Author: Peter Maass
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.
Hypocrisy That Hurts
From the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times:
The White House and Congress are trumpeting their determination to bring economic opportunity to the people of Africa. But first, a few million sub-Saharan farmers will have to suffer.
The Bush administration has been busy extending special ...
The War Is Over. We Won.
That’s the message, though with greater complexity and shading, of a new book, “Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam,” by Gilles Kepel. Although the author is a French ...
Why I’m Glad I Own PeterMaass.com
Anyone checked out ChristopherHitchens.com lately?
Afghanistan’s Black Hawk Down
Today’s Washington Post has a detailed reconstruction of the March battle in which seven American soldiers were killed during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. An excellent story.
A Bosnian Anniversary
It’s hard to believe, but ten years ago to this day I filed my first story about the war in Bosnia. Feels like yesterday, and a lifetime ago.
The Best Foreign Affairs Columnist
When I was an intern at The Washington Post, the foreign editor was Jim Hoagland, a Francophile who treated me well, perhaps because I lived in Paris for a year and he assumed I loved the French as much as he did (I did not). Hoagland is now the Post’s principal foreign affairs columnist, ...
Required Reading in Pakistan
One of the delights of reporting in Pakistan—or India, for that matter—is that English-language newspapers are prevalent and important and, in many cases, enjoyable reads (both the truth and the English language are stretched in exciting ways). The crisis between Pakistan and India has led me ...
The Long Arm Of The Hague, Cont.
Ed Vulliamy, who filed the first eyewitness dispatches about Serb-run prison camps in Bosnia, writes in The Observer that journalists should testify at war crimes trials. “I believe there are times in history–as ...
Thomas Friedman’s Chutzpah
Why can’t Thomas Friedman say “I was wrong”? His column on Sunday argues, rightly, that President Bush’s war on terrorism fails to embrace non-military strategies that would help ensure America’s security. ...