When Russia decided to intervene on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, those who don’t know anything about military matters thought that they were seeing a level of competence that nobody else had shown in the conflict. They were wrong. My experience with Russians had prepared me for what inevitably happened. One of the best films ever…
Relax. We’ll all be quite safe here fairly soon
February 24, 2016
Relax. You’re quite safe here. You’re not dreaming. Peace is on its way. Don’t give in to paranoomerah, paranoomerah. Ignore 99 percent of what you’re being told. Trust me. Relax. We’re not arming the YPG The Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in Syria together number about 15,000. The men…
Posturing staves off disaster in the Middle East
February 3, 2016
One of the reasons that westerners can’t solve the problems in the Middle East is that we can’t distinguish between genuine threats and posturing. I admit that I myself have this deficit. It’s not possible for me to tell what’s real and what’s a performance. However, Middle Easterners understand what’s actually going on. There’s always…
Arrogance blinds even the smartest people to reality
January 28, 2016
I’ve always been a patriotic American. Our nation’s ideals are truly unique. However, I’ve recently had to accept that much of the criticism we experience as a world power is completely warranted. The worst thing about us is our arrogance. We believe that we’re the best and always will be the best. This is wrong….
Syria as a microcosm of the Middle East
January 17, 2016
How would you win the war in Syria? We have Alawites, Christians, and Shi’ites fighting against Sunnis and Christians; Turkey is supporting the Sunni Arabs and threatening to attack the Kurds; the Arabs accuse the Kurds of land grabs; Iran wants to use Syria to open another front against Israel; western powers have no credibility…
Time to stop worrying about nonexistent “hurt feelings”
January 6, 2016
What a difference five days make. The fact that downtown Cologne, Germany, is now a “no-go area” for women made me decide that it’s time to explain what’s happening in Syria. My little blog won’t change a thing anyway, and we need to puncture this deranged balloon of protection we’ve put around Muslim criminals. I’m…
Reductionism is fun, but it won’t solve any of our problems
January 5, 2016
One of my genuine hatreds in life is reductionism, the attempt to reduce extremely complicated issues to a soundbite. In my experience, most people who do this are narcissistic gasbags. Through the magic of reductionism, the current conflict in the Middle East is described as Sunni versus Shi’ite. This is simply not true. The reality…