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Katrina vanden Heuvel
5/26/2010

The author makes a case against the war in Afghanistan, calling President Obama’s approach “fundamentally flawed” and far too costly in lives and money. The numbers from last month’s Pentagon report indicate that the counterinsurgency, intended to win over the Afghan people, has not been successful. Vanden Heuvel supports an alternative strategy of gradual troop withdrawal and diplomacy, but the president has asked for $32 billion for the troop surge in Afghanistan. As the Senate votes on this bill next week, perhaps it will demonstrate the growing opposition in Congress and among American citizens to “a flawed strategy and a failed war.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation and writes a weekly column for The Post.

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Bret Stephens
5/25/2010

The conservative blogosphere is buzzing with outrage over plans to build a 13-story mosque and Muslim cultural center just a few hundred feet from Ground Zero. As a resident of lower Manhattan, Stephens sees it differently. The center–to be known as Cordoba House if it is built–might yet serve as an excellent test case for Muslim tolerance. That is how the concept is being advertised by Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Kuwaiti-born imam whose brainchild this is and who sees it as as a step toward the Americanization of the Muslim community. Stephens questions the arguments of those who oppose the project and the consideration the would-be builders of the center have given to toleration themselves.

Stephens writes ‘Global View’ for the Journal.

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Bret Stephens
5/18/2010

The nuclear game Tehran is playing isn’t any more complicated than checkers. But the trouble is they’re whipping us at it. The agreement of Turkey and Brazil to enrich Iran’s uranium is a signal defeat for the Obama administration. Iran’s leaders have learned to habituate the international community to its nuclear advances. What was once considered intolerable Iranian behavior–calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, enriching uranium in defiance of UN resolutions, even becoming a nuclear power–is increasingly seen as unremarkable or understandable or inevitable. The US will now be hard-pressed to explain why a deal they never withdrew from the table–and which they insisted remain unaltered–no longer makes sense.

Stephens writes ‘Global View’ for the Journal.

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Moheb Zaki
5/18/2010

Violence against Copts is on the rise and all but ignored by the state. Despite the suffering of the Copts, the Egyptian government insists that there is no sectarian problem and brands as traitors those who draw international attention to the Copts’ plight. So far the US and the rest of the Western democracies, despite repeated Coptic appeals, have done little besides calling upon the Egyptian regime to foster greater tolerance. The “dhimmi” status of the Copts will not be changed by sweet persuasion. It will only change by persistent domestic struggle supported by international pressure. The Copts do not demand the tolerance of Muslims but rather equal rights with them.

Zaki is a former managing director of the Ibn Khaldun Center, a nonprofit organization that supports democracy and civil rights in Egypt and the Middle East.

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Roger Cohen
5/18/2010

Cohen looks at the struggles over the past 15 years of a microbrewery established in the West Bank. Today the company is on the rebound and business is good due to the political situation. Cohen says the business is a barometer of the stronger economy and the institutions of statehood being built by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. If the six percent economic growth is to continue, the West Bank must wean itself off international aid and become self-sustaining, and logistics and infrastructure must improve, along with peace. Cohen says, “Israel won’t do better than Fayyad.”

Cohen is a New York Times columnist.

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Marc De Vos
5/13/2010

Parallels between Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and the global financial crisis are manifold. As with the housing market and the derivatives craze, the euro tale is one of easy money, excessive leverage, bad accounting, and failed supervision. De Vos states that the euro’s Stability and Growth Pact, meant to restrain budget deficits and national debt, was violated in its application and ignored in its supervision. In short, this was a bubble of public excess waiting to be pricked. For the sake of the euro’s and the continent’s future, political scapegoating needs to stop. The cardinal issue for the euro is whether its members will implement structural reforms that coincide with increased austerity before doing so only furthers their decline.

De Vos is a professor at Ghent University and the general director of the Itinera Institute, a Brussels-based non-partisan policy institute.

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