As a secular person, and as a woman, I've always been appalled by the Taliban regime and would dearly like to see them toppled. I was a public critic of the regime long before the war started. But I've been told that the Northern Alliance is absolutely no better when it comes to the issue of women. The crimes against women in Afghanistan are just unthinkable; there's never been anything like it in the history of the world. So of course I would love to see that government overthrown and something less appalling put in its place. Do I think bombing is the way to do it? Of course I don't. It's not for me to speculate on this, but there are all sorts of realpolitik outcomes that one can imagine.

I'll take the American empire any day over the empire of what my pal Chris Hitchens calls 'Islamic fascism.' I'm not against fighting this enemy - it is an ene…

But just because I am a critic of Israeli policy - and in particular the occupation, simply because it is untenable, it creates a border that cannot be defende…

The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing …

Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by f…

'We are not going to apologise for any small role we may have played in helping to remove a dictator who made his people suffer for 20 years, carried out horri…

And I in terror but not in doubt of what I must do in anguish, in haste, wrenched from the earth root after root, the soil heaving and cracking, the moss teari…