World
Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? No One Really Knows.
Benazir Bhutto was murdered (along with 24 of her nameless countrymen) two-and-a-half years ago. Edward Jay Epstein has discovered that there was actually no proper—and barely an improper—investigation of the slaying. Her crooked and shiftless husband succeeded Musharraf as president, not that she wasn’t crooked herself. But shiftless she was not. Anybody is likely to be assassinated in Pakistan. But this assassination is of greater interest than most. READ MORE >>
The TNR Primer: Thailand
Well, It Sure Wasn’t A “One-Off”
Waverley Avenue in Watertown is about half a mile from my house in Cambridge. Two Pakistani men were arrested yesterday in their apartment down the road. It was big enough news to persuade the Boston Globe to run two above-the-fold articles under the headline “2 held in local antiterror raids.” A third man was nabbed in Connecticut. READ MORE >>
Having failed (and failed abysmally) to curb Iran’s nuclear vault, what’s called the “international community”—a very silly phrase, isn’t it?—is attempting to focus an accusatory spotlight on Israel’s long-held (but ritualistically shrugged off) capacity to make atomic war. The truth is that an Israel without nukes is an axiomatic target for wave combat in which hordes of soldiers, terrorists, and civilians would be deployed almost haphazardly literally to overwhelm the Jewish state. READ MORE >>
What Do Immigrants Owe America? Apparently Nothing!
A dazzling essay by Fouad Ajami in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal made the point, apropos Faisal Shahzad, that the bestowal of citizenship “gave him the precious gift of an American passport but made no demands on him.” It also allowed him to travel 13 times to Pakistan and back over the last seven years—just one exemplar of the hundreds of thousands (more likely millions) of youngish men who have both domicile and liberties in the West but burn with fire for the perilous fevers of the Old Country. READ MORE >>
Forget About “The New Middle East.” Israel Belongs To The First World, And Its Neighbors To The Third.
Everybody actually knows that. “The new Middle East” is a psychedelic fantasy of the perennially intoxicated peace processors. The dream will go on forever. And maybe it will be punctuated positively a tiny bit by practical arrangements on the ground. But probably not through the “proximity talks,” which the Obama administration has somehow convinced itself is a great achievement, which I have argued in print it is not. READ MORE >>
Follow the (Iraqi) Leader
Flop House
Actually, the insolvency of Greece also made rough waves in America. Shortly before 3 p.m., the major stock indices (S & P, Dow and NASDAQ) were about to register 10% southwards. Not good news. And the fact they all ended the market day at roughly 3.5% down was only relatively good news, very relatively. This was not a good week for Wall Street. READ MORE >>
Pregnant With Risk
So what happens now? That's the question Britain asks itself this morning. It would have been easier to answer if the country had managed to make its mind up yesterday. but for the first time since 1974, a British general election has produced no winner, only multiple losers. READ MORE >>
