How-to-leave-Iraq plans have proliferated over the past five years. Most of the plans proposed by Democrats have brimmed with rhetoric aimed at scoring points against President George W. Bush rather than working out the messy details of how to end the occupation and what to do in its aftermath. Ten Democratic candidates for Congress have just changed that with the announcement of a plan that sets forth a strategic vision both to bring the Iraq War to an end and to prevent future “Iraqs.”

As global supplies shrink and the Middle East remains in turmoil, the United States is not without competition in Africa. China and other emerging economies are also looking to the continent and only seeing the oil needed to feed their rapid growth. This is especially true as new discoveries of oil on the African continent seem to pop up every year. Ghana discovered oil off its shores in 2007, Mauritania in 2006, and many other countries are ramping up exploration.

Having only recently become a U.S citizen, I now join the millions of immigrants eligible to vote in this year’s presidential election. For my native Latin America, none of the candidates is offering a real alternative to the failed policies that have made the U.S. government wildly unpopular among people from Mexico to Argentina.