May 2011
9 posts
6 tags
An Absurd Approach to the Taliban: Kill Them...
Paris
How is the Afghan war going to end? We generally avoid this question, even though the Canadian departure is months away, and other forces will be gone within three years. After that, a bathetic descent into an awkward and ambiguous future.
So there is a desire, increasingly, to go out with a bang. The death of Osama bin Laden has created a new sense that the war can be won outright, if...
7 tags
With Ratko Mladic's Arrest, Serbia's Democrats Set...
It was easy to find the angry men on Friday, holding banners and shouting on the dusty main street of the town where Ratko Mladic was captured the day before after 16 years on the run, or in the main squares of Belgrade, raging at the loss of their ethnically pure “greater Serbia” and its last remaining warrior.
Even five years ago, it would have seemed certain that their anger would swell, in...
1 tag
Comparing Immigrant Assimilation in Europe and...
Vigdor Comparing Immigrant Assimilation
Original Article
6 tags
The Sarkozy Paradox: Blessed from Above,...
Paris
It was as if Nicolas Sarkozy had been handed the world on a plate: A disgraced opponent; a child on the way; a bold military campaign; and the Western world’s top leaders headed to France to give his ideas a global audience.
And yet, in a sign of the deep fissures cutting through European politics and the dark public mood, the French President is still struggling to hold the French...
10 tags
The Bonfire Of The Centrists
London
For decades, they were the untouchable monoliths of politics: The big nation-wide parties that straddled the centre ground, leaning slightly to the left or right, capturing big swathes of votes across the spectrum, forming the lion’s share of national governments during the half-dozen decades after the Second World War.
The Liberals in Canada. The Christian Democrats and Social...
6 tags
Let a Thousand Think Tanks Bloom: Why Aid Should...
London
When we think of foreign aid, we tend to think of something rudimentary being delivered to a village: a well, some mosquito nets, a school building. Or of something big being delivered to a government: a harbour, a generating station, a prison.
And we tend to be disappointed with foreign-aid spending these days, because after years of investments on wells and mosquito nets and school...
5 tags
America's Army of Non-Citizens: A Greater Threat...
If you had a one-time opportunity to fix your country’s most serious flaw, what would it be? That was the question facing Barack Obama after the success of his mission to kill Osama bin Laden. You can argue about the value of the al-Qaeda leader’s death for foreign relations and on international terrorism, but its effect on domestic politics was profound. Overnight, Mr. Obama had created a moment...
10 tags
How Osama bin Laden Relegated Himself to the...
It was never difficult to find fans of Osama bin Laden. You ran across them almost daily if you spent time in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf or Pakistan. T-shirts and garish wall hangings bearing his image have always done a brisk trade. He was a rock star.
But it’s been almost impossible, in recent years, to find anyone who subscribes to his ascetic and medieval view of the role of religion...
10 tags
Osama bin Laden: An Obituary
Nearly ten years after I researched and wrote it in 2001, my obituary of Osama bin Laden was retrieved from the files and published on the evening of Sunday May 1, 2011. It was updated periodically, but its main text was written long before Steve Coll’s excellent biography of bin Laden and his family.
Osama bin Laden was born into an almost unlimited family fortune amassed from a potent...
