Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 19

The Second-Most Megalomaniacal Dictator on Earth

Everyone knows the world's most megalomaniacal dictator. That would be Kim Jong Un of the North Korean hermit kingdom, also known as “The Precious Leader,” son of the “The Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il. His grandfather, Kim Il Sung, is still known today as “The Great Leader" for being the man who invented inventing things.

Funny that hardly anyone has even heard of the second-most megalomaniacal dictator on earth. We're all groaningly familiar with the likes of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Russia's V...

Cuba Outside the Tourist Bubble

Most journalists who travel to Cuba write about how awesome the tourist bubble is.

Jonathan Ray, for instance, summed it up this way in The Spectator last year: “By the end, Havana had me in her spell. She was like a brash and vulgar party girl whom everyone adores and you can’t think why. Ten minutes in her company, though, and you too are smitten. My three nights passed in a flash and I long to return to discover more about this edgy but thrilling city.”

These kinds of articles are a genre...

A Brilliant Answer to a Ludicrous Question

My Canadian pal Terry Glavin brilliantly answers a ludicrous question. “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq?”

It seems like a reasonable question, but it's not. We don't have the benefit of hindsight in advance. If we did, my goodness. The entire world would be radically different. The entire world would be so radically different that of course we should have invaded Iraq in 2003.

Here's Glavin:

To be blessed with such magical powers of clairvoyance would...

The Borg of the Middle East

My latest piece, about the fall of Palmyra to ISIS, appears in City Journal. Here's the first part.

ISIS has conquered Syria’s spectacular Roman Empire city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site long known affectionately as the “bride of the desert,” and in all likelihood is gearing up to demolish it. We know this because they’ve done it before. ISIS used hammers, bulldozers, and explosives to destroy the ancient Iraqi cities of Hatra and Nimrud near Mosul, and they did it on video.

“Thes...

The Muslim Brotherhood Takes Off its Mask

ISIS is threatening to kill judges and security personnel in Egypt after a Cairo court sentenced former Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi to death while, at the same time, what's left of the Muslim Brotherhood is promising a revolution that “exterminates all the oppressors.”

So much for the Muslim Brotherhood being moderate.

Human beings are naturally compelled to violently resist violent repression regardless of their ideology, but the Brotherhood's ostensible moderation was always...

Egypt's Former President Sentenced to Death

Former Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi has been sentenced to death.

His political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, is not half as “moderate” as its apologists claim. One of his last acts as president was appointing a member of Gamaa Islamiya, a terrorist organization responsible for murdering dozens of tourists in 1997, as the governor of Luxor—the very place where those tourists were massacred.

Few in the West liked or trusted him, and plenty of Egyptians who voted for him suffered spasms of...

The Middle East's Nuclear Arms Race is On

President Barack Obama hoped a nuclear deal with Iran would prevent an arms race in the Persian Gulf region, but the Saudis don't trust what's coming any more than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does, and they're no longer shy about saying so. And they promise to match the levels of enrichment capacity the Iranians get to keep.

“Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” said Prince Turki bin Faisal, the New York Times reports.

Prince Turki argued that the United States was m...

Raúl Castro’s Papal Publicity Stunt

Cuban dictator Raúl Castro flew to the Vatican, met privately with Pope Francis, and says he’s returning to church.

“I promise to go to all his Masses, and with satisfaction,” he said after the meeting on television. “I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church. I’m not joking.”

Fat chance.

The man is 83 years old and has been an atheist and a communist since the Season One premiere of Leave it...

The Iranian Leader's Bizarre Twitter Feed

Want a trip into bizarroland? Take a look at the Twitter feed for Iran's “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Khamenei.

It's ridiculous that even though US President is black, still such crimes agnst US blacks continue to occur. #BlackLivesMatter #FreddieGray

No, his Twitter feed hasn't been hacked by Al Sharpton. Nor is this a spoof site. It's the real online megaphone for the Iranian dictator.

This pasty old man doesn't give a flying fork about black people, especially those who live in the United S...

Under the Black Flag

I reviewed ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan for Commentary. Here's the first half.

ISIS isn’t a terrorist organization. It’s a transnational army of terror. The CIA claims it has as many as 31,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq, and Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, thinks the number may be as high as 200,000. When ISIS fighters conquered the Iraqi city of Mosul last year, they stole enough materiel to supply three fighting divi...