Inside a Failed Palestinian Police State

Guest Column: Arthur Neslen, writing from Ramallah, offers a glimpse of the political decay at the heart of Mahmoud Abbas’s Vichy state. Hamas doesn’t need to challenge Fatah in the West Bank, because Fatah is destroying itself through corruption and kow-towing to the U.S. and Israel. Never mind Hamas, it’s hard to find a Fatah activist on the West Bank who actually believes any good will come from the Bush-Olmert-Abbas “peace process” so regularly hyped in the Western media. Continue reading

Posted in Guest Columns, Situation Report | 22 Comments

Who’s Got the Power?

President George W. Bush could be forgiven for underestimating China: He had spent some months there in the mid-1970s, when his father was U.S. Ambassador to Beijing. His firsthand experience of a largely pre-industrial colossus could hardly have prepared him for dealing with the China of today — a China to which the U.S. owes some $1.5 trillion and counting, and to which America’s beleaguered banks turn for the multibillion dollar loans required to keep them afloat.
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Posted in Situation Report | 7 Comments

The Guilty Pleasure of Fidel Castro

What fascinates me is the guilty pleasure with which so many political leaders around the world revere Fidel Castro — revere him, but wouldn’t dream of emulating his approach to economics or governance. Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report, The Whole World's Africa | Tagged , , , | 90 Comments

Israel’s Self-Defeating ‘Liquidation’

Guest Column: Uri Avnery, the doyen of Israeli peace campaigners, has seen it all before. With last week’s killing of Hizballah commander Imad Mughniyeh, Israel once again demonstrated an unrivaled capacity to pull off difficult assassinations, and then went into a frenzy of self-congratulation over its prowess. After last year’s failed Lebanon war, Israel’s political-military leadership certainly felt the need to offer its public a psychological pick-me-up. But at what cost? Avnery explores the history of such “liquidations,” as the Israeli establishment calls them, to show that they tend to actually strengthen resistance organizations, while raising the danger to the civilian population of those who carry them out. Continue reading

Posted in Guest Columns, Situation Report | 21 Comments

The Fish is in the Mail

You’d think that avowed Christians would have remembered that Biblical lesson about the difference between giving a poor man a fish, and giving him a fishing pole — or a job on a snoek boat, or a deepwater hake factory ship, you know what I’m getting at. Nope, when President Bush hands out $1.5 trillion with the approval of the Democratic Congress, it’s going to be all fish. Checks mailed out in the spring, $600 or $1200, on the bizarre assumption that these will somehow be serve as a defibrillator on the flagging economy.
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Posted in 99c Blogging, Situation Report | 15 Comments