Rami G. Khouri at PostGlobal

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA. Close.

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. more »

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Digging the Iraq Hole Deeper

The land mine analogy is catchy, but, alas, not very pertinent. The hole-digging analogy is slightly better: when you're sinking into a deepening hole and you need to stabilize the situation, stop digging.

The fact is, nobody really knows how Iraq can be defused while the United States insists on keeping its military forces there, and even sending more. The presence of 150,000+ American troops and the advent of a stable, peaceful Iraq are probably mutually exclusive. We should start by acknowledging this, and from there seek a practical route to a stable, unified Iraq by asking the U.S. to declare the start of a gradual but steady withdrawal from Iraq, restoring the country to a sovereign state.

That might trigger a more vigorous effort by Iraqis to achieve a constitutional accord, because they would have a legitimate indigenous government to aspire to join and influence. The Iraqi government today, backed by U.S. armed forces, enjoys only tenuous legitimacy. Many in the country shy away from association with it or seek to replace it. Legitimacy will spur stability, rather than the confused American sense that more troops and security operations will create a stable situation.

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