| | | | Fareed: Anti-Semitism Has Spread Like a Cancer | | Recent attention has turned to two freshman Democrats, Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), over their comments about Israel and accusations of anti-Semitism.
"I don't know what is in the hearts of the two representatives. But I believe that Muslims should be particularly thoughtful when speaking about these issues because anti-Semitism has spread through the Islamic world like a cancer," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, noting that Omar and Tlaib "are not responsible for this in any way, of course, but they should be aware of this poisonous climate."
After centuries of coexistence with Jews, anti-Semitism flourished in the Islamic world in the 19th century and continued in the 20th as Israel was founded and as Arab leaders adopted anti-Semitic propaganda. It should be possible to criticize Israel and discuss AIPAC as a lobbying force, Fareed, writes, but unfortunately, "by phrasing the issue as the two new representatives sometimes have, they have squandered an opportunity to further that important debate." | | After Kashmir Bombing, Tensions Rise Between India and Pakistan | | This week's bomb attack on a convoy of Indian paramilitaries is driving new tensions between India and Pakistan, Nikhil Kumar writes for CNN—and looming elections in India do not help.
As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised retribution, The Economist writes that Kashmir is reemerging as a flashpoint of concern between the two nuclear-armed powers, with Indian military crackdowns and a resurgence of local extremist recruiting, by a Pakistan-based group, looming as troubling signs.
Tensions could extend beyond India and Pakistan, Debasish Roy Chowdhury writes in the South China Morning Post: China has blocked a UN terrorist designation for the leader of the group that claimed the attack, and the bombing could "unravel" a warming between India and China as well. | | McChrystal Warns of General Worship | | Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the noted former US commander in Afghanistan who was infamously dismissed by President Obama after criticizing civilian leadership, has some nice things to say about his former boss in a Financial Times interview: "I didn't get the vitriol. His governance was not radical. There was this perception of arrogance. People who didn't like African-Americans could hate him. People who didn't like Ivy League lawyers could hate him."
More significantly for the present moment of American political division, McChrystal warns against an America of "'red' generals and 'blue' generals," interviewer Janan Ganesh writes—and of an unhealthy reverence for the military above civilian government, which can put a country "in a strange direction, like Pakistan." | | President Trump's declaration of a national emergency to commandeer funding for a border wall may not be illegal, but it's the latest in Trump's series of broken norms surrounding the presidency, from his personal attacks on enemies to his degradation of the Justice Department, Max Boot writes in The Washington Post. Trump has "misuse[d]" the 1976 National Emergencies Act, Boot writes: "The drafters of the 1976 law were operating under the naive assumption that future presidents would be people of goodwill who should be afforded considerable discretion to do their duty."
When the idea was first floated, law professor Gerald Dickinson wrote in the Post that the law was never meant to be used this way, and Reason's Michael J. Socolow points out that, historically, emergency powers have granted presidents broad authorities like taking over broadcasts and radio transmissions. | | Gorbachev Warns Against Nuclear Escalation | | As NATO grapples with the end of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and as concerns mount over the possibility of a new arms race, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev says the situation is dangerous.
Gorbachev, who signed the INF Treaty in 1987, writes in The Moscow Times that a "great danger … now looms over all that we have achieved in the years since the end of the Cold War," while pointing the finger at an America that "wants to re-arm in order to dictate its will to the world."
Along with alleged Russian cheating, among the Trump administration's concerns with the INF Treaty was that it does not bind China, which could rise as a nuclear rival; Gorbachev, like many in the US, says that ending the treaty isn't the answer and calls instead for "further steps" toward a world without nukes. | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment