The Savoyard philosopher Joseph de Maistre died almost 200 years ago, having expressed many opinions, including the observation that “Every country has the government it deserves.” He was an inflexible monarchist who approved of the Spanish Inquisition so his philosophy was not on the lines of Plato, John Locke or Immanuel Kant, and one can…
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” Yogi Berra reminded us. But on “The McLaughlin Group,” the TV talk show on which this writer has appeared for four decades, predictions are as mandated as was taking Latin in Jesuit high schools in the 1950s. Looking to 2020, this writer predicted that Donald Trump’s…
One day in October 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, I stood at the front of a private high school classroom. As a new social studies teacher, I had been tasked with describing violence against women in that country. I showed the students an article from the front page of the New YorkTimes featuring…
The Washington Post, through documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, has published a long investigation into Afghanistan. Journalists have collected over 400 testimonies from American diplomats, NATO generals and other NATO personnel, that show that reports about Afghanistan were falsified to deceive the public about the real situation on the ground. After the…
If you need more proof that lawmakers in the U.S. couldn’t care less about America’s woeful commitment to human rights abroad—or even care about the public who vote them into office—look no further than the recent Afghanistan papers and the reaction to the publications from Congress. According to the Washington Post, the outlet had obtained…
While much of the international and domestic US media focuses on the Trump impeachment scandal, there are many signs that a major conflict could break out in the Middle East. Will Christmas go off with a monumental bang? Iran can move in and out of the media focus as other stories and scandals begin to…
