Since 9/11, western powers have behaved more or less like Prince Hamlet, conflicted by doubts and stalemated by niceties that barely register with those who have mounted their version of “slings and arrows” against the West and its allies. A dozen years following 9/11 should have erased any remaining doubt that Osama bin Laden spoke […]
Forty years ago U.S. President Richard Nixon was re-elected with a lopsided 520 electoral college votes over his Democratic opponent, Sen. George McGovern. It was a huge mandate for the president in a country divided over the war in Vietnam. But there was a cloud over Nixon’s win. A petty burglary at the Democratic National […]
There will be scores of books written and words piled up alongside the mounting American debt to fathom the results and consequences of the 2012 U.S. election. In columns of such limited space as these, one can only suggestively wink at, as I once wrote, the complexity of subjects such as this requiring treatment at […]
The role of the electoral college in American politics is unique, indirectly electing the U.S. president every four years. The American constitution provides for each state of the union to have a list of electors chosen by the state legislators equal to the number of elected representatives sent from the states to the U.S. Congress. […]
In less than two weeks, Americans will either elect a new president, or give the incumbent a second term. In following the latest polls, one can observe that since the first debate on Oct. 3, support among likely voters across the country has shifted in favour of Mitt Romney. The Gallup and Rasmussen polls have […]
Every four years in the U.S., it comes down to the question that the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan asked the American voters in October 1980: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” During the second debate of the 2012 election cycle, Republican candidate Mitt Romney responded to a question by stating, […]
Following the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi by Islamist terrorists connected to al-Qaida on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, the European press pronounced upon President Obama’s foreign policy in the Arab-Muslim world. From Berlin, the German magazine Der Spiegel in its online English version ran the headline “Obama’s Middle […]
In Crowds and Power, the late Elias Canetti, a wonderfully gifted writer and Nobel laureate, brought a unique perspective in examining the human condition and history under the stress of mobs in politics. When individuals gathered together turn into a crowd and then erupt into a mob, the transition from one into another is the […]
As Americans stopped to mark the 11th anniversary of 9/11, and ponder how much the world has changed during these years, an ocean away more terrorist attacks were mounted on American interests in the Middle East. The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya resulting in the murder of Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador, […]
Politics makes strange bedfellows. And the strangest bedfellows people saw this week in Charlotte, N.C., were former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton and the current White House occupant, Barack Hussein Obama. The worst kept secret in American politics is the bad blood between the 42nd and the 44th president. In his recent bestseller The Amateur, […]
Four years later and what a difference this makes in the cycle of America’s presidential election. Four years ago enough Americans decided to vote into the White House a man with a slim resume, no executive experience in the private sector or government, and a history of association with individuals of dubious public record. The […]
In the 1990s, western democracies stepped forward to stop ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia by dispatching NATO forces in support of UN peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. The disintegration of Yugoslavia precipitated ethnic strife, and like all such struggles anywhere in the world, the Balkan conflict was complex and layered with history of grievances, identity […]
On the final Saturday evening of the London Olympics, NBC presented Tom Brokaw’s tribute to Britain, “Their Finest Hour.” This no doubt irritated many viewers, as they scrambled for alternative channels to watch their favourite events. But NBC made the right decision to bring viewers, with faded or little memory of the past, some history […]
In an interview ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, speaking with Charles Moore of the Telegraph, discussed the unfolding reality of the Middle East. Blair admitted after 9/11 he underestimated the bad “narrative” of Islamists that the West oppresses Islam and Muslims. Any objective reading of recent history […]
The Huma Abedin flap, as I noted last week, illustrates how unserious Washington’s political establishment remains about the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism. Huma Abedin is deputy chief of staff in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office, and the troubling aspect of this flap is Republican Sen. John McCain’s conduct. Instead of questioning the Obama administration’s […]
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