The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
The Iran war could reshape the midterms as Democrats, Iran’s regime, dissidents, and Kurdish rebels weigh the political and military stakes of the next 50 days.
Many narratives swirl around the U.S. war with Iran as the November 3 midterm elections loom.
The Left is giddy with confidence that Democrats may take control of Congress. It is therefore planning a circus of impeachments, lawfare, and investigations to neuter the last two years of the Trump administration.
High gas prices and the current unpopularity of the Iran conflict, coupled with the historical reality that the president’s party has lost seats in Congress in 39 of the last 41 midterm elections, have convinced Democrats that they could win enough seats to cut off funds for the war.
Yet the elections are still seven weeks away, and the sheer number of known unknowns ensures an uncertain outcome.
Every side is now gaming the midterms.
The Democrats believe the unpopular war can at last halt Trump’s momentum and are already declaring it all but lost.
The Iranian theocracy agrees.
It will do its best to ratchet up tensions with a series of October surprises in hopes that Trump loses control of Congress and the United States reverts to familiar Democratic policies of ending sanctions and downplaying Iran’s race toward nuclear weapons.
Its leaders also remember Barack Obama’s “hands-off” policy when a million Iranians took to the streets during the Green Revolution of 2009. Then-President Obama remained silent as thousands of protesters were jailed and killed.
As for Trump, he remains enigmatic and says only that the war will likely end shortly after the midterms.
Trump could simply mean that Iran is on the ropes and the regime cannot survive much more than two months.
Or Trump may be hinting that after the midterms, regardless of who controls Congress, he will be free of electoral pressures and able to resume military operations to accelerate the theocracy’s ongoing economic ruin.
But it is often forgotten that two other groups may also be gaming the midterms with October surprises of their own—and in quite different ways.
If Iranian dissidents—35,000 of whom were killed by their own government in January—believe that a Democratic takeover of Congress would benefit the murderous regime they hate, then they may face very different deadlines and renewed incentives to resist.
The embattled opposition, suffering existential food and energy shortages, might conclude that if the regime is tottering in October, this may be its last chance to overthrow it before Democrats restrain Trump and spare the hated mullahs.
The same mindset might be embraced by some 10–15 million restive Iranian Kurds, who periodically resist the theocracy in Tehran.
If they, too, believe that ascendant post-midterm Democrats might defund the current American strikes against the theocracy, or that Trump will eventually be pressured into ending American involvement, then they may see overthrowing the hated regime as a now-or-never proposition.
The point is not what might actually happen if the Democratic opposition controls Congress or otherwise pressures Trump this fall to end the conflict.
The key, instead, is the perception that it would.
There are still more known unknowns.
This remains a strange conflict in which almost no news emerges from Iran. The United States has used no ground troops. There are no embedded correspondents. Western media are largely barred from Iran unless they regurgitate theocratic propaganda.
Thus, no one knows the true extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear, industrial, and military complexes.
Nor do Westerners know precisely how much the new sanctions, secondary boycotts, strangulating blockades, and frozen foreign assets have further weakened an already crippled regime—and driven a starving, fuel-starved, and furious populace to desperate measures.
It is understandable why the bloody popular uprisings of early 2026 failed against an oil-rich Iran whose half-century-old, half-trillion-dollar military-industrial complex was still largely intact.
Not now.
The theocracy is now vastly diminished after months of Israeli and American bombing and crushing new sanctions. Moreover, the desperate regime has continued to murder dissidents in the months since the failed uprising of January 2026.
In sum, the Iranian conflict is one of the strangest wars of the modern age.
The Iranian regime has suffered terrible material and financial damage.
Its nuclear program is likely in ruins, and its original command-and-control leadership has been destroyed.
The people detest it. The Kurdish minority loathes it. Conditions on the ground are dire, with terrible shortages of food, medicine, and fuel.
The resistance may sense that the Trump administration would double down on kinetic force to finish off the wounded regime if a mass popular uprising emerged and needed support from the air.
Taken together, these possible October surprises before the November midterms could make the next 50 days the most volatile in modern memory.
Photo: A woman crosses as motorists drive past an anti-US billboard at Enghelab Square in Tehran on September 2, 2026. Iranian forces said on September 2 that they launched attacks on US military targets in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and other countries in the region, vowing "severe" consequences for renewed American attacks on the Islamic republic. (Photo by Atta KENARE / AFP) /
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.
He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.
The message is urgent: Gaza cannot be rebuilt merely by putting up new buildings, repairing roads, or providing humanitarian assistance. The Palestinians' entire mindset must be rebuilt.
Dr. Fadel Ashour, a [Palestinian] psychiatrist, behavioral-science professor and political analyst, has described in unusually blunt terms the psychological, social and political damage caused by Hamas and its ideology, which is rooted in Islamist principles, rejection of Israel's existence, armed struggle and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in its place.
His message is urgent: Gaza cannot be rebuilt merely by putting up new buildings, repairing roads, or providing humanitarian assistance. The Palestinians' entire mindset must be rebuilt.
"Over 20-25 years [of Hamas rule], a culture was established that normalized violence, legalized it, and glorified death as if it were a means of survival. This is extremely dangerous for an entire generation that grew up saturated with this culture." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, Palestinian psychiatrist, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026.
"A society that wants to win achieves victory through building, not through death and violence... When you open a school or a university, that is a victory. When you build a prosperous society that doesn't push its youth to flee, that is a victory. Making their lives a hell that everyone wants to escape from is a defeat." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026.
If Hamas is merely regarded as another political faction, then the international community will continue to accommodate a terrorist group, negotiate with a terrorist group, and incorporate a terrorist group into Gaza's political system.
If Hamas, however, is understood from the outset as an Islamist armed organization that created a parallel society and subordinated Gaza's interests to its ideology and military objectives, the policy implications will be entirely different.
"They [Hamas's leaders] took complete control of Gaza's economy. They crushed the commercial class, became the merchants, the importers, and the tax collectors themselves... They exploited society in a parasitic manner." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026.
"Hamas controlled the incoming external aid, taking it and selling it to fund itself... In the very midst of death and extreme poverty, they were looking to fund themselves from the begging done on behalf of the people.... Fundamentalist groups like this, are obsessed with two things: gaining access to money and getting that television shot for their media." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026.
What is important is the broad picture Ashour presents: an Islamist terrorist group that claims to exist for the Palestinian people has instead become an instrument for controlling, exploiting, and indoctrinating them.
His assessment should be required viewing for anyone negotiating with Hamas. The question is not whether Hamas will hand over some weapons or accept a temporary political arrangement. The question is whether Gaza can ever develop a fundamentally different political and social culture while Hamas's ideology remains embedded in its society and institutions.
Ashour is warning the international community not to make the mistake of believing that Gaza's problem can be solved simply by reaching an agreement with Hamas's leaders.
A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions, prosperous businesses, universities, and a functioning political system.
That is why allowing Hamas to retain a political and military role — particularly by including Hamas-affiliated political figures in future elections — would only perpetuate the problem Ashour is describing.
The members of the Board of Peace and the international community need to ask themselves a basic question: Hamas's ideology has helped produce a culture of violence, death, and destruction, so can Gaza really be successfully rebuilt while that ideology — along with its institutional machinery for perpetuating it — remains intact?
The answer, it would seem, is unfortunately not.
A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions, prosperous businesses, universities, and a functioning political system. Pictured: A Hamas gunman stands in a crowd of human shields in Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip on October 13, 2025. (Photo by Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
For years, politicians, activists, journalists and organizations around the world have claimed to speak on behalf of the Palestinians. Many have blamed Israel for virtually every Palestinian problem while treating the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas as legitimate "resistance" movements whose political and military role should be preserved.
Now, a Palestinian psychiatrist who has lived and worked in the Gaza Strip is offering a rather different diagnosis.
Dr. Fadel Ashour, a psychiatrist, behavioral-science professor and political analyst, has described in unusually blunt terms the psychological, social and political damage caused by Hamas and its ideology, which is rooted in Islamist principles, rejection of Israel's existence, armed struggle and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in its place.
His recent interview with the Arabic-language outlet Jusoor News deserves to be watched and studied by everyone involved in trying to determine the future of Gaza.
Ashour's testimony is not coming from an Israeli or Western analyst. It is coming from a Palestinian professional with firsthand experience of life in Gaza.
His message is urgent: Gaza cannot be rebuilt merely by putting up new buildings, repairing roads, or providing humanitarian assistance. The Palestinians' entire mindset must be rebuilt.
This means finally, actually confronting the ideology that has shaped at least two generations.
Ashour warns that for the past two decades, Gaza has experienced a process of social conditioning in which violence and death are universally acclaimed and celebrated:
"Over 20-25 years [of Hamas rule], a culture was established that normalized violence, legalized it, and glorified death as if it were a means of survival. This is extremely dangerous for an entire generation that grew up saturated with this culture."
The observation is exceptionally important.
For years, many Western governments and so-called pro-Palestinian organizations have spoken almost exclusively about the physical destruction in Gaza. Ashour, however, is drawing attention to another form of destruction: the destruction of social values, institutions, and aspirations.
Palestinian society, he states, has been taught to associate victory with death rather than with construction and development:
"A society that wants to win achieves victory through building, not through death and violence... When you open a school or a university, that is a victory. When you build a prosperous society that doesn't push its youth to flee, that is a victory. Making their lives a hell that everyone wants to escape from is a defeat."
These are not the words of an Israeli government spokesman. They are the words of a prominent Palestinian physician describing what he has seen.
Ashour is equally blunt about rejecting the notion that Hamas should be treated simply as another political party representing the Palestinian people. "These groups are not political parties or political movements," he states, referring to Hamas and other Islamist organizations:
"They create a closed parallel society – marrying among themselves, conducting their own businesses, and running a private economic cycle. They view the rest of society with a sense of superiority, as if they are the chosen ones and the rest are just commoners."
Gaza, Ashour continues, was not home to a normal government, but something quite different:
"What existed was not a state authority; it was the rule of the oppressive, terrifying militias... In Gaza, the public found itself facing ghosts and tunnel militias. About 300,000 youths fled the Gaza Strip."
If Hamas is merely regarded as another political faction, then the international community will continue to accommodate a terrorist group, negotiate with a terrorist group, and incorporate a terrorist group into Gaza's political system.
If Hamas, however, is understood from the outset as an Islamist armed organization that created a parallel society and subordinated Gaza's interests to its ideology and military objectives, the policy implications will be entirely different. Ashour goes on to describe Hamas's economic domination of Gaza:
"They took complete control of Gaza's economy. They crushed the commercial class, became the merchants, the importers, and the tax collectors themselves... They exploited society in a parasitic manner."
Discussing humanitarian aid he discloses that Hamas controlled the incoming external aid, taking it and selling it to fund itself:
"In the very midst of death and extreme poverty, they were looking to fund themselves from the begging done on behalf of the people.... Fundamentalist groups like this are obsessed with two things: gaining access to money and getting that television shot for their media."
What is important is the broad picture Ashour presents: an Islamist terrorist group that claims to exist for the Palestinian people has instead become an instrument for controlling, exploiting, and indoctrinating them.
Ashour's analysis of Hamas's leadership is equally revealing. Hamas leaders, he states, "are very skilled at small details..."
"When they execute an operation like October 7, they plan the minute details very meticulously and successfully. But their problem is that they cannot see the forest as a whole. They do not understand the broader strategic, regional, and international environment."
He describes what happens when this strategic blindness meets ideology:
"Because of their ignorance of the big picture, gaps emerge that they fill with magical, childish, and mystical thinking – expecting unseen forces to intervene on their behalf to alter international politics."
His assessment should be required viewing for anyone negotiating with Hamas. The question is not whether Hamas will hand over some weapons or accept a temporary political arrangement. The question is whether Gaza can ever develop a fundamentally different political and social culture while Hamas's ideology remains embedded in its society and institutions.
This is especially relevant now that the Trump administration's Board of Peace announced in July that it had reached an agreement with Hamas and other terrorist groups concerning their complete disarmament — a process to be completed in stages. The announced framework envisages a new Palestinian administration for Gaza and an international stabilization mechanism.
Palestinian parliamentary elections are also scheduled for November 28, 2026.
Both developments make his assessment particularly timely. Ashour is warning the international community not to make the mistake of believing that Gaza's problem can be solved simply by reaching an agreement with Hamas's leaders.
The physical reconstruction of Gaza, according to Ashour, is the least part of the challenge. What is required is "rebuilding the human being," as he calls it, through deradicalization, mental health care, restoration of social trust, and the development of a life-affirming, forward-looking culture.
Above all, a new Gaza cannot be built on the same ideological foundations of the old Gaza.
A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions, prosperous businesses, universities, and a functioning political system.
That is why allowing Hamas to retain a political and military role — particularly by including Hamas-affiliated political figures in future elections — would only perpetuate the problem Ashour is describing.
The members of the Board of Peace and the international community need to ask themselves a basic question: Hamas's ideology has helped produce a culture of violence, death, and destruction, so can Gaza really be successfully rebuilt while that ideology — along with its institutional machinery for perpetuating it — remains intact?
Though Trump has made similar threats before, his comments come ahead of a planned meeting Tuesday with leaders from six Gulf countries on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
President Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sept. 13. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
President Trump told Axios Thursday that he's approaching a critical juncture in the Iran war over whether to restart massive attacks in an effort to bring the conflict to a close.
"I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
The meeting could shape the next phase of the war, including whether to make another push for diplomacy or intensify military action. If Trump wants to resume major combat operations, he would need buy-in from his regional allies.
The President has said several times in recent days that the war will end soon. Some U.S. officials warn that the conflict has settled into an unsustainable, neither-war-nor-peace stalemate, and they believe Trump could return to major combat operations after the midterms if a deal isn't reached by then.
What he's saying: Trump made clear in the interview that he wants to use the meeting at the UN to hear directly from regional allies about the war's next steps.
"I want to find out where they are and how they are doing. We have been very protective of them," Trump said.
The participating countries are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.
Trump declined to say whether he'll decide on the path forward before or after the midterms.
Driving the news: In early August, Trump held off on resuming major combat operations after Saudi Arabia and Qatar expressed concern that Iran would bomb Saudi oil and gas facilities in retaliation.
The U.S. military has significantly increased oil and gas tanker transit through the strait. But traffic is still below pre-war levels, and oil prices remain high.
State of play: Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have ordered the military to maintain its level of forces in the Middle East until the end of the year, U.S. officials say, to remain ready for a potential return to full-scale combat.
The officials say Trump needs to decide soon on the way forward, partly because the U.S. military can't stay in its current holding pattern much longer. "At some point you have to decide what is the end game," one of the officials said.
Trump told Axios he's very satisfied that the naval blockade has prevented Iran from exporting its oil. "Not one ship has gone to Iran since we started. They tried and we blew them up," he said.
The president added that Iran is in direct contact with the U.S. and said the Iranians still want to reach a deal.
The big picture: The White House has also been working on a post-war strategy that calls for a regional effort to contain Iran while expanding normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors.
While the plan is still in the early stages of drafting, it's intended to guide the U.S. approach in the Middle East after the Iran war ends and in the final two years of Trump's term. Two big events loom over the planning: the Oct. 27 election in Israel and the U.S. midterms in November.
What to watch: When asked if he will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York next week, Trump said, "I may."
US President Donald Trump says he will consult Gulf leaders before deciding whether to renew large-scale attacks on Iran or pursue diplomacy.
President Donald Trump via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is approaching a major decision on whether to resume large-scale military attacks against Iran as he considers the next stage of the war.
“I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me," Trump told Axios.
The comments come ahead of a planned meeting Tuesday with leaders from six Gulf countries on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman are expected to take part in the meeting, which could influence whether the US pursues another diplomatic effort or intensifies military action.
Trump told Axios he wants to hear directly from the regional leaders before determining the next steps in the war.
“I want to find out where they are and how they are doing. We have been very protective of them," he said.
The President declined to say whether he would make a decision on the future course of the war before or after the US midterm elections.
In early August, Trump held off on resuming major combat operations after Saudi Arabia and Qatar raised concerns that Iran could retaliate by striking Saudi oil and gas facilities.
Since then, Trump has taken a lower-profile approach, suspending negotiations with Iran, launching a new sanctions campaign, continuing a naval blockade of Iranian ports and focusing US military efforts on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and increasing oil flows through the waterway.
The US military has significantly increased oil and gas tanker traffic through the strait, although transit remains below pre-war levels and oil prices remain high.
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have ordered the US military to maintain its current level of forces in the Middle East through the end of the year, according to US officials, in order to remain prepared for a possible return to full-scale combat.
One US official said the current situation cannot continue indefinitely.
“At some point you have to decide what is the end game," the official said.
Trump also told Axios that he is satisfied with the results of the naval blockade against Iran.
“Not one ship has gone to Iran since we started. They tried, and we blew them up," he said.
The President added that Iran remains in direct contact with the US and that the Iranians still want to reach an agreement.
Meanwhile, the White House is working on a post-war strategy intended to guide the US approach in the Middle East after the conflict ends. The plan calls for a regional effort to contain Iran while expanding normalization between Israel and its neighbors.
The developing strategy is intended to cover the final two years of Trump's term, with Israel's October 27 election and the US midterm elections in November both looming over the planning.
Asked whether he would meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York next week, Trump replied, “I may."
Mohammed bin Salman thought he could stay out of the region’s widening war. Now the Houthi threat is pushing Riyadh back toward Israel.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office, Nov. 18, 2025. Credit: Emily J. Higgins/White House.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the brilliant young leader who has fascinated many with his vision of modernizing the heart of Sunni Islam, is changing course.
Saudi Arabia is home to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam, and its immense oil reserves have made the kingdom one of the most powerful countries in the Arab world. Mohammed bin Salman has been courted by U.S. President Donald Trump and by Israel, which has long sought normalization with Riyadh.
The crown prince thought he could navigate the region’s wars as he pleased. But the logic of this conflict is proving inexorable.
It is impossible to remain indifferent when Iranian missiles and drones threaten your country. And now the Houthis, the brutal Yemeni proxy of an increasingly desperate Iran, have brought the danger directly to Saudi Arabia.
Mohammed bin Salman thought he could remain outside the war. Instead, he finds himself in it up to his neck.
The Houthi offensive has exposed Saudi vulnerabilities, while attacks on the kingdom and the threat to shipping around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have demonstrated once again the reach of Iran and its proxies. Riyadh is looking for help. (Reuters)
The lesson for Mohammed bin Salman should be clear: Alliances matter most when allies are prepared to confront a common enemy.
Only last month, Saudi Arabia signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Turkey and Pakistan. The pact provides that an armed attack against one of the three countries will be considered an attack against them all.
It sounded impressive. Reality has proved more complicated.
Turkey has no desire to be drawn into a confrontation with Iran, while Pakistan has sent mixed signals about what the agreement actually requires. Islamabad initially indicated that continued Houthi aggression could activate the pact, but later said that no military response had been discussed. And Pakistan is far away.
The stakes extend far beyond Saudi Arabia. Through its proxies, Iran has now extended its reach to another of the world’s strategic maritime choke points. Bab el-Mandeb is the gateway to the Red Sea and, ultimately, the Suez Canal—a vital artery of trade between Europe and Asia. Houthi control of the strait therefore threatens not only Riyadh but Egypt, Europe and global commerce.
That also helps explain Mohammed bin Salman’s turn to Egypt. Cairo has an enormous economic interest in keeping the Red Sea route open and traffic flowing through the Suez Canal. The Saudi crown prince traveled there this week seeking support from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the Houthi attacks intensified.
Saudi Arabia has also sought assistance from other allies as its missile-defense resources come under pressure. The United States continues to provide intelligence cooperation while stopping short of direct military intervention.
And then there is Israel.
Israel does not disappear when circumstances become difficult. It is not going anywhere. And Saudi Arabia and Israel face the same enemies: Iran and the Houthis.
Reports now suggest that Riyadh has sought Israeli intelligence assistance through U.S. Central Command as it confronts the growing Houthi threat.
That is significant.
Mohammed bin Salman has spent years dangling the possibility of relations with Israel, always conditionally and often ambiguously. But reality is stronger than diplomatic games.
On one side are Iran and its proxies. On the other are countries with a common interest in stopping them.
The Houthis have advanced along Yemen’s Red Sea coast and threatened the Bab el-Mandeb, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. Saudi Arabia said this week that it intercepted a Houthi drone near Mecca, although the Houthis denied targeting the holy city.
They have demonstrated that there are few limits to their ambitions.
Mecca and Medina are threatened. The Red Sea is threatened. International shipping is threatened. And Jerusalem has long been in the sights of Iran and its proxies.
Mohammed bin Salman is discovering something that should have been obvious all along: Geography, common interests and common enemies are ultimately more powerful than diplomatic maneuvering.
When Iran and the Houthis threaten the region and its stability, Saudi Arabia must decide whom it can actually count on.
Riyadh is drawing closer to Israel again because, in a dangerous region, strength commands respect—and Israel has shown that it’s willing to use it against its enemies.
Fiamma Nienstein is an Italian-Israeli journalist, author and senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA). An adviser on antisemitism to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she served in the Italian Parliament (2008-2013) as vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. A founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative, she has written 15 books, including October 7, Antisemitism and the War on the West, and is a leading voice on Israel, the Middle East, Europe and the fight against antisemitism.
For the past year, jobless claims have remained within a historically low range of 200,000 to 230,000 per week.
The number of people applying for unemployment benefits dropped sharply last week, signaling the country is seeing few layoffs.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims fell to 196,000, the fewest since mid-July and down from 206,000 the week before, ABC News reported.
The four-week average for claims, which removes volatility from the unemployment figures, dropped to 203,250. For the past year, jobless claims have remained within a historically low range of 200,000 to 230,000 per week.
Economists had expected the figure this week to come in at 207,500, according to a survey from FactSet.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told service members and industry figures at the conference that the U.S. military "is prepared to fight, endure and win ... from the seabed to" the region of space located between the Earth and the Moon's orbit.
The U.S. military will need to be prepared to fight not only in Earth's orbit but also in orbit around the moon, President Donald Trump's top military advisor said on Wednesday.
The comments were made at the Air and Space Forces Association conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland. On Monday, the U.S. revealed for the first time that it has a weapon in orbit around the Earth.
On Wednesday, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told service members and industry figures at the conference that the U.S. military "is prepared to fight, endure and win ... from the seabed to cislunar space," The Washington Sun reported.
"Cislunar" refers to the region of space located between the Earth and the Moon's orbit.
Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, head of the force’s Combat Forces Command, told reporters that Space Force, the newest military service that President Donald Trump created in 2019, is preparing to fight in space and around the moon because "humanity is advancing deeper into space," and it's the job of Space Force to "defend U.S. interests."
A soaring global energy crunch collides with mid-term election season in the U.S., as the White House looks abroad to Venezuela and pressures Ukraine to ease supply pressures.
President Donald Trump is working furiously to spare the United States from the fuel crisis sweeping the globe, seeking out new sources in Venezuela, ensuring that the U.S. continues to pump oil, and calling for Ukraine to halt its strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure.
So far, the United States appears to be insulated from the worst of the crisis as unrest breaks out in countries that are feeling acute oil shortages stemming primarily from the Iran war. Rising prices in regions as diverse as South Asia and Europe have prompted protests. Governments have responded with price ceilings, rationing, and even scheduled power cuts in poorer countries.
This weekend, for example, in Syria, protesters blocked a highway, blocking traffic and setting fire to tires, just hours after the central government announced it would temporarily raise prices on fuel products by as much as 40%, both Al-Jazeera and The New York Times reported. Similar protests have occurred in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Portugal.
A missile strike by Iran-backed militias damaged Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea oil pipeline this weekend
The White House and administration officials view high oil prices as temporary, an issue that will resolve itself when the Iran war is finished, as Trump has said. However, no end to the conflict between Washington and Tehran appears likely before the midterm elections. Instead, voters are being confronted with the prospect of rising gas prices as tit-for-tat fighting between the U.S. and Iran continues just as the election season truly kicks off.
A missile strike by Iran-backed militias that damaged Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea oil pipeline this weekend has contributed to the recent oil price uncertainty sweeping the markets. The strike temporarily knocked the East-West pipeline out of commission, preventing Saudi Arabia from using its only reliable way to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and forcing the kingdom to cut oil shipments to Europe.
The current crunch is particularly acute for diesel, which is more expensive than gasoline. The price of diesel, an oil-based fuel often used in commercial vehicles and industrial machinery, set a new record when it surpassed $6 a gallon this weekend. Because of its use in freight and delivery transportation, elevated diesel prices often translate into higher prices for goods.
The pattern prompted the president to call on Ukraine to halt its strikes against Russian oil refineries in a bid to calm global diesel prices, which he blamed on the Russia-Ukraine war, not the conflict in the Middle East.
“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said during a visit to Ireland. “Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel because he’s causing a shortage of diesel. This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”
Recent polls show 49% of voters are most concerned by the cost of living
The pressure is on. Polling throughout the summer has shown that potential voters are primarily concerned with the cost of living and economic conditions ahead of the elections, which will take place in November. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June, for example, respondents said the cost of living was the most important factor in deciding whom to vote for in November – at 49%, followed by democratic norms at 22% and immigration at 13%. In that same poll, 14% of respondents overall and 20% of Republican respondents labeled gasoline prices as the issue they most want members of Congress to prioritize.
Americans are also growing weary of how the president is handling the economy. Trump’s net approval on the economy is 33 points underwater, and American approval for the Iran war has also declined to the lowest levels since the conflict began, with only 31% of Americans approving of the war.
To bolster supply, the administration has turned its focus to South America, working to ease sanctions on Caracas and facilitate higher oil exports. According to reports by The Wall Street Journal, easing restrictions on Venezuelan crude could direct hundreds of thousands of additional barrels per day to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, helping offset supply disruptions from the Middle East.
According to a Bloomberg analysis, Venezuelan crude is flowing into the United States at the highest levels since 2017. Last week, imports from the country capped out at around 800,000 barrels per day, Javier Blas, Bloomberg’s energy and commodities columnist, said.
Dep't of the Interior has accelerated environmental reviews and fast-tracked drilling permits
Domestically, the White House is pushing to maximize domestic oil production by cutting regulatory hurdles. For example, the Department of the Interior moved to accelerate environmental reviews and fast-track drilling permits on public lands and offshore sites, with administration officials maintaining that expanding domestic output is key to keeping pump prices low.
Additionally, the U.S. economy has several advantages that other countries do not that may help the administration stave off the worst of the global supply concerns, including the fact that the U.S., since 2019, is a net exporter of oil.
Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas concluded in a study earlier this year that the United States’ energy independence puts it in a far better position to absorb potential oil shocks compared to other countries. While U.S. supply does little to reduce global oil prices, it ensures that domestic shortages impacting other countries are unlikely here.
A film that makes dubious claims about the IDF slaughtering Palestinian civilians may help bolster an antisemitic trope blaming the Jews for a new global threat.
Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham and journalist and director Rachel Szor attend the photocall for the newly released film “NAZA,” presented in competition at the 83rd International Venice Film Festival at Venice Lido in Italy, Sept. 10, 2026. Photo by Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images.
In case you took the last week off from reading the news, watching TV or combing through social media, you’re aware that a lot of people have suddenly come to the conclusion that artificial intelligence will soon destroy humanity if it isn’t stopped.
While I’m sure that most Israelis are also interested in the possibility that our computer/robot overlords will soon render us extinct, headlines in the Jewish state have largely focused on another controversy in which AI plays a subsidiary role.
Bolstering the ‘genocide’ lie
The 25-minute standing ovation given to a documentary film called “NAZA”—a reference to a Hebrew military acronym for nezek agavi,which means “collateral damage”—at the Venice Film Festival shined a spotlight on the new movie. It’s the work of journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two vocal Israeli members of the far-left activist class who not only oppose the security policies backed by the majority of voters, but have a history of publicizing dishonest and fabricated atrocity stories besmirching the Jewish state in film and print.
The movie was also co-produced by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, a publication that is among Israel’s most ardent opponents.
A historical footnote to this controversy is that The Guardian was an early and crucial supporter of the Zionist cause at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Since then, as it drifted farther and farther to the left, it has switched sides. It now considers that stand to be among the worst mistakes it made in its more than 200 years of publication. In fact, it ranked its cheerleading for the Confederacy during the American Civil War as the only blunder considered more egregious than its backing for self-determination for Jews in their ancient homeland.
To buttress the blood libel that the Jewish state has committed “genocide” in Gaza, “NAZA” claims that the Israel Defense Forces used an AI technology called “Lavender” to expedite and approve airstrikes with what it claims were high expectations of civilian casualties. The film uses anonymous sources that it alleges are all Israelis involved in the program and know what they are talking about.
The accusation is apparently rooted in something true. As is well known, the Israeli military goes through a highly involved process to determine whether military actions are legal and worth the risk to both IDF personnel and Palestinian civilians before they are approved. In doing so, Israel is not committing war crimes. To the contrary, it is following both international standards and its own laws that forbid the wanton slaughter of civilians and require the military value of the operation to justify “collateral damage.”
One may debate whether such standards are stringent enough or foolishly hamper legitimate and necessary IDF operations. Most of the criticism of the IDF’s actions ignores the context in which such strikes are ordered in the first place. Israel was fighting a war in Gaza started on Oct. 7, 2023 by a brutal enemy bent on the genocide of its citizens and the destruction of its country.
What the film doesn’t say
Indeed, as even an article in the far-left newspaper Haaretz by an author who had seen the film—something no one in Israel or the United States has yet had the opportunity to do—pointed out, much is missing in this attempt to make the genocide libel stick to the Jewish state.
As one might expect from an outlet where anti-Zionism is normative, Haaretz’s news and opinion sections have been acting as cheerleaders for “NAZA.” But as much as Raviv Drucker, who works at Israel TV’s Channel 13, wanted to like “NAZA” and vouched for the honesty of its creators, he couldn’t help noting that it was completely lacking in context. Hamas’s role in maximizing the number of Palestinians killed in its war—numbers that have already been proven to be highly inaccurate—isn’t taken into account.
As Drucker noted, “At one point, Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields comes up, only to be sharply dismissed. Instead, we’re told that we [Israelis] deliberately killed suspected Hamas operatives at home with their families, at night, because it was convenient.”
Even left-wing Israelis like him, who oppose the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, understand that the organization that governed Gaza from 2007 to 2023 as an Islamist terror state deliberately located its military structure and command centers in schools and hospitals. It used international aid intended to help civilians to construct a tunnel network underneath Gaza as extensive as the New York City subway system; a feat of engineering that could be considered the world’s largest bomb shelter. But no civilians were ever allowed to enter it since it was reserved for Hamas’s soldiers, commanders, and their supplies and ordnance—not to mention being where they often hid the Israelis they kidnapped on Oct. 7.
As Drucker also admitted, many of the names of the people that Hamas and its sympathizers previously claimed were innocent journalists, teachers, athletes and aid workers slain by Israel later turned up on lists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives who were killed in the war.
More to the point, he described the film as presenting the Israelis as committing terrible crimes and then casually going out to dinner in Tel Aviv, comparing themselves to Nazis and treating the killing of children as “fun.”
In other words, the point of the documentary film seems to be to depict Israelis as callous monsters.
For those who cheered “NAZA,” Oct. 7 is just a date on the calendar. For Israelis who lived through the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab assault on communities in southern Israel—when 1,200 men, women and children, Jews and non-Jews, were slaughtered and 251 others dragged into captivity in Gaza—it was the reason why the war was fought. The orgy of mass murder, torture, rape, kidnapping and wanton destruction carried out that day was the trailer for what Palestinians want to do to all of Israel. The only reason why it hasn’t happened is because of the efforts of the Israeli military and its various branches, which have been on active alert since that day.
The soldiers of the IDF sent to operate in Gaza—many of them young men not long out of high school or 40-year-old reservists with families at home—were not only risking their lives by conducting operations on foot in areas and buildings to avoid indiscriminate killing of civilians; they often wound up getting ambushed, with hundreds killed and many more wounded. They were there not for the “fun” of waging war on Palestinian Arabs. Rather, they were defending their homes and families, and attempting to ensure that Hamas and its allies couldn’t repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 again and again, as they still pledge to do.
A graffiti mural created by Israeli graffiti artist Dudi Shoval in Ashdod, Israel, depicting filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, creators of the documentary film “NAZA,” with the Hebrew word “Traitors” painted across their portraits, Sept. 15, 2026. Photo by Liron Moldovan/Flash90.
Liron Moldovan
The point is demonization
Drucker also disputes the account in the film of deliberate IDF attacks on civilians, which he believes just didn’t happen.
He says the film doesn’t bother comparing the record of the IDF in urban warfare with other modern armies. If it had been honest about it, then “NAZA” would have shown that Israel’s conduct has been exemplary when placed alongside other examples of such fighting, killing disproportionately fewer civilians than in other wars, including those fought by the U.S.-led Western alliance against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq and elsewhere. And recalling how many non-combatants were killed in the Allied bombings of Germany and Japan in World War II, such efforts to avoid civilian casualties are even more proof of the Jewish state’s devotion to legality and humane behavior under the most difficult of circumstances.
But, of course, the purpose of such a film isn’t, as Drucker notes that he would have preferred, an effort to give an honest journalistic account of a complex situation. The point of the exercise is to demonize Israelis and their army, and to delegitimize efforts to defend themselves against a genocidal Islamist foe that was widely supported by the civilians under their control who celebrated the Oct. 7 atrocities.
No matter how thoroughly the the charges in the film are debunked, not even the most exhaustive investigation of the issues raised by “NAZA” will have much of an impact on a global audience that is hungry for inflammatory lies about Israeli misbehavior. To those who are already convinced that the Israelis are settler-colonialists who have no right to be in their own land and “white” oppressors of Palestinian “people of color,” the truth doesn’t matter.
As seen with previous efforts that unpacked the falsehoods about exaggerated Gaza casualty figures, the bogus number of women and children killed, and the non-existent famines, few among those giving a standing ovation for films like “NAZA” will listen. The same individuals were ready to believe in The New York Times’ preposterous claims that Israelis trained dogs to rape male Palestinian prisoners don’t care if the charge is ultimately disproven. The belief in such slander is impervious to even the most rigorously documented journalism that vindicates Israel’s behavior.
Whether or not Abraham and Szor think of themselves as serving humanity by trashing their own country, as with their past attacks on Israel, they aren’t likely to convince many of their compatriots whose lived experiences of the war contradict their claims. The only impact it will have will be to further encourage other efforts to bash and isolate Israel. It will also embolden the global surge of antisemitism rooted in blood libels about Jews.
Worries about AI
That is why one detail of the filmmakers’ indictment of Israel is crucial to understanding just how dangerous such calumnies can be. While these allegations about indiscriminate killings of Palestinians will likely blend into many other false charges, the focus on AI in the midst of a worldwide panic about artificial intelligence is likely to make it stand out. Like radioactive material, it will give such smears an extended life long after the film is forgotten.
The explosion of concerns over a potential apocalypse started when Jacob Coxon, who had worked at the two largest AI companies—OpenAI and Anthropic—publicly resigned from the latter with a broadside alleging that unless the technology was reined in by public regulation, it would soon turn on its creators and wipe out the human race.
That was followed by announcements from Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, the CEOs of these companies, as well as billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, chiming in that they agreed about the need for government intervention.
Like almost everyone else who has followed this controversy, I have no idea whether they are right about the threat from AI.
I deplore the use of AI in writing. It is a practice that dumbs down author and reader. It is both a symptom and an accelerant to the trend by which humans are becoming less literate and less intelligent.
Nevertheless, I realize that AI can be very useful in doing some things, such as research or creating accurate translations from one language to another. It also helps industries of all sorts accelerate their ability to create new solutions to old problems, as well as break new ground for innovation, as Israel’s “startup nation” high-tech sector has proven.
It’s equally true that skepticism about apocalyptic predictions of doom is often more than justified. Even when the concerns are legitimate or at least arguable, advocates for causes often succumb to the temptation to exaggerate the consequences of various problems simply to motivate people to take them more seriously. The effort to instill an almost religious belief in the alleged peril to humanity from anthropogenic global warming is only one such example.
I understand why these companies might welcome regulation. It will give them cover if things go wrong (and they almost always do, to some extent) and gives them enormous leverage over Washington, which will likely mean their market advantages will be grandfathered into any effort to slow down the pace of innovation. This sort of collaboration between government and big business invariably results in corruption, not sensible policies.
But even if worries about AI are justified—and this might be an example of when doomsday predictions could be accurate—the notion that the government is going to solve the problem by creating bureaucratic regulatory structures beggars belief. It’s far more likely that it would be either ineffective or make the problem worse.
It’s also true that any halt to AI research and development that doesn’t include China would not only fail to achieve the desired results. It would make a very different doomsday scenario more likely, involving that communist tyranny gaining a decisive advantage over the free world.
Doomsday scenarios and antisemitism
But all of this is speculation. The one thing I know for sure about the fears being generated about AI is that sooner or later, they will be harnessed by those who always seek to blame the Jews for everything they think is wrong with the world.
And that’s where Abraham, Szor and their sugar daddies at The Guardian come in.
It doesn’t take much to inflame the imagination of conspiracy theorists. Still, the effort to falsely label Israel’s use of technology to help it conduct military operations as a genocidal tool is catnip for those willing to blame Israel for every problem under the sun. Podcasters like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson already believe that the Jews are responsible for every possible crime, like using sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail politicians and even creating pornography to enfeeble American males.
It isn’t much of a leap from there to think that the Israelis are creating AI to dominate the world or wipe out humanity. It may not make sense, but antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories don’t have to be logical. Their purpose is to convince people that the Jews are responsible for whatever it is that they fear most as part of an effort to gain financial and political power. That’s why leftists and Islamists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, in addition to their counterparts on the far right like Carlson, seek to weaponize lies about “genocide.”
In the long run, those responsible for “NAZA” won’t help the Palestinians they supposedly care about since the net effect of their propaganda is to strengthen Hamas—the terrorist outfit that is oppressing them. Nor will it break Israel, even if it also bolsters the cause of those seeking to isolate and sanction the Jewish state.
But what they will likely accomplish is to create a new variant on an old antisemitic trope about Jews poisoning the wells. Whether or not the worries about AI are justified, the film will alarm the paranoid and the fearful, who are already vulnerable to conspiratorial thinking. The difficult question of how to harness a new technology will morph into what to think about a mythical plot by the Jews.
Israelis have good reason to accuse the filmmakers of concocting treasonous defamation against their own nation. The two deserve even more opprobrium for their shameless efforts to fuel the worst kind of Jew-hatred with a high-tech twist.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, available on all major audio platforms and on YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won 60-plus awards for his columns, commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
The response to the attack was to teach too many Americans to hate their own country—a country that does not deserve this hatred.
The year 2026 is an interesting one. It has both the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States and, simultaneously, the 25th anniversary of September 11.
The two events are inescapably intertwined. For me, 9/11 shattered much of what had come before it.
I was born twenty years after World War II ended. Growing up—and being educated—in the 1970s and 1980s, I knew America was good. Raised on military bases in Italy and Cuba, I was exposed to parades, marches, and military drills that bred patriotism.
We flew on military planes, we sang the National Anthem before every movie in the theater, and my friends and I would regularly eat lunch in the Gold Hill Barracks galley (cafeteria), with a table of Marines on one side of us and a table of Navy NCOs on the other.
While my specific experience was unique, the feeling of patriotism wasn’t. For the most part, Americans knew America was fundamentally good.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that I had imprinted on my soul that America was always destined to win WWII. Not because the Kaiser shipyards together delivered a new Liberty Ship every day for years, or because North American Aviation could produce 30 Mustang fighters per day, but rather because we were the good guys and the Nazis and the Japanese were the bad guys. Like Manifest Destiny before it, America was destined to triumph.
I carried that same framework long after college. Sure, you could look at Vietnam and make the argument that the United States was involved in something that it should not have been—an arguable, but far from convincing, point—but that didn’t change the fundamental nature of America. Nations, like humans, make mistakes, but ours was essentially good.
For me, that was the backdrop upon which everything else operated. Like gravity, it’s not something that you think about regularly; you just know it’s there. It’s true, and you go about your everyday life.
September 11 shattered that for me. Like most Americans alive on that day, I remember exactly where I was. I was in Atlanta, having gone back to bed after returning from the gym. My sister called me after the first plane hit the tower, and I turned on the TV and watched.
“What the hell!” I asked myself. “How the hell does that happen?” It was only a couple of minutes later when the second plane crashed into the South Tower. Suddenly, it was like Americans must have felt when they heard of Pearl Harbor. America was being attacked!
I spent the next seven days sitting in front of my TV, probably 20 hours a day. Other than going to the eerily empty Publix across the street for food, I was glued to my set. Of course, it didn’t take long to understand exactly what was going on. Osama bin Laden’s Muslim terrorists had attacked America.
I must confess, I knew very little about Islam or Muslims at the time, and what little I knew was from headlines: the ’72 Munich Olympics, Ayatollah Khomeini’s takeover of Iran, the 1993 WTC bombing, the twin embassy bombings in 1998, and a few other events.
So I did some reading… Things like Bernard Lewis’s The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years, Dore Gold’s Hatred’s Kingdom, Steven Emerson’s American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, as well as anything I could get my hands on from Robert Spencer and David Horowitz.
That reading, along with observing actual events, made it clear we were seeing the revival of a 1,400-year clash of civilizations that had largely waned for most of the last 400 years. A crystal-clear result of 9/11 for me was the realization that Islam is simply incompatible with the United States.
But 9/11 turned out to be a catalyst for much more. George Bush, against all observable facts, claiming “Islam is peace,” was just the beginning and the latest iteration of political correctness that was beginning to infect America.
Although Americans were united in a way not seen in decades in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it would not last. The media would showcase every American wartime mistake and lionize those calling for America to withdraw.
By 2003, rallies were common, with activists calling George Bush “Hitler”, and in 2004, the Democrats would nominate a globalist, John Kerry, for president. Four years later, America would send Mr. “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” to the White House.
The quarter-century following 9/11 would see “political correctness” meld the interests of Communists, environmentalists, gays, minorities, and Islam, and together they would morph into a largely anti-American party, i.e., Democrats. They were and are anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, and, fundamentally, anti-Western civilization. Their immediate need to protect the “religion of peace” started an avalanche of victimization that would pick up every minority or disgruntled group along the way.
Statues would come down, and not only those of Confederate Civil War generals, but men who built our history, men like Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and more. Language would change. Marriage, which had meant one man and one woman for more than 2,000 years of Western civilization, was suddenly something else.
Wearing a sombrero or dressing like an Indian for Halloween was suddenly cultural appropriation. The “Broken Windows” policing and “stop and frisk” approach to manifest criminals that had saved urban America from the devastating crime rates of the 1990s were replaced with “Defund the Police” and “community responders.”
Our borders were essentially eliminated, and blue states and cities decided that protecting invaders was more important than immigration law. Not to mention that millions of years of biology were erased by the sudden “reality” that men could become women and women could become men. And from that, children could be butchered without their parents’ consent.
For too many Americans, the legacy of September 11 is a nation that is something of a Bizarro world, where up is down, right is wrong, and anything pro-American is somehow bad.
I’m not one of them. For me, the legacy of September 11 is just the opposite. It reinforced much of what I already knew to be true and, regrettably, took for granted.
By forcing me to examine the history of America, of the world, and of civilization in general, I now understand that I was right to believe that America is the greatest nation in human history, but now I understand why. Our Founding Fathers, while imperfect, left us with the greatest document since the Bible.
The freedoms protected by it, the separation of powers dictated by it, the limited government established by it, and the entrepreneurial tsunami it unleashed combined to birth a people who created more prosperity for more people than any nation in human history and saved the world from fiery suicide twice along the way.
My blog is called Imperfect America, and the subtitle is Voltaire’s observation that “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” Nothing demonstrates that reality more than America. From her “Original Sin” to today, America is imperfect, but very much a force for good.
To the degree that September 11 set in motion the cleaving of too many Americans from the understanding of the things that make her the greatest of God’s creation, the terrorists succeeded far more than they ever imagined.
I, for one, try every single day to correct that, either by writing here and elsewhere or by suggesting that we might not want to take it all for granted. Because if history shows us anything, unappreciated and unprotected civilizations can collapse, and sometimes do very rapidly.
