Katherine Tiedemann is a Policy Analyst at the New America Foundation. The drone wars continue. This morning’s Predator strike in Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s hometown of Makeen, South Waziristan is the 25th this year (compared to six this time last year), and the fourth in the last two weeks to target Mehsud.
In the two weeks since French President Nicholas Sarkozy condemned the all-enveloping burqa or niqab garment as a sign of the “subjugation” and “debasement” of women, words have flown in France as well as Britain and the United States about the proper extent of religious practice in public.
Sunday’s strike of a compound in Syria by American Special Forces, purported to have killed important Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) smuggler Abu Ghadiya will have broad strategic consequences for America and the Middle East as a whole.
Author’s note: some of the links in this article are in French, apologies. This is the view out my window in Paris of the Hotel des Invalides, where French President Nicholas Sarkozy gave a moving tribute to the 10 French soldiers killed in Afghanistan on August 18th.
A new poll released last week from J Street, the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” political action committee, contained very promising data regarding American Jews and their views of the Middle East peace process.
John McCain and I have something in common: we have both tried recently, and failed, to get op-eds picked up by major newspapers. But I daresay McCain’s snub from the New York Times two days ago is a bit more important to the average Washington Note reader.
In this insightful video op-ed Daniel Levy, the director of New America’s Middle East Initiative, provides a glimpse into the reasons why today’s prisoner exchange was important for both Israel and Lebanon. As Daniel argues, this exchange can be hard to understand in the West.
Supporters of the surge give many reasons for the dramatic and real reduction of violence in Iraq over the past 16 months. These range from the rise of the Sahwa movement to General Petraeus’s new counterinsurgency strategy to the newfound independence of Nuri al-Maliki’s government, backed by strengthened Iraqi Security Forces.
For anyone who has not looked at the Washington Post this morning, they should flip to Karen DeYoung’s piece about a Baghdad Embassy report on progress in Iraq. According to the report, leaked to the Washington Post yesterday, Iraq has satisfactorily met 15 of the 18 benchmarks established by Congress.
Patrick Doherty is the Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program at The New America Foundation, and the Director of our US-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. The New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow will release the results of a Pakistani, pre-election public opinion poll today at New America at 12:15.