President George Bush gave his 2007 State of the Union address on January 23. While the speech covered many domestic issues, Bush also laid out his foreign policy approach to Iraq, Iran, terrorism, and democracy promotion. Excerpts from the president’s speech are in italics; my comments follow.
You’re astride a donkey, and it’s not going anywhere. You’ve got carrots in your pocket and a stick in your hand. Which to use? In the ideal world, the donkey would take a few steps forward to get the carrot that you dangle in front of its nose. If it slows down or gets distracted from the carrot, a couple taps of the switch on its hindquarters get it moving again.
The new strategy of the United States in Iraq does not include an extensive overhaul of reconstruction efforts at this critical time. Very little money is now being appropriated for reconstruction. As the Iraq Study Group Report explains, of the $21 billion to date that has been appropriated for the “Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund” (IRRF), $16 billion has been spent and the remaining funds have been committed. The administration requested $750 million for 2007, and President Bush’s new proposal is to add $1.2 billion to that.
A few times a year, thousands of people break out their tied-dyed t-shirts, collect all of their peace buttons, make snarky yet provocative posters, and hop on a bus to what has become a political and social ritual: the protest. On January 27, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is holding a massive protest against the Iraq War in Washington. We (I’m a member of the coalition’s steering committee) will once again not be silent. Buses and vans are coming from at least 30 states and 111 cities packed with people who will bestow a historic welcome to the new Congress that we just helped elect and aim to change the trajectory of this war.
The movie Good Night, and Good Luck depicts how journalist Edward R. Murrow took down the most dangerous U.S. demagogue of his era with a simple, yet elegant, act of annotation. Murrow played excerpts on his CBS news show of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s speeches about the ÂCommunist menace and then refuted the charges. The lies and half-truths of the Wisconsin senator were laid bare, and that was the beginning of his end.
On January 15, a Moroccan court gave editor Driss Ksikes and journalist Sanaa al-Adzi three-year suspended sentences for publishing jokes related to Islam. Here, Dawid Warszawski of Poland’s leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza comments on the case.
Boots from the American Friends Service Committee project Eyes Wide Open, a traveling exhibition on the costs of the Iraq War. Photo by Jochen Strack.
Russia, according to the Western news media, is increasingly slipping toward totalitarianism. The man allegedly pulling all the strings is Russian President Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB operative and apparatchik extraordinaire. Journalists and politicians alike embrace this misconception of Putin as a powerful dictator whose control over his citizens must be countered through punitive measures.
The headlines this week will be all Iraq, all the time. President Bush will unveil his not-so-secret plan of a military “surge” to rescue Iraq from all its other disastrous surgesÂin civilian deaths, pervasive violence, and unemployment. FPIF analyst Dan Smith, in Bush to Iraq: More War, argues instead that “Congress needs to act as a surge suppressor and carefully look at what Bush as commander-in-chief threatens to decree.” And, indeed, the Democrats have decided to shift from the largely domestic focus of their 100-hours plan, having realized that 45% of the American electorate wants action on the Iraq War versus only 7% who wants Congress to focus on the U.S. economy or health care reform.
The United States, fearing a new Taliban had come to power in Somalia, recently did what many expected it would do: invade Somalia. Not directly though. In the final weeks of 2006, Ethiopian forces that were trained, financed, and outfitted by the United States pounded Somalia’s capital and port cities with air attacks, routing the poorly equipped militias of the Islamic leadership.