Osama bin laden

Wednesday

Charles Moore

The only ‘civilisation’ Trump will destroy is his own

If, as Donald Trump had threatened, ‘a whole civilisation’ had died on Tuesday night, the whole civilisation concerned would have been that of the United States, not of Iran. If an American president had deliberately ordered the death of a civilisation – whether or not such a thing is achievable – America’s claim to world leadership would have collapsed. Like, I suspect, many, however, I did not go to bed that night thinking that Trump would carry out his threat. I remember my parents telling me that, during the Cuban missile crisis, people truly believed there might be nuclear conflagration at any moment. It did not feel like that this time.

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

How Dick Cheney made Donald Trump

Former vice president Dick Cheney, who died on Monday at age 84, loathed Donald Trump. In a 2022 election campaign ad for his daughter, Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming, he declared: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Yet Cheney was more responsible for Trump’s rise than almost anyone else in the Republican establishment. He helped to mastermind the calamitous Iraq War and preached the unitary executive theory of the presidency. Instead of vilifying Cheney, MAGA-world should offer him a bouquet of appreciation. Recall that it was during the 2016 South Carolina primary that Trump first showed his real independence from the folderol surrounding the Iraq War.

dick cheney

Saturday

Chris Mondics

When will we learn the truth about Saudi involvement in 9/11?

Will Saudi Arabia ever be held to account for the 9/11 terror attacks? For decades, the Kingdom has successfully parried lawsuits in the United States accusing it of providing logistical and financial support to a network of Islamic extremists who launched a global terror campaign, culminating in the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Those attacks occurred 24 years ago and since then survivors and victims of the 9/11 hijackings have had to counter not only vigorous Saudi denials mounted by their well-funded American legal team but also repeated attempts by the US government to thwart the lawsuits. But there are signs the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. On August 28, US District Judge George B.

9/11 saudi
terror
Daniel DePetris

The never-ending War on Terror

Twenty-two years ago today, the United States experienced its worst terrorist attack in history. It was a life-changing moment for tens of thousands of Americans, particularly those in the New York metropolitan area who saw two of the city’s most iconic buildings reduced to smoldering heaps of rubble and ash. The Pentagon, a stoic building across the Potomac River from our capital, saw one of its sides destroyed. About 166 miles to the northwest, another hijacked plane went down in rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania. By the time that horrible day was over, nearly 3,000 people had lost their lives. The country’s entire being was shaken to the core. Americans, particularly those in New York and Washington, DC, felt more vulnerable than they had in years. For President George W.

Wednesday

Neal Pollack

Real ID is a legislative wisp from the Bush-era War on Terror

The Real ID moment is here, the Y2K panic of 2025. Today is the deadline to update your driver’s license, leading to frantic predictions of something no one alive has ever seen before – long lines at the DMV. Will the center hold, or will the need to have a digitally embossed star on a piece of plastic finally bring the Republic down once and for all? I predict a quiet day. The fact is, though you now need a Real ID, you technically don’t need one today, unless you do. People must now deploy these enhanced IDs any time they’re entering a federal building, which most people don’t do on the reg, or a nuclear-power plant, which most people never do, and, most significantly in the lives of the general public, if they’re trying to get through airport security.

real id

Monday

Ross Anderson

George Santos is demanding $20,000 from Jimmy Kimmel for Cameos

Jimmy Kimmel announced a new segment on his show last Friday, titled, “Will George Santos Say It?,” in which he "pranked" the former congressman by paying for Cameo videos under anonymous names, requesting that Santos read out absurd messages. The first video in the series, “Jimmy Kimmel Pranks George Santos on Cameo,” brought in 1.4 million views in just three days on YouTube; but Santos may have the final laugh. Having been booted from Congress on December 1, the self-described “People's Princess” has continued to serve the public through Cameo, a site where fans can pay celebrities for short, personalized messages.

george santos

Saturday

Addison Del Mastro

Growing up with 9/11

Every writer from the New York area who lived through 9/11 has to write about it, right? Not long after the terrorist attacks — I was about eight years old, keep in mind — I came up with a game, which my mother indulged. I called it “Pilot.” I would approach my mother, and I might or might not have a little puzzle piece or something hidden in or under my clothes. My mother would then pat me down, trying to find it. If she found it, I would be “arrested.” If I hadn’t hidden it, I’d walk into the next room — “boarding the flight” — with no incident. But if I had hidden it and slipped it past security, I’d “board the flight” and then knock over a “skyscraper” I’d built out of wooden blocks. Yes, at age eight, I was pretending to be Osama bin Laden.

Thursday

Christopher Sandford

Patty Murray is no longer endearing

Someone once asked Johnny Depp about the secret of good acting, and he replied: “I pretty much try and stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.” Okay, maybe Depp’s not someone to hold up as a sage on the human condition. But I think we can at least agree that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to projecting the sort of halfway engaging befuddlement that earned him a reported $90 million as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. I mention all this only in so far as it applies to seventy-one-year-old Patty Murray, Democrat from Washington state. Murray won her primary election on Tuesday ahead of what could be a sixth consecutive term in the US Senate.

Thursday

Hugh Thomson

The least familiar stretches of Nile prove the most interesting

From our UK edition

It’s one of the most tantalising travel images in the world — a felucca floating along the Nile at sunset, its lateen sail spread aslant to catch the wind. It takes us back to the beginnings of ancient Egypt, when the need to manage Nilotic flooding and the imperative to trade along the river’s course were the motors of civilisation. Even 2,500 years ago Herodotus was fascinated by the ease with which the Egyptians had learned to cultivate the soil with its waters rather than with laborious ploughs — which, some speculate, had given them the leisure to build pyramids in the down months.

Thursday

Sam Leith

Barack Obama was decidedly a man of action as well as words

From our UK edition

Well, it’s quite the title, isn’t it? It tends to invite comparisons. The first one that occurred to me, though, was that the original Promised Land guy managed to get all the important stuff down on two stone tablets. His would-be successor doesn’t have quite that gift for compression. As he semi-apologises in the opening pages (he feels bad about it, but not bad enough to do a ruthless edit), this memoir was originally envisioned as a 500-pager. A Promised Land is just north of 700 pages, and there’s another volume to come. That speaks of a certain self-regard. Then again, Barack Obama has a good bit to be self-regarding about.

Tuesday

Daniel McCarthy

The wars go on

America’s longest war has just entered its 20th year. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda. Now, nearly a decade after the death of Osama bin Laden, the Afghan war continues. And everyone expects that if the Americans ever leave, the Taliban will return to power. Yet the Taliban who take charge will not be the same as those who harbored bin Laden. The median age in Afghanistan is around 19 years old: half the country’s population was born after the war began. The US is not fighting a limited reservoir of Taliban militants; it is fighting a cultural force that has renewed itself over a generation.

wars

Sunday

Noor Bin Ladin

A warning letter from the niece of Osama bin Laden

Dear America,Two-hundred-and-forty-four years ago, the resolve, courage, and wisdom of your Founding Fathers forever changed the course of history. For the first time, with the ratification of your Declaration of Independence, mankind was offered an unmatched societal ideal. Human beings were recognized for what we truly are by nature: all created free and equal, endowed with unalienable rights derive from our Creator. With your Constitution, your Founders sealed these God given rights, and protected them by instituting a limited form of self-government along with a robust justice system.This, America, is what makes your nation exceptional. It is why you have stood as a beacon of democracy and hope for all subjugated peoples over the past two centuries.

noor bin ladin

Monday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Could Donald Trump’s revisionist history leave the GOP in the lurch?

Holy Schitt! Just when you think there isn’t anything for Donald Trump to add to the lexicon of insults, he finds a new way, this time with the jejune epithet aimed at California lawmaker Adam Schiff, who is poised to become chairman of the House Intelligence committee. Trump’s tweet about him may be taken as an index of his inner apprehension about Schiff, not to mention Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who continues silently to stalk Trump, immune, at least so far, to his brickbats. The main reason for Trump’s turmoil is that he lost the midterm elections even if, as he explained to an alternately bemused and incredulous Chris Wallace of Fox News on Sunday, ‘I wasn’t on the ballot.’ So he was on the ballot until he wasn’t?

donald trump revisionist history