Sublime

Devoid of archival sources and tainted with inaccuracies—oil, of course, and not Israel, was America’s Middle East priority—“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” was even less academically sound than Orientalism. Utterly ignored were the vast advantages that Israel afforded the United States in intelligence sharing, weapons development, and hi

THE MOST INTELLIGENT of the Nazis, the legal theorist Carl Schmitt, explained in clear language the essence of fascist governance. The way to destroy all rules, he explained, was to focus on the idea of the exception. A Nazi leader outmaneuvers his opponents by manufacturing a general conviction that the present moment is exceptional, and then tran

Palestinian terrorists changed that, however, with two attacks in Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv, and another in Ashkelon, killing almost sixty Israelis in the heart of Israel’s cities within nine days. Israelis were outraged and frightened, and Peres was voted out of office a mere seven months after he had assumed Rabin’s place.

The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands.

Life magazine made My Lai famous.80 My Lai, they did—but first of all, note the timing: it’s a year and a half after it happened, a year and a half after corporate America turned against the war. And the reporting was falsified. See, My Lai was presented as if it was a bunch of crazy grunts who got out of control because they were being directed by

The truth of the Kissinger “case” is not whether Nazism affected his personality, or to what degree and in which ways this childhood persecution then influenced his political thought and action. The truth is Kissinger’s resistance to reduction. His resistance to being biographized is the reason for his “denial.” The genius of his plots and ploys of

The problem in the Middle East is, at its base, a breakdown in order associated with the serial failures of colonial rule, postcolonial monarchies, Arab nationalism, socialist dictatorships, and Islamist extremism to provide effective governance and forge a common identity across diverse communities. Decades of conflict fragmented societies along e

But for President Obama, the word Islamist may not be uttered. Language must be devised to disguise the unpleasantness. Result? The world’s first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers and ever more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.

IN LESS THAN SIX months, General Suleiman had lost a nuclear facility he’d managed to keep secret for five years, and a close confidant and ally who’d cheated death for decades. Humiliated and furious, he ordered Scud missiles, some armed with chemical warheads, prepared for launch into Israel. He demanded that Assad strike back with aggression. As