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Iran's Meaningless Presidential Elections

June 13, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

The Islamic Republic of Iran is holding its eleventh presidential election on Friday. It's all very exciting — just as it was in 1979 when, right after the Iranian Revolution that brought down the Shah, Iranians first cast ballots. I was there — a reporter in Iran, working on a documentary film for Bill Moyers at PBS. Then, as now, the elections were the focus of considerable international attention. Then, as now, the elections were a total fiction.

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Al-Qaeda vs. Hezbollah

June 6, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Back during the Bush administration, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously called Hezbollah the "A Team of terrorists," adding, "al-Qaeda is actually the B Team." How do these two organizations compare today?

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Why They Fight and What Democracy Demands

May 30, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

In his 6,000-word speech at the National Defense University last week, President Obama devoted only one paragraph to the ideology of those who proclaim themselves America's enemies. But those 101 words are worth a closer look.

"Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology," the president began. Quite right: Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran's rulers, Hezbollah, Hamas, and many others who utilize terrorism do indeed see the world through similar lenses. The president did not name their ideology, but most of us have come to employ such terms as "jihadism," "Islamism," "political Islam," and "radical Islam."

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Black Swans, Icebergs, and Benghazi

May 23, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

"Humans are great at self-delusion," the polymathic philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb has observed. I'm confident he'd agree that the humans who populate the foreign-policy community are no exception.

Two years ago this month, Osama bin Laden was killed on President Obama's orders — a very good thing. Before long, however, sophisticated analysts were declaring that this was not just a battle won — it was a war ended.

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Newseum's Wall of Shame

May 16, 2013  •  Scripps Howard News Service

Inspire is a glossy, English-language, online magazine published by al-Qaeda. It was conceived by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric and al-Qaeda leader, who also contributed editorials. In 2011, President Obama ordered a drone strike against al-Awlaki as he was riding in a car in Yemen along with Samir Khan, Inspire's Pakistani-American editor and publisher. So why hasn't the Newseum — the interactive Washington museum of news and journalism — honored al-Awlaki and Kahn in its Journalist Memorial?

If your answer is "because the Newseum would never honor terrorists," you're on shakier ground than you might think.

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