It was nearly three in the morning, on a recent Saturday, when the door of a Washington DC jail cell slammed closed with me inside. After an already grueling day in police custody that began at 1:30pm and included being handcuffed for eight hours straight at one point, the ability to move freely (albeit in a 5×7 cell) was a welcomed relief.
The Pentagon ushered in the New Year with seemingly welcome news: IraqÂs security is improving. Attacks across the country fell 62% and, according to aid organization Iraqi Red Crescent, 20,000 Iraqi refugees returned home from Syria in December alone. The U.S. troop surge must be working. Even the Democratic opponents of President George BushÂs agenda in Iraq are befuddled by the news, unclear how to proceed.
President George W Bush announced during his recent Middle East trip that he is formally serving notice to Congress of his administration’s decision to approve the sale of bomb-guidance kits to Saudi Arabia. This announcement follows notification on five other arms deals to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait that are part of a $20 billion package of additional armaments over the next decade to the family dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf emirates announced by President George W. Bush last summer.
The claim that decentralizing decision-making power to local communities can strengthen national governments may seem like a contradiction. After all, the common assumption is that power concentrated at the national level strengthens a country’s autonomy. Therefore, how could national sovereignty possibly be reinforced if the responsibilities for planning and managing development programs are distributed among local people?
When national governments assist initiatives that help communities determine and implement priority development projects – such as job creation, education, health, and environment – they create in the process diverse administrative partnerships at all levels within their country. Consequently, local organizations and communities seek to maintain these partnerships with the national level because they help satisfy their human needs and better enable people to shape the institutions that govern them. Central governments benefit by creating overall targets and inter-regional balance and competition that can foster performance, affect remote areas far from the national capital, and enhance their legitimacy.
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On January 15, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments in U.S. policy toward Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. In the first part of this two-part interview, Chomsky also discussed how the U.S. government’s belief in its ownership of the world shapes its foreign policy.
Michael Shank: Is the leading Democrats’ policy vis-à-vis Iraq at all different from the Bush administration’s policy?
The rise in popular support for Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy reflects the growing skepticism among Democratic and independent voters regarding both the Bush administration’s and the Democratic Party establishment’s foreign policies. Indeed, on issues ranging from Iraq to nuclear weapons to global warming to foreign aid, as well as his general preference for diplomacy over militarism, Obama has also staked out positions considerably more progressive than the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and its aftermath seem all too familiar.
President George W. Bush has been using somewhat stronger language than he has uttered previously about the Israeli-Palestinian situation and has made some optimistic predictions of a peace agreement within a year. Nevertheless, there is little reason to hope that the president is any more serious about or is any more likely to be successful in bringing about a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
For many Democrat voters, John McCain represents the least bad Republican presidential candidate on the ballot. Democrats not wanting the Bible in the White House are disinclined toward southern Baptist Mike Huckabee, and those not wanting a doubled-in-size Guantanamo or an immigrant-free America find Mitt Romney completely unlikable. McCain seems to be the most willing to build bipartisan coalitions, the most willing to give detainees legal representation, and the most willing to tackle global warming  all of which makes many Democrat voters fonder of McCain than any other Republican candidate.
The strong showings by Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in the early contests for the Democratic presidential nomination don’t just mark a repudiation of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy and “war on terrorism.” They also indicate a rejection of the Democratic Party establishment, much of which supported the invasion of Iraq and other tragic elements of the administration’s foreign policy.