Boots from the American Friends Service Committee project Eyes Wide Open, a traveling exhibition on the costs of the Iraq War. Photo by Jochen Strack.
Annotate This: Escalation in Iraq
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Iraq
Bush Skimps on Communal Rights and Responsibilities
President George W. Bush will address the nation Wednesday night on his new strategy for his same-old goal of “victory” in Iraq. Most of the plan has been leaked — in this case probably the expression ”handed to” would be more accurate — to the press with the approval and encouragement of the White House. The most carefully guarded secret, as of this writing, seems to be the venue: The Oval Office; the White House Map Room; or Vice-President Cheney’s last undisclosed location.
Nuking Iran
The headlines this week will be all Iraq, all the time. President Bush will unveil his not-so-secret plan of a military “surge” to rescue Iraq from all its other disastrous surgesÂin civilian deaths, pervasive violence, and unemployment. FPIF analyst Dan Smith, in Bush to Iraq: More War, argues instead that “Congress needs to act as a surge suppressor and carefully look at what Bush as commander-in-chief threatens to decree.” And, indeed, the Democrats have decided to shift from the largely domestic focus of their 100-hours plan, having realized that 45% of the American electorate wants action on the Iraq War versus only 7% who wants Congress to focus on the U.S. economy or health care reform.
Bush to Iraq: More War
In his popular weekly radio and subsequent television quiz show, ÂYou Bet Your Life, Groucho Marx featured the “magic word.” If a contestant happened to utter it during the course of the show, he or she would instantly receive $25 or $50 or some other, inflation-adjusted amount.
Iron Fist Economics
Capitalism and democracy go together like  like what? Peanut butter and jelly? Or a fish and a bicycle?
The Making of Another Iraq
A new front in the Âglobal war on terror has emerged with its center in war-torn Somalia. The target of the new front, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), both brought back normalcy to seemingly untamable southern Somalia and anxiously legislated morality to the point of social suffocation. According to the U.S. State Department, its greatest sin was its purported link to al-Qaida.
All Talk
Before the recent nuclear test and the famine of the mid-1990s, North Korea engaged in a form of public diplomacy. It promoted juche, its home-grown philosophy of self-reliance. Juche societies sprang up in dozens of countries around the world, especially in the global south where the rhetoric of self-reliance appealed to post-colonial sensibilities. At the Tower of the Juche Ideal in Pyongyang, plaques donated from these juche societies cover the base of the monument.
Response to Public Diplomacy Dialogue
Public diplomacy includes the government-sponsored cultural, educational, and informational programs, citizen exchanges, and broadcasts used to promote the national interest of a country through understanding, informing, and influencing foreign audiences. My view of the field, similar to what we are doing at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, is to broaden that definition. While I recognize that Âtrack two diplomacy will never replace official diplomatic efforts, we’ve barely tapped the possibilities of what the United States might accomplish in gaining credibility if we shifted focus away from foreign policy lectures to international understanding.
The U.S. Credibility Deficit
As Nancy Snow compellingly argues, more listening and civic diplomacy may be viable, preliminary steps to salvaging the U.S. international reputation from charges of arrogance and impatience. However, while Âmore ears than mouth may counter the U.S. image problem, U.S. public diplomacy has a much more serious problem. It has a credibility deficit of global proportions. To tackle that credibility deficit, U.S. public diplomacy needs a comprehensive, innovative, and strategic approach that entails developing more creative relationship-building strategies, matching policy decisions with viable communication options, and coordinating traditional and public diplomacy initiatives.
Anti-Americanism and the Rise of Civic Diplomacy
Anti-Americanism has emerged as a term that, like Âfascism and Âcommunism in George Orwell’s lexicon, has little meaning beyond Âsomething not desirable. However it is defined, anti-Americanism has clearly mushroomed over the last six years, as charted in a number of polls. This phenomenon is, everyone agrees, intimately tied to the exercise of U.S. power and perceptions around the world of U.S. actions.