December 10, 2012 – Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 71 years ago this month was a “day that will live in infamy” according to US President Franklin Roosevelt. Seven decades later, it increasingly appears that the president’s surprise and outrage may have been synthetic. Roosevelt had been maneuvering for […]
December 1, 2012 NEW YORK – The wicked 19th century American cynic Ambrose Bierce defined diplomacy in his “Devil’s Dictionary” as “the patriotic art of lying for one’s country.” True enough. But diplomacy is also the fine art of getting one’s way without war, and convincing people that it’s in […]
November 24, 2012 A year ago, I was mixing with demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square calling for an end to Mubarak’s dictatorship and democracy for Egypt’s 84 million people. Being a natural-born firebrand, I find most revolutions intoxicating – if almost inevitably disappointing or even ghastly. What a difference a […]
