Topic

The Middle East

From Commonweal

  • William Pfaff

    In the riots that swept Islamic society last winter, reaction to the publication of cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammed, the world glimpsed evidence of a clash between cultures—but not in the sense of the “clash of civilizations” that Samuel...
  • Barbara Mujica

    With chilling matter-of-factness, Joshua Tuohy describes the explosion that took his right leg and killed three of his buddies.
  • Joseph D. Becker

  • The Editors

    The United States has been at war for more than a decade. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, and others have been killed. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been maimed or crippled.
  • David Cortright

    The democratic uprising that brought down the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt stands as one of the most dramatic expressions of “people power” in history. The people’s victory in Egypt was preceded by the downfall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and...
  • Ronald Osborn

    The October online posting by WikiLeaks of nearly a thousand classified Pentagon documents (the “Iraq War Logs”) shed new light on the vexed issue of Iraqi deaths during and after the 2003 invasion.
  • Jay Mandle

    I am deeply suspicious of economically determinist or conspiratorial explanations for political and historical events. The world is just too complicated, and chance and history play too large a role in the choices we face and the decisions we make....
  • Jay Parini

    From my student days, almost forty years ago, when I hitchhiked with a backpack on my shoulders and a guitar at my side, I’ve been an eager traveler in the Middle East, fascinated by the rich historical resonance and complex politics of this region.
  • Christopher Thornton

    Ask most people in the West what images they associate with the words “Middle East” and you’ll likely get descriptions of oil wells, desert dunes, and men in flowing robes and Bedouin headgear. More recently, you might hear of crowds filling public...

Free e-newsletter

More Information