Syria prepares its grand comeback
To better understand the assassination of General Francois Hajj on Wednesday morning in Baabda, one…
Author Michael Young
Destroying Lebanon for a great sinecure
In late 1994, I interviewed Michel Aoun at his borrowed residence at La Haute-Maison just…
Score this round for March 14
Lebanon is looking into the abyss; it is in the throes of a political crisis…
Place the Hariri trial on a fast track
Those of us who welcomed the naming of Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister of France…
Recalling what ‘realism’ did to Iraq
For a long time and until 2003, the Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya was a critical…
Dressing the Christians up in brown shirts
Maybe someone might convincingly explain why, whenever Western journalists and publicists talk about Lebanon’s Christians,…
Corner Syria at the Annapolis conference
Bashar Assad, never a man to accept conditions, is nevertheless imposing some of his own…
A majority that refuses to act like one
The two-month period to elect a new president has begun, and not surprisingly it started…
Learning compromise from the Lebanon of Europe
Recently, amid reports that Hizbullah was creating closed-off security zones north of the Litani River…
Should we worry about the Hariri camp?
Half of politics is being there; the other half is knowing what to do once…
Spare the army fatal factional politics
On Monday, the dean of Lebanese journalists, Ghassan Tueni, wrote a column in Al-Nahar that…
If you pay, we’ll be sure to look the other way
Nicolas Sarkozy is as pro-American a president as France will ever have. But when he…
A victory on the path to oblivion
So, Michel Aoun’s candidate won. If the general knew any better, he would realize that…
Back to an old template in the Gulf
The United States plans to sell Gulf countries at least $20 billion worth of military…
Is Michel Aoun walking into a trap?
All the signs are that the voting will go ahead in the Metn by-election this…
If the Metn votes, Aoun can be beaten
Michel Aoun has taken a risk in deciding to contest the Metn by-election against the…
Switching off the Iraq war is not an American option
These have been traumatic weeks for the White House, as its strategy of holding the…
A minefield ahead for Bernard Kouchner
July 14 was the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in France. A day…
Mostly, a divine victory for disinformation
It says something that one year after the summer 2006 war, we’re not sure whether…
When Dictators Dictate: Why do Arab thugs always get away with murder?
In his remarkable book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore does…
Some common sense from Javier Solana
After the attack against a Spanish patrol two Sundays ago, Spain’s military began cooperating with…
The dismantling of Resolution 1701
For those following events in South Lebanon, the deadly attack on Sunday against soldiers of…
Iran’s and Syria’s plan: an interpretation
Many Lebanese, particularly in the majority camp, have been preoccupied with the court being set…
Lebanon: Why rush a national-unity government?
Negotiations to create a new national-unity government have hit a brick wall, and that’s a…
Left, Right, and Wrong: Desperately searching for a libertarian foreign policy
In his 2007 essay What’s Left?, Nick Cohen wonders how it is that many on…
Winning over the Palestinian card
It is a coincidence, but a useful one, that on the 40th anniversary of an…
Liberal Lebanon Worth saving, or the hell with it?
Last week, while being driven through Chicago, I heard one Flynt Leverett speaking in a…
Destruction and deceit in North Lebanon
There are few pleasures these days as Lebanon descends into the kind of violence that…
America moves forward to the past
No sooner had Condoleezza Rice finished shaking hands with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem last…
Syrian Endgame
BY MICHAEL YOUNG, BEIRUT–This week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is meeting in the Egyptian…
Two openings March 14 might consider
Daily Star staff It’s never easy to discern movement in the midst of glacial stalemate,…
The blogosphere’s foreign informant
What is it about the blogosphere that can transform perfectly credible academics into unethical hit…
Prepare for less attention in Paris
Jacques Chirac still has some weeks left in office, but as of this Sunday, when…
Duck Soup
Michael Young As France prepares to vote in the first round of its presidential election…
A divorce that Nasrallah cannot afford
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on Sunday formalized Hizbullah’s divorce from the rest of Lebanese society,…
When a dilettante takes on Hizbullah
We can thank the US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, for having informed Syrian…
Deal with Syria, but first impose Lebanese sovereignty
Add Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht to the list of dignitaries who have left…
Sy Hersh: the dark side of spun a lot
It’s become a habit to greet whatever journalist Seymour Hersh writes with reverence. However, after…
Learning nothing and forgetting nothing
Earlier this week, two statements neatly summarized the crisis in Lebanon. The first came from…
Who will blink first, the US or Iran?
Recently, from his perch at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, Germany’s former foreign minister, Joschka…
Beirut and the sad autumn of the Arabs
In March 2005, Samir Kassir wrote a column titled, “Beirut, the springtime of the Arabs.”…
When Don Quixote takes to the streets
So today is a “day of change,” to quote Suleiman Franjieh. He could be right.…