Free Republic

For years now it's been clear that the Middle East peace process has left the realm of diplomacy and started to become an industry, with its own G.N.P. of conferences and seminars. But there is a new industry rapidly overtaking it in the Middle East, and that is the "reform industry." Every month there seems to be a new conference on reform in the Arab world. Indeed, I have been attending one here in Dubai, an amazing city-state on the Persian Gulf that is becoming the Singapore of the Arab East. What the reform process and the peace process have...

I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's "60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops," Scott said. "They call...

Sometimes it’s useful to stand back and ask yourself: If I could vote for anyone for president other than George W. Bush or John Kerry, whom would I choose? I’d choose Bill Cosby — on the condition that he would talk as bluntly to white parents and kids about what they need to do if they want to succeed as he did to black kids and parents a few months ago. The one thing that has gone totally missing, not only from this election, but from American politics, is national leaders who are actually ready to level with the public...

Well, the numbers are in and the numbers don't lie. At the Madrid aid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged 0 new dollars. Add it all up and the bottom line becomes clear: Saudi Arabia actually cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France. Ah, you say, but that's unfair. Germany and France opposed the war, so why should they pay anything more than their share of the paltry E.U. contribution? Actually, it's not unfair, when you remember that before the war France and...

TEL AVIV, Israel -- I learned something new the other night in Tel Aviv. I learned that your neck is actually the weakest part of your body. The Israeli police spokesman taught me that as he explained why the Palestinian suicide bomber's head was blown straight up, like a champagne cork, and was still sitting on a ledge atop the bus stop, like a human gargoyle. It was Tuesday night. I was on my way to Tel Aviv when the Hamas bomber blew himself up outside the Tsrifin base, near our route, so I dashed over. By the time I...

I have been trying to avoid writing about Thomas Friedman. Two years ago, when I had a serious drug problem, one of the worst symptoms was a monomaniacal obsession with Friedman. I called his office regularly from overseas, sent him rambling two-page letters, harassed him in 100 different ways. Once, I even called the office of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and, pretending to be Friedman himself, screamed at Sulzberger’s secretary. I told her that I was pissed, that "Arthur better get his car out of my fucking parking space" and that "golf this weekend [was] out of the f***ing question." I’d...

<p>Friday's Times carried a front-page picture of a skull, with a group of Iraqis gathered around it. The skull was of a political prisoner from Saddam Hussein's regime, and the grieving Iraqis were relatives who had exhumed it from a graveyard filled with other victims of Saddam's torture. Just under the picture was an article about President Bush vowing that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, as he promised.</p>

THE FINE ART OF BEING FOREVER WRONG by Dennis E. Fishel Have you ever noticed that there are people in advisory positions who never seem to be right, but who never lose their jobs? The investment arena has a lot of them, folks who tell you gold is just the ticket when it hasn't been the ticket for damn near 25 years, or who recommend penny stocks as legitimate opportunities for wealth rather than 1-chance-in-10 gambles. One guy, who shall remain unnamed here, fills radio space with ads for seminars on how to take the "dead equity" in your home...

Toogood Reports [Wednesday, March 19, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Whom to Fight? The problem with fighting our Moslem enemies, as many observers have noted, is that the terrorists never identify themselves with any particular nation. Thus, each Moslem nation – excepting the Saudis – enjoys plausible deniability regarding its role in 911. What no one, to my knowledge, has noted, however, is that deniability cuts both ways. Just as Islam could not openly declare war on America, America cannot openly declare war on Islam. But we can fight Islamic nations, while denying that we are fighting Islam. Were America...

I had a note this week from one of Dennis Prager's minions saying Dennis had read a piece of mine with interest. "As you know," it said, "Dennis is not confrontational. His main goal is to clarify issues for his listeners." Actually, it was news to me, but I guessed Dennis might be American since his staff assumed Canadians knew him and his m.o., something media personalities here would not take for granted. So I went on Dennis's show yesterday for an hour. It comes from L.A. and is opposite Dr. Laura's brutal, abusive phone-in (toward her listeners, never the...

Cuckoo in Carolina By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN he ruckus being raised by conservative Christians over the University of North Carolina's decision to ask incoming students to read a book about the Koran — to stimulate a campus debate — surely has to be one of the most embarrassing moments for America since Sept. 11. Why? Because it exhibits such profound lack of understanding of what America is about, and it exhibits such a chilling mimicry of what the most repressive Arab Muslim states are about. Ask yourself this question: What would Osama bin Laden do if he found out that...

Bush's Shame By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN OLOMBO, Sri Lanka Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt's decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn't just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them. Since Sept. 11 all we've heard out of this Bush team is how illegitimate violence is as a tool of diplomacy or politics, and how critical it is to oust Saddam Hussein in order to bring democracy to the Arab world. Yet...

Recent events in the Middle East leave me wondering whether we're witnessing not just the end of the Oslo peace process, but the end of the whole idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When the Palestinians' Intifada II began over a year ago, in the wake of a serious proposal for a Palestinian state by President Clinton, I argued that Palestinians were making a huge mistake. When the party to a conflict initiates an uprising, then suicide bombing, at a time when the outlines of a final peace are on the table — as the Palestinians did...

The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is widely considered a sage on the Middle East, and he certainly is knowledgeable. But sometimes, when you read him, you have to ask yourself: “What kind of a sage says this? Or that? Or this?” I have asked such questions many times, sometimes in public. I am not exactly a Friedmanologist, though I’m an observer, and I commend to readers a piece on the columnist by Michael Wolff, the perceptive and always interesting media critic of New York magazine. On March 17, Friedman had a column praising (though in a backhanded...