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

New Cheney Foreign Policy Adviser Sets Sights on Syria

by | Oct 22, 2003

Vice President Dick Cheney’s office continues to grow as a homebase for prominent neoconservative foreign policy strategists. Earlier this year Aaron Friedberg, a prominent neoconservative China hawk joined Cheney’s staff, (China Hawk Settles in Neocons’ Nest, http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305friedberg.html). The latest addition is David Wurmser, a neoconservative strategist who has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to “roll back” the Ba’ath-led government in Syria, who joins Cheney’s staff as an adviser on the Middle East. Wurmser, who had been working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, joined Cheney’s staff under its powerful national security director, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in mid-September, according to Cheney’s office.

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A Fig Leaf to Cover Occupation

by | Oct 16, 2003

The U.S.-driven UN resolution passed by the Security Council provides only an internationalist fig-leaf for Washington’s occupation; the occupation remains illegal and in violation of the UN Charter. The new resolution does nothing to change the fundamental problems of the U.S. occupation of Iraq–its illegitimacy, its unilateralism, and its responsibility for so much destruction in Iraq and for the on-going crisis of violence in the country.

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Baghdad’s Future on Table in Madrid

by | Oct 15, 2003

With Iraqi oil proving to be insufficient to finance the occupation of post-war Iraq and with U.S. taxpayers recoiling at covering the shortfall, the result of a donors’ conference in Madrid will decide whether the United States can stay on in Iraq. The donors’ decision, in turn, depends on whether the occupation turns from a unilateral to a multilateral form of corporate invasion.

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Bush Administration Foreign Policy Team in Disarray

by | Sep 24, 2003

As the Washington, DC area recovers from effects of Hurricane Isabel, President George W. Bush keeps trying to divert the potential “perfect storm” forming from the combination of the constant stream of bad news coming out of the Middle East and growing domestic discontent over the war and occupation in Iraq.

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To Occupy or UNoccupy?

by | Sep 22, 2003

American public reaction to the most recent bill of $87 billion for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rising human costs of occupation in Iraq, have concentrated the minds of the administration in a way that not even the reality on the ground could. It is a measure of how stark the impinging reality is that Washington even considered returning to the UN for yet another new and stronger resolution.

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Control of Oil Revenues

by , , | Sep 17, 2003

While widespread ransacking was happening in Iraq after Baghdad fell, the U.S. moved swiftly to secure the country’s oil facilities. But in the months since the official end of the war, general looting and sabotage have impeded even the oil industry, frustrating efforts to quickly return oil production to prewar levels.

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