Category: Foreign Policy

How Washington Adds to Yemen’s Nightmare

Exclusive: Tangled in corrupt old alliances, such as with the Saudi monarchy, the Obama administration has now joined a war in Yemen that pits some of the region’s most anti-democratic forces and Al-Qaeda against a home-grown rebel movement with limited backing…

The Nasty Blowback from America’s Wars

Exclusive: There are historical warnings to countries that inflict violence abroad, that the imperial impulse will blow back on the domestic society with suppression of public debate and repression of common citizens, that the war will come home — as is happening in…

Neocons, R2Pers and Hypocrisy

Exclusive: R2Pers say America has a “responsibility to protect” endangered people around the world, but this R2P moral imperative is selective, often indistinguishable from neocons tolerating some slaughters and choosing to wage war against certain enemies — just dressed up in liberal rhetoric,…

Reasons for the Mideast’s Despair

The West is quick to show disdain for the Muslim world and almost as quick to bomb it. But the only way to ultimately diffuse Islamic extremism is to understand the West’s historic role in causing the problem and then…

Hyping the Iranian ‘Threat’

Iran hasn’t invaded another country for centuries and is helping the U.S. push back against the Islamic State in Iraq, but Israeli leaders and American neocons want to enlist the West in the Saudi cause of promoting Sunni Islam over…

Israel’s Unsavory New ‘Allies’

The American people, who still want to stop Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, are only dimly aware that longtime U.S. “allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia have shifted into an effective alliance with those Sunni jihadists as part of their regional war against…

When Journalists Join the Cover-ups

From the Archive: Ex-New York Times reporter Judith Miller still insists only innocent mistakes were made in the phony claims used to justify invading Iraq, but what the case really showed was a systematic failure of the Washington press corps, as…

Judith Miller’s Blame-Shifting Memoir

U.S. intelligence veterans recall the real story of how New York Times reporter Judith Miller disgraced herself and her profession by helping to mislead Americans into the disastrous war in Iraq. They challenge the slick, self-aggrandizing rewrite of history in…

Why America Needs Iran

President Obama is tiptoeing around the sensitivities of Israel and Saudi Arabia as he depicts the Iran-nuclear deal as a one-off affair. But broader cooperation with Iran may be vital to salvage U.S. interests in the Mideast, say Flynt and…

Obama’s Fateful Indecision

Exclusive: With Israel and Saudi Arabia siding with the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda versus Iran and its allies, President Obama faces a critical decision whether to repudiate those old allies and cooperate with Iran or watch as Sunni terrorist groups possibly…