Strategic Paradigms by Ehsan Ahrari

Professor Khaled Hroub’s review of Olivier Roy’s three books—The Failure of Political Islam; Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah; and The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East—published in your Journal, New Global Studies (Vol. 3, Issue 1, 2009, Article 6), is interesting but leaves the reader wanting more analysis.

The Obama administration is entering a crucial phase of its existence. President Barack Obama is about to determine his new strategy governing the Afghan war. He has a lot at stake because wars have a bizarre way of making heroes and villains out of presidents and prime ministers.

As President Barack H. Obama is edging toward making up his mind about accepting, partially accepting, or not accepting General Stanley McChrystal’s advice to insert more troops in Afghanistan, I hear an abundance of metaphors flying.  One metaphor was used by the candidate Obama himself during the presidential campaign, when he described starting the war [...]

Major crises of each generation create heroes and villains related to them. This is true for all nations. One of the recent trends inside the United States, when facing the crisis du jour, is to examine how leaders who faced similar crises in the past behaved; what mistakes they made, and why they made those mistakes; [...]