Author Archives: David Bromwich

About David Bromwich

David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and has written on politics and culture for The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines. He is editor of Edmund Burke's selected writings On Empire, Liberty, and Reform and co-editor of the Yale University Press edition of On Liberty.

Thomas Friedman finds Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Posted on December 21, 2011 by David Bromwich

Times columnist says US fought Al Qaeda in Iraq. But the terrorist group didn’t get there till after we invaded

Posted in Iraq, Media, US Policy in the Middle East | 36 Comments

‘The Social Network’ and the Acceptance World

Posted on December 18, 2011 by David Bromwich

People in their 50s find Mark Zuckerberg’s values in The Social Network detestable. But for the young, they’re awesome

Posted in US Politics | Tagged | 11 Comments

Netanyahu’s visit and its precedents

Posted on April 21, 2011 by David Bromwich

Haaretz has reported that Benjamin Netanyahu in 2007 offered to join a coalition government with Ehud Olmert on the condition that Olmert launch an attack against Iran. Recall: just three months before Netanyahu made that offer, in March-April 2007, Iran … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 72 Comments

New York Times vs. direct negotiations

Posted on August 22, 2010 by David Bromwich

The New York Times published two articles yesterday about the resumption of direct talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Both address a reader who already knows what happened, yet neither opens with a sentence carrying the basic information: “Secretary … Continue reading →

Posted in Beyondoweiss, Israel/Palestine, US Politics | 7 Comments

The moral authority of non-violence

Posted on June 14, 2010 by David Bromwich

A response to the debate on this site over the question of non-violent protest, following from the Gaza flotilla raid. For Gandhi and for King non-violence was a principle. Tactics such as the refusal to budge from a position where … Continue reading →

Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Politics | 14 Comments

A thought from Jean Amery

Posted on May 16, 2010 by David Bromwich

The thought is this: that the judgment against the torturer that persists in the mind of the tortured has a moral authority unequaled by any verdict of official justice. Thus Amery offers a clue to the metaphysical lie underneath the … Continue reading →

Posted in US Politics | 4 Comments

The Cooper Union question: Was Arab anti-Semitism the same as Nazi anti-Semitism?

Posted on April 9, 2010 by David Bromwich

Last night at Cooper Union, George Packer sought to expose some possibly embarrassing sources of Tariq Ramadan’s political commitments by reading a quotation from Ramadan’s grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Packer asked Ramadan why he had … Continue reading →

Posted in American Jewish Community, Middle East, US Politics | 96 Comments

Translating Obama, and Netanyahu

Posted on March 18, 2010 by David Bromwich

President Obama, having dared an unusual show of strength, declined yesterday to reproach Israel for any fault beyond a local violation of decorum. Instead, in his customary manner, he took one step back, one deep breath, and declared: "Israel’s security … Continue reading →

Posted in Iran, Israeli Government, US Politics | 20 Comments

On the Lack of Interest in the Goldstone Report

Posted on January 28, 2010 by David Bromwich

Many American Jews who are liberals, supporters of Israel, and generally well informed about events of the day suppress their knowledge of Israel-Palestine to a second-rate level of almost innocence. An inadequacy which (out of pride) they wouldn’t allow themselves … Continue reading →

Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Politics | 103 Comments

Chomsky: the ‘unipolar moment’ is working out fine for ‘the satisfied nations’

Posted on December 4, 2009 by David Bromwich

Last night, Noam Chomsky delivered the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia on "The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism." Some notes from David Bromwich who was there: Chomsky took up a major theme of Said’s writings. In the … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 30 Comments

Bromwich on Bronner’s shocking euphemism

Posted on December 1, 2009 by David Bromwich

We’ve made a lot of Ethan Bronner’s implicit endorsement of the Israeli battle-orders for West Bank nighttime raids: "cutting the grass." David Bromwich’s analysis: Love of order may present itself as a principle without exceptions so long as the order … Continue reading →

Posted in Beyondoweiss, Israel/Palestine | 8 Comments

Bromwich: Where did Cheneys get the idea that ‘dominance’ is the goal of foreign policy?

Posted on October 13, 2009 by David Bromwich

Here is something curious: evidence, via Liz Cheney, that the very idea of the U.S. as merely a major nation in the world of nations is considered by the Cheneys to be craven, weak, indeed pusillanimous to the point of … Continue reading →

Posted in Neocons, US Politics | 30 Comments

William Safire: Wars Made out of Words

Posted on September 30, 2009 by David Bromwich

“There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.” What Mencken said of Coolidge can be reversed in the case of Safire. There were plenty of … Continue reading →

Posted in Beyondoweiss, US Politics | 19 Comments

Force, provocation, disaster…. more force

Posted on September 4, 2009 by David Bromwich

Notice the page 1 story in today’s New York Times on the internal White House debate about Afghanistan. Holbrooke and Clinton want more troops, Gates mostly agrees, Biden is opposed to the idea. The Times doesn’t say, but we know: … Continue reading →

Posted in US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 7 Comments

Obama vs Gelb=democracy vs covert war

Posted on June 23, 2009 by David Bromwich

In a piece in the forthcoming New York Review of Books, David Bromwich creatively opposes the post-colonial credo of Obama in his Cairo speech to a book by Leslie Gelb of the Council of Foreign Relations, which mingles the best-and-the-brightest…
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Posted in Iraq, Israel Lobby, Middle East, US Politics | 6 Comments

Bromwich on ‘moral equivalence’ and Obama’s Cairo speech

Posted on June 5, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich writes: President Obama in his Cairo speech mentioned and named the “unprecedented Holocaust” suffered by European Jews in the years 1933-1945. He also mentioned the sufferings of Palestinians, from the dispossession of 1948 to the life under occupation…
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Posted in Nakba, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 131 Comments

Iran and nothing but Iran

Posted on May 20, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich writes: One inference is plain from the contrary emphases of Netanyahu and Obama at their news conference. The coming six months will see a continued aggressive insistence by Israel’s most uncritical American supporters, tuned to a single theme:…
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Posted in Iran, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, US Politics | 6 Comments

Bromwich on the ‘Times’ account of Israel’s plans to carve up Jerusalem

Posted on May 11, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich shares my criticism of the New York Times’s article on the Israeli plans to take more land in east Jerusalem: A few details warrant further notice in the Bronner-Kershner story on the urban-renewal-by-monument-making that Israel has used to…
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Posted in Beyondoweiss, Settlers/Colonists, US Politics | 17 Comments

Obama should state that 5th and 8th amendments bar torture

Posted on April 24, 2009 by David Bromwich

Great piece by David Bromwich on Huffpo calling for a full investigation of the torture-orderers, so as to establish why they did it, and to prevent the repetition of such power-grabs. Names Jane Harman as a rationalizer of torture: “I’m…
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Posted in US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 4 Comments

Bromwich: Who talks about the 4,700,000 Iraqi refugees?

Posted on April 7, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich has a fabulous post on ways that aristocracy perpetuates itself–Larry Summers’s payday. And he offers this comment on James North’s piece on Mahmood Mamdani’s Darfur book, posted here yesterday: The report confirms a suspicion about the way the…
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Posted in Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, US Politics | 15 Comments

Bromwich on Corrie

Posted on March 17, 2009 by David Bromwich

Yesterday David Bromwich published a piece on Huffpo memorializing Rachel Corrie in the best way, by using her story to critique the media and the American government and ultimately to the fields of political philosophy and Jewish and American identity….
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Posted in Beyondoweiss, Gaza, Israel Lobby, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 10 Comments

David Bromwich: Further Comment on Walzer

Posted on March 8, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich comments on Michael Walzer’s piece in Dissent on the two-state solution: What must be done on both sides has been clear for a long time. Many Israeli commentators–among them Uri Avnery–have been saying it. Palestinians (both Fatah and…
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Posted in Beyondoweiss, Settlers/Colonists, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 42 Comments

Bromwich: Obama can learn from Lincoln, party and principle go hand in hand

Posted on February 9, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich, who lectured on Lincoln’s legacy last week in Colorado, responds to a post by Phil Weiss on Lincoln’s failed 1849 effort to get a presidential appointment, commissioner of the Land Office: Why do people grasp at dirty straws…
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Posted in Beyondoweiss, US Politics | 13 Comments

Bromwich: Gitmo backlash on MSNBC

Posted on January 24, 2009 by David Bromwich

David Bromwich writes: Annals of Broken Journalism: At 10:25 this morning (EST) the MSNBC News anchor Alex Witt broadcast a segment entitled “Terrorists in Your Backyard?” The subject was Guantanamo. The premise: can we afford to close it? The guest…
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Posted in Beyondoweiss, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 4 Comments

Israel to 2-State Solution: Drop Dead!

Posted on January 15, 2009 by David Bromwich

LRB has a powerful collection of contributors condemning the slaughter. Excerpts: Yitzhak Laor: Israel is engaged in a long war of annihilation against Palestinian society. The objective is to destroy the Palestinian nation and drive it back into pre-modern groupings…
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Posted in Beyondoweiss, Gaza, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 6 Comments