Why It’s Time to Rethink Our Pointless Standoff with Russia
The following column was filed June 5, 2016, and not published. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s widely respected foreign minister, dropped a big one here over the weekend. After an hourlong conversation with John Kerry Friday, Lavrov asserted in nationally televised remarks…
She’ll make Iran, Syria worse: What the media won’t tell you about our foreign policy — and how hawkish Hillary will pour the kerosene
The truth about our foreign policy is on display, if we choose to look. If only we ever learned the right lessons What an unusual season—or seasons, I should say. The inner workings of American foreign policy are rarely as…
Obama Faces Painful Choice in Syria as Peace Talks Falter
Following the ceasefire in Syria negotiated a month ago by Washington and Moscow, Secretary of State John Kerry must now work out a long-term settlement in Syria. Any agreement involves not only the Assad regime and the Russians — a…
The real story about Syria and Libya: Behind a new agreement with Moscow, and the insidious way the New York Times protects Hillary
A new accord with Moscow on Syria clears up little. And a new Times series on Clinton and Libya has a messy agenda Hardly does the Syria accord announced jointly in Washington and Moscow last week clarify the swamp of…
How the US and Russia Can Make the Syria Ceasefire Deal Last
We have a serious “cessation of hostilities” in Syria, finally, and it’s the best chance for peace since protests became violent four years ago. But there was no sliver of daylight between the joint announcement of the U.S.-Russian agreement last…
A New World War? Russia and the US Look for a Way to Cool Down Syria
Two things emerged from the Munich security conference last week, which seem to make little sense when considered side by side. One, the major powers agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria. Skeptics think this will amount to little…
As Syria Talks Flop, Obama Is Painted Into a Corner
So much for the Syrian peace process. With the opening of talks in Geneva last Monday, their collapse two days later, and little hope their resumption February 25thwill bear much more fruit, the four-year war in Syria takes a new…
“Intelligent people know that the empire is on the downhill”: A veteran CIA agent spills the goods on the Deep State and our foreign policy nightmares
After almost 30 years in the CIA, Ray McGovern became a truth-teller. He sits down with Salon for a long debriefing I first heard Ray McGovern speak on a country road in the New England hills. This was courtesy of…
“Cruel bastards hang together: All you need to know”: The world according to the New York Times
American media covers the world through American eyes. Let’s look at Syria the way the rest of the world does The long-anticipated all-parties conference on Syria was scheduled to open in Geneva Monday, but of course it did not. Now…
From bad to worse to delusional: The real story about Syria that the New York Times won’t tell you
The Times’ coverage of anything that challenges the mythology of American primacy just gets worse Forgetting, not paying attention and feeling as opposed to thinking are, of course, acts of patriotism in our great nation. Let us, then, do the…
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