Having already sacrificed its international and domestic political effectiveness to prolong the ill-fated war in Iraq, the White House now stands poised to throw more money at the problem. The ethical and strategic costs of the war in Iraq have always been too great to bear, but the ever-increasing financial costs imperil future American economic solvency.
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan’s Pakitka Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.
The last few days have brought a flurry of tense words between the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. At a press conference earlier this week, Bush lamented the ongoing violence, strife, and sectarianism and then pointed the finger quite directly at Mr. Maliki suggesting that the real question in all this mess is "will the Iraqi government respond to the demands of the people?" U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was even harsher; phrases like "extremely disappointed" and "our support is not a blank check" tumbled from his mouth with a dire tone not heard from the administration before. Mr. Maliki registered his offense at the words (if politely, given his precarious position), noting he found them "discourteous."
The poet Samuel Hazo, at his installation as the first state poet of Pennsylvania in 1993, declared that “we should learn to listen to our poets here and now — and not wait for history to confer on them their already earned validity.” Poets like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Lorca, Yeats, Whitman, and Frost, he continued, would be remembered long after their contemporaries – the military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and celebrities – have been forgotten. “One reason for the unforgettability of poets is that they somehow speak for more than themselves,” Hazo continued. “Day by day we are so used to hearing voices that speak for individual constituencies or institutions that we tend to be deaf to those voices that speak from and to our common humanity.”
After finally receiving $24 million in frozen assets, North Korea shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in July. The optimists cautiously celebrated the move as the first step toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the eventual establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang. The pessimists drolly pointed out that we’re back to where we were in 2002, except that now North Korea has a whole lot more nuclear material and possibly a bomb to boot.
Foreign policy and bridges are not typically associated with one another, except perhaps in the metaphorical sense, as with President Clinton’s “building a bridge to the twenty-first century” campaign slogan. The recent tragedy in Minneapolis, however, in which the collapse of an interstate highway bridge across the Mississippi River left at least 5 people dead […]
The “headline-grabber” read: “U.S. Plans New Arms Sales to Gulf Allies.”
At the end of July, the Bush administration announced that members of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – would receive approximately $20 billon worth of U.S. arms sales. While neither the type amount of weapons, nor the timeframe for their delivery has yet been finalized, the list will likely include air-to-air guided missiles, Joint Direct Attack Munitions, upgrades for fighter aircraft, and new naval vessels – all weapons and systems desired by many countries around the world. Although many are calling this a Saudi arms deal, it remains unclear what each country will be getting. The administration has only said that the details of the sales will vary from country to country.
On July 31, the UN Security Council (UNSC) passed resolution 1769 authorizing the creation of a 20,000-strong peacekeeping force to be deployed to the Darfur region of Sudan. This resolution has been hailed as a historic landmark on the way to fulfilling the “responsibility to protect” established in humanitarian law. Supporters of the resolution believe that this peacekeeping force will end the ongoing genocide, which has left 7,000 civilians dead each month.
With elections in Russia fast approaching, relations with the West are deteriorating drastically. Three recent events highlight this downward trend. The most dramatic has been the failure of the United States and Russia to compromise on anti-missile defense (AMD). Reflecting months-long tensions, the latest round of talks in Maine between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin ended with U.S. insistence on setting up a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.