|
|||||
|
Two posts I read today hint at some degree of increased strength for Khomeinist theories of government in Iraqi political. First there is Juan Cole: “Ammar has a say in who serves as the Friday Prayer leader and sermonizer at the mosque of the shrine of Ali in the holy city of Najaf, a position [...] In the November/December 2009 issue of the Boston Review, Nir Rosen has a piece called “An Ugly Peace.” In it, Rosen writes about the new status quo in Iraq that was created by the end of the sectarian war and the U.S. Surge, something that he was reluctant to talk about in previous articles. He [...] The Wall Street Journal reported on October 5, 2009 that there might not be a referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between Iraq and the United States. The SOFA is actually two documents that set the future relations between the two countries. When it was originally debated in Iraq’s parliament, the Iraqi [...] On August 19, 2009 twin bombings occurred at Iraq’s Foreign and Finance Ministries. Three days later, the Baghdad Operations Command announced that it had arrested a suspect, and his taped confession was later played on television. He said he was a Baathist and former policeman who put together one of the truck bombs in the [...] One of the unfortunate side-effects of the overhyping of the “success” of The Surge in Iraq, and the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine that supposedly facilitated that success, has been the belief that we can fix what ails our effort in Afghanistan by replicating that approach: applying COIN doctrine coupled with a troop surge. What gets left out of this can-do-COIN discussion [...] Widely quotes Iraq expert Reidar Visser is now blogging at Iraq and Gulf Analysis. Here’s a sample: “An even clearer indication of this approach was recently highlighted by the Tawafuq politician Nur al-Din al-Hayali, whose National United Trend has stated it will fight the elections as an independent entity in three governorates – Baghdad, Salahaddin [...] Most of the Iraq chapter of Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World will be nothing new to regular readers of his blog. The first part surveys different views of the war in the United States and the Arab world. In the U.S., the war is sold through “Islam Anxiety,” which Cole uses throughout [...] |
Blake Hounshell (aka praktike), our co-founder and main man, is now managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. 
|
||||
|
American Footprints 127 queries. 0.763 seconds. |
|||||
Recent Comments