Die Weltwoche

The late Edward Said invented, or at least brought into vogue, the notion of Orientalism. For a time this became the big boo word in academia, a handy phrase for casting a variety of writers, ranging from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Joseph Conrad, into the abyss for their putative imperial cast of mind when it came to depicting the inhabitants of the further reaches of the British empire. But soon enough, as a recent and lengthy erudite review in the London Review of Books noted, Said apparently found himself accused of the very same sin by the cultural revolutionaries that he had exposed. It turned out that the founder of Orientalism was (gulp) an Orientalist. My, my.

President Biden blames Donald Trump and his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Mike Pompeo vehemently disagrees. In this exclusive interview with Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, Pompeo sees America's failure in Afghanistan and its loss of credibility as direct results of Biden’s policies of ‘weakness’ and warns that ‘if the Taliban decide that they're going to become violent in a full-on assault, the US should use every element of its military power to protect American interests.’   Lausanne, Switzerland  Urs Gehriger: President Biden announced that he would withdraw all US military forces by August 31. It looks highly unlikely that this can be accomplished.