19 October 2008 The Iraqi Deal By Gwynne Dyer It has been a short hundred years. That’s how long Republican presidential candidate John McCain said that American troops might have to stay in Iraq at the beginning of his campaign, but the deal that Washington concluded with the Iraqi government last week said that they …
8 June 2008 US-Iraq: The Treaty That Isn’t By Gwynne Dyer In the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze,” the world’s most famous private detective refers to “the curious incident of the dog in the night.” “But the dog did nothing in the night,” replies his interlocutor. “That was the curious incident,” says Holmes. The dogs …
1 April 2008 Maliki Blinked First, If Anybody Cares By Gwynne Dyer Suppose the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose that the former United States had splintered into half a dozen fragments after the South won the Civil War 145 years ago. Suppose all the Arabs lived in a single, powerful state, but had …
10 September 2007 Marking Time By Gwynne Dyer The thing to remember about General David Petraeus’s report to Congress on the progress made by the US military “surge” in Iraq is that he is basically reporting on his own performance. Nothing in his past career suggests that he is prone to downplay his own achievements, …
23 June 2007 The Middle East After Iraq By Gwynne Dyer Israeli historian Benny Morris is famous in his country for reopening the forgotten history of the expulsion of the Palestinians during the 1948 “war of independence” and deconstructing the Israeli myth that they freely chose to abandon their homes. By five years ago, however, …
10 January 2007 Iraq: No Change of Strategy By Gwynne Dyer Repeat after me: there is no new US strategy in Iraq. The allies are the same, the enemies are the same, the tactics are the same, even the new American force strength lies within the range that has prevailed since 2003. We are only …
5 November 2006 The Lynching of Saddam Hussein By Gwynne Dyer Occasionally, like any doomed man, Saddam Hussein played with the notion of a last-minute reprieve. “He’s told us many times that we won’t be able to [avoid a death sentence in his trial],” said Khalil al-Dulaimi, one of his lawyers, in June. “He knows …
17 October 2005 Saddam’s Trial By Gwynne Dyer If they had taken Adolf Hitler alive in 1945, they would certainly have put him on trial. But what if they had ignored Hitler’s responsibility for starting the Second World War and his murder of six million Jews, and simply put him on trial for torturing and …
14 March 2005 Iraq: Deadlock by Design By Gwynne Dyer Six weeks after the 30 January election that White House press flacks hailed as the “purple revolution,” the new Iraqi national assembly opens (opened) on Wednesday, 16 March — but there is still no new government in Iraq. Partly that is because of the attitude …
28 June 2004 Allawi’s Dilemma (Version 2.0) By Gwynne Dyer The last thing Iyad Allawi needed right now was a photo-op of President George W. Bush congratulating him on becoming prime minister of the ‘sovereign’ (but US-appointed) government of Iraq. What he must do in order to survive, not only politically but personally, is to …