On Thursday, January 20, I listened to George W. Bush take the oath of office as President. He made many promises. One promise he did not make is to end the torture his administration has not only tolerated but facilitated. It left me wondering what his promises to uphold the law and fight for freedom and liberty really mean.
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.
When historians look back over the past 25 years, one of the great crimes they will identify is the Third World debt crisis.
en Espanol: El Legado de Iglesias y el Futuro del BID
Twenty-five years ago, on March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot down while celebrating Mass in San Salvador. In the years before his murder, Romero had emerged as an outspoken defender of the Salvadoran poor, making him one of the best-known embodiments of the liberation theology that was infusing new life into the Catholic Church in Latin America in the ’70s and ’80s.
Jeb Bush wanted a win in Miami, and he got one, so the White House says. Any honest observer, however, knows that the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) failed before they ever began.
From Chile to Cuba to Mexico, Latin American countries united behind Washington in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The Organization of American States (OAS) issued a declaration stating, “Individually and collectively, we will deny terrorist groups the capacity to operate in this Hemisphere. This American family stands united.” Yet despite this overwhelming show of solidarity, the Bush administration has largely turned its back on its Latin American allies. Most disturbingly, it is unilaterally waging war against its own Latin American “axis of evil”–the Colombian “narcoterrorists,” Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez–with little if no effort to take into account the concerns of Latin American leaders, reach regional accords, or engage the OAS.
The 19-member Rio Group will meet in the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco, high in the Peruvian Andes, on May 23-24. Innovative, new solutions to familiar problems, like the promotion of democracy and the war on drugs, are on the agenda of this Latin American alliance.
The potential benefits of trade can be an important engine for economic growth and poverty reduction. However, only when trade is built upon solid institutional foundations are these benefits typically realized. There is a widely shared frustration by many working in Central America that these conditions may be lacking. The region remains critically vulnerable to recurrent economic and ecological shocks. After a decade of post-civil war and economic reforms that have already lowered trade barriers, eliminated state subsidies for many producers in the region, and increased trade, broad-based development in the region remains elusive. Poverty has not been reduced, and income inequality has increased–as have unemployment and underemployment–and the World Food Program reports that 8.6 million Central Americans (1 in 4) continue to suffer from hunger or food insecurity. Meanwhile, social violence has reached epidemic proportions, now approximating the worst political violence of the civil wars years in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In desperation, more Central Americans set out every day to attempt the dangerous entry into the United States.
This month marks the fortieth anniversary of Cuban Missile Crisis. The conjunction of this anniversary with the Iraq crisis has led various policymakers and pundits, including President Bush, to make comparisons between the two incidents. Mr. Bush would have us believe that the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis support a preemptive war against Iraq. Mr. Bush is wrong, and his misreading of the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrates what is wrong with the current administration’s policy toward Iraq.