Rob Asghar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rob Asghar [born Saquib Suhrab Asghar in 1965 in Sunnyvale, California] is a Pakistani American writer and political commentator. His essays and commentaries have appeared in more than 30 newspapers around the world, including The Denver Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Japan Times. [He has occasionally written under the name "Robert."] Asghar has also been a columnist for Creators Syndicate and the Ashland Daily Tidings.
Asghar began publishing columns about East-West relations and American foreign policy shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on American soil, offering a perspective shaped by his travels and his roots in Pakistan, a long-obscure country that emerged as a major front in the American war on terror.
Many of his essays are personal in nature, reflecting on the manner in which his Pakistani heritage and American culture converge and diverge. Asghar attended an American-operated school in Islamabad, Pakistan when the school and American embassy were attacked on November 21, 1979 during a brief flare-up of anti-Americanism. He would later write about the episode in a Chicago Tribune commentary that discussed the delicate balance of tact and force necessary to protect American interests. A vocal critic of American neoconservative foreign policy, he has staked out moderate-to-conservative positions on several other issues such as political correctness.
Asghar spent many years as a speechwriter and consultant for executives in business and academia, and also edited books on management and theology. Warren Bennis, author and leadership expert who once employed Asghar as an editor, has called Asghar "one of the exciting new voices within the American punditocracy."
