World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

There has been another violent attack in Kenya, and, once again, there is confusion about who is responsible for nearly 30 deaths.  Most analysts believe that Al-Shabab, an Islamist group from neighboring Somalia, is responsible for the attacks, but the government blames a local political group for the attack.  The Kenyan government appears to be highly reluctant to admit that Al-Shabab can operate so freely in Kenya, and prefers to treat the matter as a domestic affairs.  Al-Shabab insists that it is carrying out the attacks in retaliation for earlier Kenyan incursions into Somalia.

The US is “profoundly troubled” by reports that an American citizen, Tariq Khdair, was brutally beaten while in Israeli police custody in East Jerusalem.  Khdair is a cousin of the Palestinian youth, who was recently abducted and burned alive in the West Bank.  We  will have to wait for complete information on the incident but a video taken of Khdair’s arrest is deeply unsettling.  Whether Khdair was involved in violation of Israeli law so serious that he had to be brutally restrained remains to be seen.   The photos of Khdair taken after the beating are horrific.

Wars have a deeply unsettling effect on the domestic politics of a nation.  Such was the case for the US in World War I.  We tend to forget how much things change because of the emotional demands of a war, but those changes were also clearly evident during the Vietnam War and the War on Terror after 11 September 2001.  Rarely, however, are those changes totaled up when the costs of war are tallied.