In April, the Democratic-controlled Congress froze $55.2 million in military assistance earmarked for Colombia. At issue were linkages between the Andean nation’s military and a paramilitary group on the State Department’s terrorist list. The administration response has largely been to marshal the troops and espouse the benefits of Plan Colombia, the vehicle that delivers U.S. assistance to Colombia.
Banner of hands for Darfur, from September 9, 2006 rally in Washington, DC. Courtesy of Genocide Intervention Network.
Current U.S. foreign policy is unjust and breeds insecurity for all. In seeking an alternative, we should not revive the failed policies of the past. Instead, we should chart a new relationship between the United States and the world.
This alternative foreign policy framework tells five different stories about our common future and the five principal challenges we face: climate change, global poverty, nuclear weapons, terrorism, and military conflict. We address five different sets of core misconceptions and offer five interconnected prescriptions for change. We then offer a Just Security budget that would cut roughly $213 billion from the president’s current defense budget request and yet make the United States safer and more secure. The concluding chapter puts the challenges facing the United States in a larger historical context and offers an integrated Just Security program.
James Moran (D-VA) has been in the House of Representatives since 1991. In 2002, he was one of 133 House members to vote against authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Most recently, he has proposed holding hearings in July on closing the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that currently holds several hundred detainees. FPIF contributor Michael Shank interviews him on the implications of his position on Guantanamo.
With primary election season in full swing, Democratic Party candidates have begun trying to distinguish themselves from each other and from the Republicans. The Iraq War has been one such dividing issue. Liberal groups like MoveOn.org praised both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for “showing real leadership” because they “stood up and did the right thing” by voting against the recent Iraq/Afghanistan war-funding bill. The main fight in Congress over the bill was whether or not to include a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
In Albania, nearing the end of his six-nation tour of Europe, President George W. Bush hopped out of his limo to have his head rubbed and his cheeks kissed by an adoring crowd in what The New York Times called a “virtual mosh pit” of enthusiasm.
Surely, he was delighted and relieved to be warmly welcomed in the mostly Muslim nation. It was a tough week in Europe: the president endured long meetings, pointed criticisms, huge protests, and an upset stomach that took him out of some of the Group of Eight Summit meetings.
In Iraq, after more than four years, President George W. Bush may be about to get what he has been hoping for: a clear reading on the Iraq situation that is free of U.S. politics.
In April, FPIF published an essay by historian Lawrence Wittner on the future of the U.S. peace movement. His call for a large, national peace organization generated a flurry of responses, which we published collectively in What’s Next for the Peace Movement. Here we publish three final comments from Robin Hahnel, Michael Foley, and Matt Meyer.
The capitulation of the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership to the Bush administration’s request for nearly $100 billion of unconditional supplementary government spending, primarily to support the war in Iraq, has led to outrage throughout the country. In the Senate, 37 of 49 Democrats voted on May 24 to support the measure. In the House, while only 86 of the 231 Democratic House members voted for the supplemental funding, 216 of them voted in favor of an earlier procedural vote designed to move the funding bill forward even though it would make the funding bill’s passage inevitable (while giving most of them a chance to claim they voted against it).