A friend and I keep having different permutations of the same conversation, which revolves around this question: what is the essential explanation for Islamic terrorism? My friend’s answer is that it’s primarily religious; in other words, that something intrinsic to Islam spurs on suicide bombers and the like. I disagree for a number of reasons: […]
Category Archives: Mideast
The Jill Carroll Story
August 28, 2006 – 11:07 pm
The Christian Science Monitor today wrapped up its first-person account of journalist Jill Carroll’s abduction in Iraq earlier this year. I was particularly interested in the psychology of her abductors. The men who kidnapped Carroll murdered her translator, and they were apparently closely associated with al-Zarqawi. Yet they repeatedly expressed concern that she be comfortable, […]
Some Reasons Not to Start Withdrawing from Iraq
December 8, 2005 – 8:34 pm
With some discussion even among conservative friends that the U.S. should start pulling troops out of Iraq, Mortimer B. Zuckerman gives some good reasons in a recent editorial why we shouldn’t. When he writes, “For those who think it was a big mistake to go in, it would be a bigger mistake to quit now,” […]
BJU Joins Murtha and Sheehan?
December 5, 2005 – 8:01 pm
Blawger Eric Muller thinks that this is evidence that “support for the war is slipping a tad bit” : the editor of Bob Jones University’s student newspaper, the Collegian, is calling for a troop pullout from Iraq. The United States should start to gradually remove its troops from Iraq. We’ve been there long enough and […]
In the Red Zone
October 8, 2005 – 11:50 pm
Steven Vincent authored In the Red Zone almost a year before he was murdered in Basra, Iraq. When I read about his death, I knew I had to read the book. A freelance journalist (actually a former art critic), he wrote articles from Iraq that were published in the National Review and The New York […]
Steven Vincent and Nascent Iraqi Democracy
August 4, 2005 – 12:29 pm
Murdered journalist Steven Vincent got to know many Iraqi people first-hand. His freelance articles and blog entries offered reasons both for hope and for concern about democracy in Iraq. According to him, one thing to be concerned about was the misguided multi-cultural relativism displayed by the American and British troops. A blog article describes a […]