Lebanon on Tenterhooks “They are the martyrs. You are the witnesses.” Thus proclaims one of Beirut’s ubiquitous political billboards overlooking the vast plaza now known as “Martyr’s Square.” Lebanon is filled with political signage that would give civics teachers mixed feelings, since much of it praises notorious terrorists. This poster, though, is sponsored by the country’s anti-Syrian “March...
Tough Love Bronwen Maddox makes the case against Anti-Americanism. In Defense of America By Bronwen Maddox; Little, Brown; 216 pages; $16.99. “Only one opinion or ideology in the world today has a truly global reach,” observed political scientist James Caeser in 2004. “It is anti-Americanism.” Even after the death of Communism as a worldwide revolutionary doctrine, hatred...
History's Comeback According to Robert Kagan, the world is back to normal. The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan; Knopof; 105 pages; $19.95. Robert Kagan’s latest effort to explain the state of the world opens with a sentence that most book editors would abhor: “The world has become normal again.” So pedestrian....
Communist Loser Eric Hobsbawm, revisionist On Empire: America, War and Global Supremacy,; By Eric Hobsbawm; Pantheon Books; 128 pp.; $19.95 Yes, Eric Hobsbawm is still at it. The University of London professor, it should be remembered and endlessly repeated, was an early member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and perhaps the most prominent scholarly defender...
Choosing the Whip Heidi Holland explores the complex psychology of Robert Mugabe. Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who Became a Tyrant by Heidi Holland; Penguin Global; 280 pp.; $30. When Heidi Holland welcomed Robert Mugabe to her home over 30 years ago, she “had never had a black man to dinner before.” Such...
The Passivist Matthew Yglesias proves that doves, too, bury their heads in the sand. Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Matthew Yglesias; John Wiley & Sons; 272 pp.; $25. 95 A retrospective obsession, married to an indifference to Iraq’s prospects, characterizes Heads in the Sand:...