Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 16

Beirut Chokes on Its Own Filth

Since the time of antiquity, almost every place in the Middle East has suffered from way too much government, but Lebanon is an intriguing exception. It’s the one country in the region that doesn’t have nearly enough.

Its government is so weak and dysfunctional that it can no longer carry out the most basic functions. Months have now passed since municipal workers have removed trash from garbage cans and dumpsters in Beirut. Mountains of garbage the size of buildings are piled up everywhere....

ISIS Wages Cultural Genocide in Palmyra

They finally did it. The bastards destroyed Palmyra’s Temple of Bel.

We all knew it was coming in May when ISIS conquered the ancient Roman-era city an hour’s drive east of the Syrian city of Homs.

At first nothing happened. They promised they’d leave Palmyra alone, that they wouldn’t lay waste to its offensive pre-Islamicness they way they wrecked the Iraqi cities of Hatra and Nimrud.

I almost wrote that I was wrong after I predicted Palmyra’s destruction in City Journal, but then I thought,...

How to Destroy a City in Five Minutes

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You don’t need a weapon of mass destruction to ruin a city.

Well, maybe sometimes you do. You’re not getting rid of New York City without one. But some of the world’s cities are so vulnerable, so precariously perched above an abyss, that a single bloodthirsty nutjob with a rifle can bring it to its knees in a matter of minutes.

Look at Tunisia’s resort city of Sousse on the Mediterranean. Two months ago, an ISIS-inspired nutcase named Seifeddine Rezgui strolled up the beach with a Kalashnikov...

The Price of American Diplomacy in Cuba

If you watched the American Embassy’s reopening ceremony in Cuba on television, or saw some of the photographs, you may have noticed dozens of bare flagpoles in the background.

There’s a story behind that.

After the US and Cuba dissolved relations during the Cold War, the former American Embassy building became the US Interests Section.

Not a lot went on in that building since our two nations didn’t have normal relations, but even mutually hostile governments have to talk to each other once i...

The American Flag Flies Again Over Cuba

The American flag was raised over Cuba this weekend for the first time in 54 years at the official reopening of the US Embassy in Havana. Three of the Marines who lowered the flag as young men in 1961 ran it up the flagpole as old men.

Diplomatic relations between our two nations have been officially restored.

This is controversial in the United States, to say the least, but look: Cuba is not Iran, and it is not Syria. It certainly isn’t the Islamic State’s psychopathic “caliphate” in Raqqa.

...

The Forward's Dispatch from Iran

The Forward just published the very first dispatch from Iran in a Jewish newspaper that was tolerated by the Iranian government since the revolution in 1979.

The article by Larry Cohler-Esses is interesting and worth reading, but it’s also a bit on the naïve side. Reporting from police states on a journalist visa doesn’t always take nerves of steel (such countries are generally not dangerous places for foreign visitors if permission to work there has been granted), but it does require heavy d...

A Wave of Attacks Across Turkey

Turkey is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting countries in the Middle East, and not in a good way.

A terrorist organization called the People’s Defense Unit detonated a car bomb at a police station in Istanbul. The Kurdish PKK blew up an armored police vehicle and shot and killed a soldier flying in a military helicopter.

And the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) attacked the US consulate in Istanbul.

None of these organizations are affiliated with ISIS. They are...

Turkey’s Parallel War

Fighting between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) is heating up again after a two-year hiatus. In late July, the PKK murdered two Turkish policemen in their homes, and Turkish warplanes bombed PKK positions across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds is officially off.

Which means Turkey is less likely than ever to help the rest of the world cope with ISIS.

It has been obvious for a while now that Turkey implicitly sides with I...

Turkey's Big Con

The Turkish government is finally allowing the United States to use Incirlik Air Base, just 70 miles from the Syrian border, to launch air strikes over ISIS-held territory—but only if American air power is not used to support Kurdish militias.

The United States, at this late date, is not really interested in helping anyone in Syria aside from the Kurds. All other factions fighting ISIS and the bankrupt Assad regime are Sunni Arab Islamists.

The Kurds are the only American option. But Turkish...

In Cuba, Neither Bread Nor Freedom

I’ve only visited Cuba once, in late 2013, so it’s hard to say for sure what kinds of changes Raul Castro has brought to the island since he took the wheel from his brother Fidel, but it appeared at that time that little had changed. Aside from a refurbished old quarter, Cuba looked like it was described in the 1980s or even the 1950s--though surely the urban decay is much more advanced now than it was in the 1950s.

James Bloodworth has been more than once, though, and says hardly anything ha...