http://tonykaron.com Analysis and commentary by Tony Karon Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:23:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My latest, posted on TomDispatch: America's march to a disastrous war in Iraq began in the media, where an unprovoked U.S. invasion of an Arab country was introduced as a legitimate policy option, then debated as a prudent and necessary one. Now, a similarly flawed media conversation on Iran is ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/08/24/goldbergs-bogus-ticking-clock-on-iran/ Goldberg, left, in conversation with Michael Oren, Bibi's man in Washington The first question to ask when considering how seriously to take Jeffrey Goldberg's latest alarmist screed about Israel gearing up to attack Iran, is "Why do people talk to Jeffrey Goldberg?" In the course of an Atlantic Monthly cover story ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/08/12/why-are-the-israelis-telling-their-secret-iran-attack-plans-to-jeffrey-goldberg/ For a variety of reasons, I ended up watching the World Cup Final on a TV tied to a tree at the soccer fields in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn... Click here to read the full set of my TIME.com world cup blog posts http://tonykaron.com/2010/08/03/world-cup-2010/ Last time around the U.S. encouraged this, what will Obama do? Tuesday's cross-border firefight between Israeli and Lebanese government forces might simply have been a misunderstanding. And the rockets fired from Gaza and the Israeli air strikes on the besieged territory over the past week could be viewed as periodic blip ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/08/03/the-eve-of-destruction/ Okay, I don't have much time here, it's recycling night -- and the New York Times seems to revel in recycling really tired Israeli PR lines. Today, it's Ephraim Karsh trotting out a mish-mash of misrepresentations and tar-balls of wishful thinking to make the case that the Arab world has ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/08/02/another-remarkably-stupid-nyt-op-ed-on-the-mideast/ Beinart chats with friends in high places: Liberal "hawks" like him played a major role in enabling the Iraq debacle In 2003, the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, a country that had neither attacked nor threatened it -- and we, and the Iraqis, are still living with ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/07/31/on-iran-liberals-are-enabling-another-disastrous-war/ Despite the escalating war rhetoric, conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. military establishment and even President Obama himself believe that the potential consequences of a military strike that plunges America into a third war in the Muslim world are so grave — and the prospects for such a strike preventing ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/07/29/is-war-talk-painting-obama-into-a-corner-on-iran/ So how do you say "Duh!" in Urdu? There's nothing new or remarkable in the suggestion that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has been aiding and abetting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, as highlighted in coverage of the massive leak of U.S. military documents published on Sunday. If anything, ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/07/26/how-do-you-say-duh-in-urdu/ Obama is unable to offer Abbas an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, because that is not what Netanyahu has in mind. Indeed, recent reports suggest that during his meeting last weekend with Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak, the Israeli prime minister presented a proposed map of a Palestinian ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/07/26/abu-mazen-and-obamas-peace-pantomime/ Take the 32 countries that qualified for the World Cup and have each represented by an iconic living cultural figure rather than 23 footballers, and here are the results: Group A: 1. Uruguay -- Eduardo Galeano 2. South Africa -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu 3. Mexico -- Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu 4. France ... http://tonykaron.com/2010/06/11/how-slovenia-wins-the-world-cup/