Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 44

My New Book is Available for Pre-order

You can now pre-order autographed copies of my new book, Taken, which is my first novel. The book will be published in April. If you order from me directly, you'll receive a signed copy in March before it's available anywhere else.

Here are the front and back covers:

Most of you don't know this, but I was a fiction writer long before I became a journalist. I'm a product of the English Department, not Journalism School, and I spent my entire early adulthood developing and honing skills as a sh...

This is No Way to Behave

The British parliament’s national embarrasment George Galloway (MP-Gaza) belatedly discovered in front of a live audience at Oxford that his debate opponent is an Israeli citizen, so he stormed out in a bigoted huff. Watch the video. It’s really something.

I suppose he’ll get “resistance” points in some circles for his theatrics, but Mahmood Naji, who organized the debate, condemned Galloway for his boorish behavior. I should also add that I learned of this video from a Muslim friend of mine w...

Free Syrian Army Threatens Hezbollah in Lebanon

Syrian rebels are (again) threatening to attack Hezbollah targets in Lebanon to retaliate for Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria’s civil war.

They’ve said this before and it was just talk. I assume it’s still only talk. I don’t expect this will actually happen. But who knows? Lebanon is the kind of place where just about anything you can imagine eventually happens at some point.

If the Free Syrian Army does go after Hezbollah, things will get…interesting. Hezbollah is formidable when it fights a...

Israel to Treat Wounded Syrians

The Israel Defense Forces plans to put up a military field hospital on the Syrian border to help refugees seeking assistance.

I would not expect Syrians to approach the Israeli border and ask for help, not after having their minds poisoned for so long by the violent propaganda of the Assad regime, but apparently some wounded refugees did just that a couple of days ago.

Hardly anyone knows it, but the Israelis do this sort of thing as a matter of course.

Quote of the Day

“Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to take either Syria or Khuzestan [in western Iran], the priority for us is to keep Syria….If we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back too, but if we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran.”-- Senior Iranian cleric Mehdi Taeb in a speech to the regime's Basij militia

The Grand Universal Illusion

North Korea just tested a nuclear weapon. The test was successful. We know this because the explosion triggered a unique kind of earthquake and South Korea picked up the seismic waves.

Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times thinks the Obama administration and every American administration before it has failed to resolve this problem because they've had the wrong approach. “Isolating N Korea doesn't help,” he wrote on Twitter. “China has a plausible strategy for N Korea: use investment, exchang...

Egypt's Refuseniks

Here’s something you don’t see every day:

Hundreds of low-ranking policemen in Egypt are holding protests to demand they not be used as a tool for political oppression in the country's ongoing turmoil.

Dozens of policemen rallied Tuesday outside local security administration headquarters in at least 10 provinces. Some of them carried signs reading, "we are innocent of the blood of the martyrs."

These little demonstrations aren't likely to have much, if any, effect, but they're still nice to see....

So Much for All That

Libya isn’t the only post-revolutionary country in North Africa that’s collapsing. Egypt is too.

Here is Lee Smith in the Weekly Standard:

This week marks the second anniversary of the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Two years after the refrain “the people want to topple the regime” filled Tahrir Square, it is now Egypt itself that is toppling. Street violence has pitted various groups against each other—anarchists against Islamists, policemen against protesters, men against women—and...

Shooting at the Neighbors

Three years ago I interviewed an Israeli man on the Golan Heights who fought in Lebanon in the 1980s.

“I can’t understand that place,” he told me. “The Christians and Druze were shooting each other. They weren’t shooting at us, they were shooting each other. Most of the time they seemed to get along perfectly fine, but then Thursday or Monday would come along and they’d fight. Why? Why did they think their lives would get better if they shot at the neighbors?”

Some things never change.

Lebanon’...

Big News in Tunisia

A Tunisian opposition leader was just assassinated, presumably by an Islamist, and massive demonstrations have broken out all over the place, the biggest since the revolution. The headquarters of Ennahda—the sort-of-but-not-exactly “moderate” Islamist party—was set on fire. So the government dissolved itself, appointed technocrat stand-ins, and promises speedy elections.

Tunisia has all sorts of serious problems, but I can’t imagine the Egyptian government—and obviously not the Syrian governme...