Author Archives: Keith Urbahn

Maybe I’m a callous wretch. After all, it was the great Sir Winston Churchill who once said, “Show me a young conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” What exactly is it that makes our rare breed — the young »

Politics or religion makes for impolite discussion — or so my mother once told me. Apparently, no more. With one week until Election Day, the posters, buttons, chalk and T-shirts are out in full force and in your face. Even thefacebook.com has joined the political orgy with an “Intended Vote” category, and members have taken »

Despite problems with subject-verb agreement and a longing to give “some wood” to moderator Charlie Gibson, George Bush came out for Friday’s debate prepared, relaxed and determined not to repeat his first debate debacle. Admittedly, George Bush doesn’t possess the same debate skills and rhetorical flourish of John Kerry — perhaps owing to how they »

Faced with the realities of an ongoing genocide in Darfur, some unlikely bedfellows have found themselves together: once-vociferous war protestors, disillusioned hawks, and cowed politicians too craven to risk the political fallout of American casualties have all become conspicuously silent, failing to confront Sudan’s overt campaign of ethnic cleansing. Even worse than the individuals who »

If there were anything anti-Semitic about “The Passion of the Christ,” I must have missed it. Perhaps my wincing at the sight of flying pieces of flesh and rivulets of blood, and the sounds of cracking whips and crunching bones had something to do with it. Despite “The Passion’s” gratuitously graphic portrayal of the flaying, »

The enthusiasm generated by the Democratic primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire is a testament to our nation’s commitment to democracy, yet the epic battles of polemic and policy pale in comparison to the real struggle for democracy half-way around the globe. In Iraq, the future of political freedom is hardly sealed — a loss »

Between writing final papers, studying for exams, and nursing the mid-reading week hangover, most on-campus extracurricular events during the last two weeks of the semester go unnoticed.  Two women, Amal al-Khedairy and Nermin al-Mufti, offered their “perspective as two independent Iraqis” on their nation’s history, the U.S. wars, and their experiences as Iraqi women on »

Democracy is the inevitable outcome of historical progress, not merely for the Western, modern and secular world, but for every nation. In his speech here at Yale, former President Bill Clinton articulated an active role for the United States in fostering freedom and democracy around the world with the “cooperation of others whenever we can »

It’s been a bad week in Iraq: Monday brought the news of a rocket attack on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s hotel; Tuesday, 35 killed, 230 more injured in simultaneous attacks on the Red Cross and police stations around Baghdad; Wednesday, Baghdad’s Deputy Mayor assassinated; Thursday, more American soldiers dead, making the total number of »

We live at a time in America where racial, ethnic and religious sensitivities run high. Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie, “The Passion,” is a case in point, having drawn criticism from Jewish interest groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, which claims that the movie “unambiguously portrays Jewish authorities and the Jewish Mob as the ones responsible »

Nearly five months after President Bush declared the end of “major combat operations in Iraq,” and still without a shred of evidence of nuclear and biological weapons, the administration is now confronting an internecine blame game for the dubious intelligence on WMD. Marking a significant departure from the acquiescent image that the CIA has held »