Quantcast
Channel: Commentary Magazine » Arabian Peninsula
Browsing all 20 articles
Browse latest View live

Sharif’s Return

The differences are greater than the similarities, but somehow the Saudi decision to send exiled politician Nawaz Sharif back to Pakistan on an airplane belonging to King Abdullah reminds me of the...

View Article



An Isolated Extremist?

In his remarkably unenthusiastic and perfunctory appearance yesterday (couldn’t he at least have shaved or put on a tie?), Obama uttered this line: “This incident, like several that have preceded it,...

View Article

Obama Tries Once More

In a few hours, Obama went from not wanting to point fingers to labeling the intelligence community as the root of the Christmas Day bombing fiasco. The New York Times reports: President Obama said...

View Article

Terrorist Recidivism

I recall visiting Saudi Arabia a couple of years ago and being briefed by Saudi officials on their program to reeducate and rehabilitate Islamist extremists in their prisons. The program had long been...

View Article

Appeasement Won’t Woo Terrorists

Yesterday President Obama declared that in light of the “unsettled situation” in Yemen, he will not be transferring detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to that country. At the same time, Obama declared:...

View Article


They Were “Aspirational”

There seemed to be both a bureaucratic and an analytical “disconnect” in the posture communicated by the Obama administration yesterday on the Christmas airliner bombing. On the bureaucratic side, we...

View Article

The Yemen Project

Frederick Kagan and Christopher Harnisch have a useful think piece in the Wall Street Journal today on applying “smart power” in Yemen. Their series of excellent points culminates in the suggestion of...

View Article

Too Much of a “Light” Thing

The profile of Country A in Yemen associates it with domestic military raids by the corrupt, ineffective central government. Country B’s profile in Yemen involves contracts to build a railroad and new...

View Article


Michael Hayden vs. Obami’s Folly

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden is the latest and among the most credible critics of the administration’s handling of the Christmas Day bombing. He writes: We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas...

View Article


Undoing the Damage — We Hope

As Stephen Hayes details, the Christmas Day bomber is now talking and the Obami have changed their tune. For days and weeks we heard from Obama’s flacks and from leaks in mainstream news outlets that...

View Article

What if They Got Away?

Eli Lake reports: U.S. and allied counterterrorism authorities have launched a global manhunt for English-speaking terrorists trained in Yemen who are planning attacks on the United States, based on...

View Article

Klein of Arabia (Again)

Joe Klein has a characteristically paranoid post in which he says that the criticisms of Barack Obama lodged by AIPAC and other “American Likudniks… teeter on the brink of treachery.” The AIPAC...

View Article

Obama OKs Assassination of American Citizen

…and no, it’s not Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was...

View Article


Petraeus Is Not Anti-Israel

In the never-ending debate about General Petraeus and Israel, a few more data points are in — and they buttress what I have said earlier, that he is hardly the Israel-basher that some on the Left (and...

View Article

The Senate Intelligence Committee: The System Sure Didn’t Work

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence put out a 55-page report finding 14 significant intelligence failings in connection with the Christmas Day bombing plot. These included problems with the...

View Article


RE: Peaceful, Humanitarian, Civilian Flotilla

As Noah points out, the flotilla was many things — ingenious, sinister, deceptive, etc. — but not peaceful. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren writes in the New York Times: Peace activists are people who...

View Article

Yemen and the Biden Strategy

One of the most useful prisms through which to view Yemen and Somalia is that of the “Biden strategy” for the War on Terror. The strategy’s outlines are provided in this article, one of many recounting...

View Article


Saudi Arms Sale: Which War in View?

The sheer size of the proposed $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia makes it worth critical reflection. The types of weapon systems in the Saudi shopping list are even more eye-catching. News outlets...

View Article

LIVE BLOG: Expiration Date

“And we have sent a message from the Afghan border to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.” And if not, we’re leaving anyway.

View Article

LIVE BLOG: Mixed Messages to al-Qaeda

Obama to al-Qaeda: “We have sent a message from the Afghan border to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.” But we will also...

View Article
Browsing all 20 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images