Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 40

Is Obama Arming the Syrian Rebels or Not?

If you’re confused about whether or not the White House has decided to arm the Syrian rebels, don’t feel bad. I’m confused too. So is everyone else. Even the government seems confused about what it is or isn’t doing.

A few days ago The New York Times reported that President Barack Obama has decided “to begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition, according to American officials.” But The Daily Beast reported another administration official saying that “lethal a...

Is Syria Iran's Stalingrad?

Gary Gambill at the Foreign Policy Research Institute argues that Syria is the Iranian Stalingrad.

I think he’s a little more confident than he should be, but he makes a good case and may turn out to be right.

The growing infusion of Iranian-backed Lebanese and Iraqi Shiite fighters into the Syrian civil war is causing some veteran pundits to panic. Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, warns that “Iran is beating the U.S. in Syria.” Former...

Why the Turks are Turning on Erdoğan

I’ve been to Istanbul several times and once drove a thousand miles across Turkey (to Iraq) and back, but I’m hardly an expert on Turkish politics. I’ve only read a handful of books about the country and have never interviewed anyone there. Turkey, for me, has been a place I passed through to and from other parts of the greater Middle East. So I’m a bit reluctant to write much about the apparently massive resistance Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is facing right now, not just in Istanbul...

Does Al Qaeda Have Missiles?

This doesn’t look good.

The photocopies of the manual lay in heaps on the floor, in stacks that scaled one wall, like Xeroxed, stapled handouts for a class.

Except that the students in this case were al Qaeda fighters in Mali. And the manual was a detailed guide, with diagrams and photographs, on how to use a weapon that particularly concerns the United States: A surface-to-air missile capable of taking down a commercial airplane.

The 26-page document in Arabic, recovered by The Associated Press...

Hezbollah's Vietnam

Michael Young has a smart new piece in NOW Lebanon arguing that the Syrian war may end up being Hezbollah’s Vietnam, a grinding and debilitating quagmire for the so-called Party of God from which there is no exit.

Hezbollah is willing to take heavy casualties in Syria, if this allows it to rescue the Assad regime. The real question is what time frame we are talking about, and how this affects the party’s vital interests elsewhere. For now, Hezbollah has entered Syria with no exit strategy. Th...

When Dictators Were Young

I just found a fascinating photo gallery of the world’s most infamous dictators when they were children and young men. I think the reason these photographs are so captivating is because, in most cases, no one had a clue when these photos were taken that these kids would become such horrible people and scourges of history (though I have to say that Adolf Hitler looked pretty creepy even when he was small). And contrary to what some might believe, Fidel Castro did not, in fact, have a beard whe...

Journalist Meets Novelist

Jonathan Spyer reviewed my new novel for The Jerusalem Post.

The review is behind the paywall, but here are some excerpts.

This is his first foray into fiction. It is a success.

[…]

‘Taken’ works on a number of levels. From one point of view, it is a thriller. The author drives the plot with a determined hand. He shows a talent for describing scenes of action and intensity which has already been apparent from his reporting on Iraq and Lebanon.

But the book is also a novel of ideas, and a character...

WHERE THE WEST ENDS Now Available as an Audio Book

My book Where the West Ends is now available as an audio book from Amazon.com, Audible, and iTunes.

Steven Roy Grimsley did a fantastic job with the narration. Dozens of professional readers auditioned for the job, and my wife and I both thought Steve was the best.

You can listen to a sample for free on the Audible Web site.

The Friend of My Enemy is My Enemy

My latest City Journal column is up. Here's the first part.

Syria’s blood-soaked tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, is finally right about something. He recently told an Argentine newspaper that he doubts the joint Russian-American peace initiative will stop the bloodshed in his country. Of course it won’t. Syria’s civil war is an existential fight to the death between the Alawite minority that dominates the regime and the revolutionary Sunni Muslim majority that will be smashed if it loses. The peace i...

The Syrianization of Lebanon

In the past I’ve used the term Lebanonization to describe what’s happening in Syria, referring, of course, to the internationalized sectarian bloodfest of the Lebanese civil war. The term Lebanonization, though, is becoming outdated. Lebanon’s civil war killed more than 100,000 people, but it ended in 1990. Syrianization works better now, not only because it’s more current, but because it describes a phenomenon that’s spilling beyond the borders of Syria.

Two years ago, Syria became Lebanonize...