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Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 19, 2007 / 9 Kislev 5768

Looking at Iraq in macrotime

By Michael Barone


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | When my father returned from service as an Army doctor in Korea in 1953, he brought back slides of the photos he'd shot, showing a war-torn country of incredible poverty. We would have laughed if you had told us that Americans would one day buy Korean cars. But 50-some years later, South Korea has the 13th-largest economy in the world, and you see Hyundais and Kias everywhere in America. Looking at things in microtime frames is not always a reliable guide to the macrotime-frame future.


" So it may turn out to be with Iraq. We have been looking at Iraq in microtime frames — or, for many who oppose the war, frozen in the time frame of late 2006. A better picture of the microtime frame is that we have achieved considerable success this year. "The trend toward better security is indisputable," writes the Associated Press. U.S. military and civilian deaths have declined sharply. Anbar province is pacified, Iraqis are streaming back to Baghdad, and al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run. Time's Joe Klein, a critic of the administration, admits the gains and advises Democrats not to try to cut off funds. Conservative columnist Tony Blankley claims "a very real expectation that next year the world may see a genuine, old-fashioned victory in the Iraq war."


American media are presenting less reporting from Iraq, partly because some in the media believe that good news in Iraq is not news. Some Democratic congressional leaders still maintain that the surge strategy has made no difference, and they seek a vote on troop withdrawal. But Democratic presidential candidates, more closely attuned perhaps to changes in events and opinion, are talking less about withdrawing from Iraq and more about what we should do (or should not do) about Iran.


Hopeful signs. Let's look, however, not just at the microtime frame but the macrotime frame. Yes, violence could re-escalate, as Klein predicts. But within sight is a far more hopeful trajectory. In the long run of history, our involvement in Iraq is starting to look less like a descent into a hopeless quagmire and a more unstable Middle East. Remember that in early 2005 the successful initial invasion and the specter of a possibly democratic Iraq prompted Libya's Muammar Qadhafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction and Syria to withdraw troops in the face of the "cedar revolution" in Lebanon. The increasing violence in Iraq in late 2005 and all of 2006 was accompanied by the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, the increasing menace of Iran, Syria's continued bullying of Lebanon, and other dire developments.

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There was similar back-and-forth in Korea: Communists nearly driving the United States off the peninsula, then the successful Inchon landing and push to the Yalu River boundary with China, then the Chinese counteroffensive that resulted in a stalemate roughly along the 38th parallel. Each of those developments suggested a very different future trajectory; the one that turned out to be lasting was the maintenance of a non-Communist South Korea that over several decades became first prosperous and then democratic. That example gave impetus to similar developments in east Asia and even China, which adopted a system of authoritarian government and market economics reminiscent of 1970s South Korea. Harry Truman was regarded as a failed president, with job ratings below George W. Bush's. But the long-term verdict on his Korea policy is much more positive.


An Iraq that is reasonably stable, fairly democratic, more prosperous and productive than the Middle Eastern standard: This seems to be at least one possible trajectory from the success of the surge. That would be a considerable achievement, with positive reverberations for decades to come. In time the back-and-forth between victory, then rout, then acceptable but incomplete success that we saw in Korea — the microtime frames that seemed so important at the time — was mostly forgotten. And the qualified but substantial progress achieved in the macrotime frame, in Korea and in the dangerous region around it, dominated our view. We have now some basis to hope that something similar happens in Iraq and the dangerous region around it. We are still far from the "broad, sunlit uplands" that Winston Churchill pointed to in the distance after disaster was narrowly averted at Dunkirk. But we seem to be getting closer.

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