It is doubtful that the Bush administration will be very successful advancing America’s image in the Islamic world as long as its representatives have such trouble telling the truth.
IndiaÂs vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) against Iran in September came as no surprise to anyone who has followed closely the recent course of IndiaÂs foreign policy. It is a safe guess that support for U.S. actions on Iran was one of the conditions of IndiaÂs nuclear deal with the United States, which was given the final seal of approval by President Bush during the July 2005 visit of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington.
This is a tale about a vote, a strike, and a sleight of hand.
One of the most tragically irresponsible decisions of the Bush administration in the critical hours following Hurricane Katrina was its refusal to accept offers by the government of Cuba to immediately dispatch more than 1500 medical doctors with 37 tons of medical supplies to the devastated areas along the Gulf coast.
The massive earthquake of October 8, 2005 in South Asia has assumed truly horrific proportions, killing upwards of 40,000 people, leaving 50,000 injured, and affecting more than four million people.
In the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 17, 1862, a division of Confederate soldiers moved into place just south of a cornfield near where the Hagerstown Pike runs past a white, clapboard church on its way to the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Northeast of the Confederates, Union Major General Joseph Mansfield was getting his XII Corps into line facing a small forest. The lesson of what happened within the shadows cast by those trees–known in thousands of military histories as simply “the East Wood”–is something the Bush Administration is letting the nation re-discover these days.
Random thought: Columbus Day is here again.
To understand just how tenuous the U.S. position in Iraq is at the moment, we have only to look at the way Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, in the solidly Shiite South slipped out of the control of occupation forces last month.
President Bush’s inclusion of North Korea in an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq is only the latest indication of Washington’s new hard-line approach to Pyongyang. Since taking office, the Bush team has deliberately distanced itself from the Clinton administration’s policy of engaging the former “state of concern.” Even North Korea’s condemnation of the events of September 11 and its continued repudiation of terrorism have done little to repair the frayed ties. Relations between the U.S. and North Korea (DPRK) are deteriorating into a slow-motion catastrophe with unpredictable consequences for the region and the world. Until recently an oasis of increasing cooperation in a conflict-prone world, the Korean Peninsula has again become a dangerous place.
The meeting between the UN, the Coalition, and the Iraqi Governing Council on 19 January suggests that the harsh realities of an election year in the U.S. may be making elections more feasible in Iraq. It is also very likely going to speed up the return of the UN international staff there.