The New Republic

Today, Ba'adre is once again a sleepy, backwater town in northern Iraq, 25 miles south of Dohuk and miles from the nearest paved road. Few Iraqis have ever heard of Ba'adre, and fewer still visit. But, for 72 hours in December 2000, Ba'adre captured attention in crisis rooms in Washington, London, and Ankara after Iraqi troops invaded the Kurdish safe haven and laid siege to the town. READ MORE >>

One of the most vivid experiences of my time as a graduate student at Harvard was a seminar I took with the preeminent liberal political theorist John Rawls. The discussion centered on Rawls's later work, in which he divorced his liberalism from the claim of absolute truth. His argument was only cogent, he averred, if read and understood by people who already shared some basic premises--the need for consent, the reliance on reason, a tone of civility, a relatively open mind. READ MORE >>