Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 56

Did Assad Just Kill the Saudi Intelligence Chief?

Pro-Assad Web sites are claiming that the Syrian government assassinated Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the current intelligence chief and the former ambassador to the United States. The Syrians accuse him and the CIA of orchestrating the recent bombing in Damascus that killed several top regime figures, undermining the initial claim that the attack was carried out by an Islamist suicide bomber.

I have no idea if the Syrians really killed Bandar bin Sultan or if he’s even dead. (The Saudis mi...

Like it or Not, Jerusalem is Israel's Capital

White House press secretary Jim Carney refused to publicly name the capital of Israel yesterday. All he was willing to say when asked repeatedly is that the White House position on Israel’s capital hasn’t changed.

You can watch the video and read the transcript .

This is all really quite silly.

It’s a fact—not an opinion—that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Anyone who insists otherwise is in denial. You may wish Tel Aviv was its capital. You may even wish a united Al Quds was the capital of t...

European Union Refuses to Blacklist Hezbollah

After a suicide-bomber killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, the Israelis are (again) asking the European Union to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Europe (again) refuses to do so.

Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, the foreign minister of Cyprus just 30 minutes off Lebanon’s coast, says Europe would consider adding Hezbollah to the list of banned terrorist organization “if there were tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terror.”

Let’s just pretend for the sake of argum...

Assad Delenda Est

Here’s a piece I wrote for the print version of World Affairs that has just now come online. I’ll excerpt the first half here on the blog, and you can follow the link at the bottom to read the second half.

Syria’s tyrant Bashar al-Assad is in the middle of a life-or-death struggle. He might be overthrown. He should be.

The Arab Socialist Baath Party regime, beginning with its founder Hafez al-Assad and continuing through the rule of his son Bashar, is the deadliest state sponsor of terrorism in...

Last Chance for an Autographed Copy

This is your last chance for an autographed copy of my new book, Where the West Ends. They will no longer be available after this weekend because on Monday I’m placing an order for all the books that have been purchased so I can sign and ship them all at once.

I’ll make twice as much money from each autographed copy as I’ll earn if you buy it from somebody else, so I’ll sincerely appreciate it if you buy directly from me. You can support me this way without paying anything extra.

You can order...

When the West Saved Tbilisi

NRO has published another excerpt from my forthcoming book, Where the West Ends. This one is darker and more serious than the last one I published here. It takes place in Georgia during the Russian invasion.

Getting into Georgia on the train was easier than getting out. As soon as the Georgian customs officials stamped my passport and finished hand-searching my luggage, I stepped off and into a taxi. A friend warned me in advance that while the train sits at the border between Georgia and Azer...

Back to Iraq

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Where the West Ends.

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“An adventure,” the great travel writer Tim Cahill once wrote, “is never an adventure when it happens. An adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.” I have never taken a trip that more aptly fits that description than when my best friend Sean LaFreniere and I drove to Iraq on a whim.

It was stupid of us and the trip was unrelentingly miserable, though in my defense the idea was no...

The First Review is in

There are a few advance reading copies of my new book out there and Asher Abrams has read one of them and reviewed it on his blog.

Here’s a taste:

Where the West Ends is, at least superficially, a travelogue about the region straddling eastern Europe and western Asia, during the period from 2006 to 2012. The book is divided into four sections covering the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea. It's roughly the same region covered by Robert D. Kaplan about ten years earlier i...

An Excerpt from WHERE THE WEST ENDS

The following is a previously unpublished excerpt from my forthcoming book, Where the West Ends.

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“The forced collectivization of agriculture decreed by the Soviet master and his party likely cost the lives of more people than perished in all countries as a result of the First World War.”- Michael Marrus

“They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible; they had shot or exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they had reduced some of the m...

Pre-Order Your Autographed Copy of WHERE THE WEST ENDS

It is now time to pre-order your autographed copy of my new book, Where the West Ends: Stories from the Middle East, the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus. It will be published at the end of this month, but you may get your copy sooner if you order directly from me.

I’m extremely happy with how this turned out. I had more fun writing Where the West Ends than my other books and I think you’ll have more fun reading it, too. This one should also appeal to a much wider audience since it cov...