Steve Coll: All Related Content

... by titles alone, the nonfiction category seems particular intriguing this year, with the finalists "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," by Katherine Boo; "Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power," by ...

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden by Stephen Coll. There are many great things about this fine investigative history ... Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven. This book generated a lot of controversy in Pakistan when it came out ... Manhunt: From 9/11 to Abbottabad - The Ten-year Search for Osama bin Laden by Peter Bergen. A useful, intelligent and reasonable account of how Osama bin Laden was found and killed ...

New York can be as compelling in a hurricane as it is on a starry Saturday night. Some of the thrill of living in the city arises from its combination of majesty and vulnerability. Coming to terms with apocalyptic scenes is easier here than in other cities because the scenes have already been imagined, scripted and filmed by Hollywood’s dystopian directors. We step outside this week as if onto a familiar movie set.

The final Presidential debate, devoted to foreign policy, was the most reasoned and the least polluted by rehearsed talking points of the three. The format and the moderator helped: the candidates sat side by side at a table, close to Bob Schieffer, of CBS News, who conducts interviews of this kind every Sunday morning on “Face the Nation”; his confidence showed, and the roundtable feeling seemed to calm everyone down.

In “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” an essay published in 1990, the historian Bernard Lewis describes a “surge of hatred” rising from the Islamic world that “becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such.” The thesis became influential. It posited a crisis within a global Islamic community that made conflict with the United States and Europe inevitable. Academics and policymakers expanded on these ideas after September 11th, which brought urgently to the fore questions about how Al Qaeda’s radical ideas should be understood in relation to wider, diverse Muslim thought.

There is really only one plausible scenario in which Republicans could enact some version of Paul Ryan’s radical, government-shrinking budget plan during the next two years. That would be if Mitt Romney wins the White House and Republicans eke out control of the Senate in November. (The Democrats now hold the Senate by a 53-47 margin.)

Satwant Kaleka, who served as president of the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, arrived in the United States from India three decades ago with thirty-five dollars in savings. By last Sunday, he owned several gas stations, according to the Los Angeles Times. He turned up early that morning at his temple to oversee worship and preparations for a large birthday party.

The humid lull between the party primaries and the party conventions is the traditional moment for a Presidential challenger to peacock abroad as a prospective Commander-in-Chief. Four years ago, Barack Obama cruised the Iraqi war zone in a helicopter, dazzled throngs in Europe with his then fresh rhetoric of change, and charmed American soldiers in a Kuwaiti gymnasium, where, with preternatural nonchalance, he lofted a three-point shot toward a distant rim. He drained the three, the soldiers roared, and, somewhere back home, John McCain slumped deeper into gloom.
 

On September 30, 2011, in a northern province of Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and a senior figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, finished his breakfast and walked with several companions to vehicles parked nearby. Before he could drive away, a missile fired from a drone operated by the Central Intelligence Agency struck the group and killed Awlaki, as well as a second American citizen, of Pakistani origin, whom the drone operators did not realize was present.

On Wednesday, an apparent suicide bomber in Damascus attacked a meeting of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s war cabinet, killing Daoud Rajha, Syria’s defense minister, and Asef Shawkat, who was the President’s brother-in-law. The attack was the most striking in a series of signs that Syria’s uprising has tipped into a full-blown civil war, as the Red Cross has now labelled it, with the war’s momentum now favoring the rebels.

Steve Coll has announced his intention to step down as President of the New America Foundation later this year when a successor is selected. Coll has led the organization for the past five years.

When a new President is in place, Coll will transition into a Senior Fellow position with New America's National Security Studies Program as he pursues a follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.