Here’s a sampling of what the Republican presidential candidates said about Syria and Iraq at Tuesday night’s debate. Ben Carson declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is trying to really spread his influence throughout the Middle East. This is going to be his base. And we have to oppose him there.” Jeb Bush said, “It is tragic that you see Iraq and other countries now ...
This week, the staff at the Center for American Progress learned why Tony Blair’s foreign ministry nicknamed Benjamin Netanyahu “the armor-plated bullshitter.” And why former French President Nicolas Sarkozy called him a “liar.” And why former Clinton administration spokesperson Joe Lockhart said, “He could open his mouth and you could have no confidence that anything that came out of it was the truth.” CAP, an ...
W hen it comes to Palestinian rights, America’s 44th president is hardly a radical. According to both Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, he’s provided Israel with more security assistance than any president in history. He’s refused any dialogue with Hamas, even as Israel reportedly initiates its own. He’s repeatedly stymied Palestinian statehood efforts at the United Nations. But compared to almost all the candidates running ...
Great news for Jeb Bush! Jon Meacham’s new book has just set off several more days of debate about his brother’s decision to invade Iraq. In Meacham’s forthcoming biography of George H.W. Bush, the old man unloads on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for having wrecked his son’s foreign policy. The elder Bush says Cheney joined forces with the “real hard-charging guys who want to ...
When he comes to Washington next week, Benjamin Netanyahu will do something unusual. He’ll sit for an interview at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank whose worldview is radically different than his. Some American liberals think that given the way Netanyahu has treated the Obama administration, and the Palestinians who live under his control, CAP shouldn’t let him in the door. ...
Jeb Bush fashions himself the thinking man’s Republican candidate for president. Donald Trump, he declared late last month, is “not serious.” When it comes to foreign policy, Trump hasn’t “thought these things through.” Trump is “not taking the responsibility—the possibility of becoming the president of the United States really seriously.” So what are Jeb’s well-thought-out, serious foreign-policy views? He offered a few on Monday in ...
If you’re feeling sorry for Jeb Bush after Wednesday night’s CNBC debate, don’t. His defenestration by Marco Rubio should make even those who support neither of them for president smile. It’s a sign that maybe, just maybe, the system still works. …
The Arab American Institute invited every major presidential candidate to address its National Leadership Conference last Friday in Dearborn, Michigan. Only one showed up: Martin O’Malley, a long shot Democratic hopeful who once served as governor of Maryland. …
The success of Donald Trump and Ben Carson has turned the members of the GOP elite into anthropologists, struggling to understand those ordinary Republicans who now resemble an exotic and hostile tribe. “I have no feeling for the electorate anymore,” George H.W. Bush’s former chief of staff John Sununu told The New York Times last Saturday. “Their priorities are so different that if I tried ...
It’s now clear: Jeb Bush wants to speak about his brother’s record on 9/11 as much as possible. Donald Trump launched the controversy last Friday when he told Bloomberg News, “When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time.” But then Trump quickly tried to tamp it down. Later that day, after Bush ...