It is now time for the United States to pursue the one policy option that has been missing from the national discussion of Iraq: the negotiation of a peace settlement with the insurgents that would involve the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in return for the surrender of the insurgents and the reintegration of the Sunni region into the post-Saddam political system.
March 20th marks 731 days–two years–since the first munitions of the second U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein’s regime exploded in Baghdad.
He wasn’t in the room when President George W. Bush announced it on Wednesday, but somewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney must have been smiling–well, smirking–when the commander-in-chief’s voice coupled the improbable name Paul Wolfowitz with the title “President of the World Bank.”
Incredibly, just as President Bush begins his second term with a real need to restore U.S. international standing, he chose John D. Negroponte to head the newly restructured intelligence system. Negroponte, based on the record of his 40-plus years in the State Department, has no credibility at all.
Ongoing scandals of prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are fuelled by the Bush administrationÂs criticism of the Geneva Conventions. The administration has perpetuated the myth, which domestic public opinion and the popular media have accepted, that the Conventions do not entirely protect suspected terrorists or other non-state combatants captured abroad. This myth allowed the administration to invent a new category of detainees outside the purview of international lawÂÂunlawful combatantsÂÂessentially legitimating subsequent mistreatment and abuse. This self-serving strategy has even distracted critics of U.S. policy, who have fallen for the trap by becoming embroiled in a defensive debate over who is entitled to Âprisoner of war status, when they should have been asserting aggressively the basic rights owed to all human beings (including suspected terrorists) under international law. Capitalizing on the ambiguity and historical specificity of the Geneva Conventions, the Bush administration has defined the terms of a pivotal debate, while opening the door to human rights abuses and disarming potential opponents.
For the past two years, the destruction of Darfur has played out before the eyes of the world, and the member countries of the United Nations have remained largely paralyzed. Recent UN votes on sanctions and on a referral to the International Criminal Court are important steps forward on Darfur, but they are not enough. Unless there is a rapid and robust international intervention in Darfur, up to a million people could be dead by the end of this year. As the genocide continues, the need for immediate humanitarian intervention can no longer be disputed.
Had Marla Ruzicka not died, she would be busy visiting survivors of the fifty people found dead in the Tigris River. That, after all, was what she did–it was her “windows.”
Thirty years after the last chopper left the Saigon embassy, Americans still donÂt know why this country fought in Vietnam.
In 1975, polls showed that only 20% of the U.S. population age 18-29 trusted the Pentagon. That number tended upward through the next quarter century until, by 2000, the military stood head and shoulders above every other national institution in the public’s trust. A March 2003 poll of 1,200 college undergraduates by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that 75% said the military would “do the right thing” most or all of the time. Gallup reported a similar finding a year later.
At first glance, the growing tension between China and Japan seems almost inexplicable. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in China over events that took place more than half a century ago? A heated exchange filled with mutual threats over an offshore petroleum field that western oil companies think is not worth exploiting? Has a Shinto shrine and slanted textbooks really driven the two great Asian powers to the edge of a Cold War or worse?