OxBlog

# Posted 8:44 PM by Patrick Belton

DAILY ROUND-UP: Richard Shultz writes in the WS on why the US didn't use Special Operations forces against Al Qaeda before 9/11. Kevin O'Connell and Robert Tomes offer ideas in Policy Review on reforming intelligence. Slate's Josh Levin points to a NYT Magazine piece showing you don't have to go to Cambodia to find sex slavery. Atlantic marks Emerson's 200th birthday. New Yorker profiles man-of-the-hour Kerry. NYT Book Review takes on Jung, the Church, and terrorist turned author Gerry Adams.

EurasiaNet comments on the Turko-Pak anti-terrorism agreement, prospects for Iranian reformists, Georgia, and the sad state of human rights in Central Asia. The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute offers up pieces on the Xinjiang province of China, India's new drive into Central Asia (come to think of it, Curzon tried that, too....), and promising economic trends in Kazakhstan.

LRB follows al-Muhajiroun activists around London, and looks back at Tacitus and Bonnie Prince Charlie. New York Review of Books looks at the history of the relationship between the US and Israel, Bosnian refugees, and has a piece by Oliver Sacks on whether consciousness is like Borges's river. Wilson Quarterly remembers the two-hundredth birthday of Marbury, says ideas matter even in pragmatic America, and recalls Britain's earlier go at making a democratic Iraq.

Economist, meanwhile, eulogizes a Geisha, despairs about the Chinese and Japanese economies at the beginning of the year of the monkey, looks into human rights in Morocco and education in the Arab World, and peers into Iran. CS Monitor profiles Al Qaeda's super-terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, covers rural-urban migration in China, and an op-ed says the wars on terror and against Saddam are changing Korea and Japan deeply.

In the major op-ed pages, Thomas Friedman is calling Iowa a victory for hawkish, sensible, i.e., Tony Blair Democrats (hey, that's us!), Jim Hoagland is optimistic about a settled peace in Kashmir, and David Brooks is optimistic about moderation and optimism in the Democratic party. Maureen Dowd is plumbing new depths. The Post applauds Bush's quiet (but, they point out, unilateralist) war on AIDS, and decries a hugely porky omnibus appropriations act that was rushed through the legislative process.

Happy reading!

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