Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Middle East & North Africa

Hillary Clinton on International Law

by , | Dec 10, 2007

Perhaps the most terrible legacy of the administration of President George W. Bush has been its utter disregard for such basic international legal norms as the ban against aggressive war, respect for the UN Charter, and acceptance of international judicial review. Furthermore, under Bush’s leadership, the United States has cultivated a disrespect for basic human rights, a disdain for reputable international human rights monitoring groups, and a lack of concern for international humanitarian law.

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New Intelligence Estimate Calls for Credible Diplomatic Option to Extend Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Halt

by , | Dec 4, 2007

On December 3, 2007, the long-awaited and much delayed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran was released to the public after more than a year of congressional and public demands for its release. The new assessment, which represents the consensus view of all 16 American intelligence agencies, says that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold. This new assessment contradicts the 2005 NIE, which assessed with "high confidence" that Iran was determined to have a nuclear weapon and was working inexorably towards this end.

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Changing The Subject

Changing The Subject

by , | Dec 3, 2007

In their recent Foreign Policy In Focus piece, “Divestment: Solution or Diversion?” activists Kevin Funk and Steve Fake criticize Sudan divestment as an ineffective diversion from the real bugaboo: Israel. If the “worst offending” companies bankrolling the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur are not based in the United States, Funk and Fake reason, the process of influencing companies and the Sudanese regime will inevitably be “convoluted.”

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The Surgeon Fails in Iraq

by , | Nov 28, 2007

If a surgeon botches an operation, few patients would ask him to stick around and try again. This is especially true if the operation was elective and the surgeon insisted on performing it. Yet this is exactly how the Bush administration is trying to justify the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq. This time, the administration’s latest addition to the reasons to stay in Iraq is that we have a moral obligation to the Iraqis to prevent them from having a blood bath.

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Broken Peace Process

by , | Nov 26, 2007

There’s little reason to hope for a breakthrough at the Middle East peace summit in Annapolis, unless there is a fundamental shift in U.S. policy in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there’s little evidence to suggest such a change is forthcoming.

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Dancing in the Earthquake

by , | Nov 7, 2007

Every religious community in the world is now living through a profound crisis, an eruption of God, a world-wide earthquake brought on by modernity in every life-dimension: political, economic, sexual, ecological, military, cultural, biological. In traditional communities, new religious outlooks are being born. Believers are coming to new understandings of what the world came from and is moving toward, what aspects of the world are holy and what are either ordinary or demonic, what symbols and metaphors and practices are sacred.

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