Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 35

Final Kickstarter Push

Fewer than 24 hours remain in my Kickstarter campaign to send me to Cuba.

I've reached my minimum threshold, but this trip is going to cost a bit more than I expected, and money is always tight for me anyway, so if you can pitch in a few dollars I'll sure appreciated it.

Besides, if you want a full-color dispatch pack e-book from Cuba, backing my Kickstarter project is the only way to get one. It won't be available anywhere else at any other time, so it's now or never.

Many thanks to everyone wh...

The Fall of Tunisia's Islamists

Ennahda, the Tunisian Islamist party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has been forced from power by an overwhelming secular opposition.

I didn’t know this was going to happen, but I had a pretty strong sense that it would. Tunisia is a modern, pluralistic, civilized place. It’s striking liberal compared with most Arab countries. A person couldn’t possibly show up in Tunis from Cairo and think the two are remotely alike. Egypt is at one extreme of the Arab world’s political spectrum, and...

On the Radio

I was on the John Batchelor Show again today to discuss everyone’s favorite problem right now: Syria.

Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and you can stream the interview. I come in at 10:50.

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Beware Persian Leaders with Masks

Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke on the phone for a couple of minutes on Friday, and NBC News breathlessly reported that this was “the first time leaders from the U.S. and Iran have directly communicated since the 1979 Iranian revolution.”

That’s not exactly true. Hassan Rouhani is not Iran’s leader.

Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is Iran’s leader. He is the head of state—the dictator—and the one who makes all sovereign decisions. And of course Rouhani is loyal and...

Hassan Rouhani, Holocaust Revisionist

I hate to rain on everybody's good time, but Iran's new president Hassan Rouhani is getting a lot more credit than he deserves for supposedly condemning the Holocaust.

First of all, Middle Eastern politics are in awfully bad shape if uttering something so basic and obvious will earn a man plaudits all over the world.

Second, he may not have said what everyone thinks he said.

Here is the full text of Christian Amanpour's interview with Rouhani at CNN.

Here is some criticism from Fars News agency,...

Al Shabab Strikes Back

Al Shabab, Somalia’s franchise of Al Qaeda, killed at least 68 people and wounded more than 175 when it seized control of the Westgate Premier Shopping Mall and took hostages in Nairobi this weekend.

The Westgate looks like a mall anywhere in the West. It could be in Los Angeles or Cincinnati or Poughkeepsie.

President Uhuru Kenyatta says one of his nephews and his fiancée are among the 68 dead. Canadian diplomat Annemarie Desloges was also killed.

The attackers went to the mall to murder non-Mu...

A Bipartisan Autopsy Report

America’s Middle East policy died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the feet. Scholars Tom Nichols John Schindler co-wrote the bipartisan autopsy report for The National Interest.

We write as two scholars and former national-security practitioners who agree on almost nothing else regarding Syria: one is a traditional realistwho opposed military action against Assad, and the other is a recent arrival in the camp of the post-Cold War liberal internationalistswho supported striking the Syria...

Mission Impossible in Syria

I live near an enormous former stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. It isn’t walking distance from my house, but I can drive there between breakfast and lunch without exceeding the speed limit.

From 1962 to 2011, the US Army stored nearly four thousand tons of VX, Sarin, and HD blister agent (commonly known as mustard gas) at the Umatilla Chemical Depot along the Columbia River two and a half hours east of Portland, Oregon.

In 1993 the US signed a treaty forbidding the production, stockpil...

Vladimir Putin's Reset with America

Here are two pieces that should be read together.

First up is Lee Smith in The Weekly Standard on Vladimir Putin’s victory in the Middle East:

Give Vladimir Putin his due. With his proposal to put Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons under international control, he proved he was more than a mere thug who expresses his self-regard by posing bare-chested, dating teenage gymnasts, and wrestling wild game. In showing his subtlety and cunning, Putin reminded us that his professional t...

Cuba is Funded

You know what’s awesome? Kickstarter.

You know what’s even more awesome? Everyone who pitches in for my travel expenses on Kickstarter.

I’ve raised the money I need for Cuba, so it looks like I’m going. Most likely in November when it’s slightly less hot and I’ll be more prepared. Working there will be challenging and I need to work out some things in advance.

Thanks so much to everyone who is backing this project. I’m going to send personal thank-you notes, but I want to wait until the fundrais...