War

The Saudi Arabian government has issued a series of 1,000 public lashings and 10 years in prison to an activist blogger Raif Badawi for insulting Islam. U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki requested an end to this punishment, but it does not look like Saudi authorities will end this brutality.

Having American troops occupy Iraq for 8 years, humiliating its citizens and torturing people in military prisons, was a bad idea. Did Bush and Cheney model for the Kouashi brothers how you take what you want and rub out people who get in your way?

Washington has invented a system so deeply entrenched in our world that changing it will surely prove a stunningly difficult task. Welcome to the new world of American insecurity.

For years, the U.S. did not even publicly acknowledge the existence of the drone strikes. This, among other foreign policy issues, brings about the debate over our national security and secrecy.

President Obama had aspirations to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but he has failed so far at living up to the expectations he has promised. We will hopefully see some more positive changes this year.

Most likely the Sunni Arabs will be brought back under Baghdad’s sway, but Kurdistan has disappeared except on paper. Can Iraq be put back together?

The collapse of the Middle Eastern states is pointing to climate change as one culprit. The already bad climate problems in the Middle East will only get worse over the next 50 years.

There is a maintained fiction that the U.S.' 2014 bombing raids against Daesh and al-Qaeda do not help the regime, but rather the moderate rebels. In actuality, they help the regime.