While the Bush administration still aspires to ward off defeat, it is becoming increasingly clear that its failure to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement represents the latest in a series of setbacks for its sputtering trade agenda. For working people throughout the Americas, this is cause to celebrate.
Thanks in large part to persistent campaigners in the global South and their international supporters, a plan granting 100 percent multilateral debt relief for 18 impoverished countries has been approved by leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized countries in advance of their July meeting in Scotland.
Somenthing extraordinary is happening in Korea, and Washington appears to be paying no attention. The two Koreas have plunged headlong in to unknown territory: reunification. For 50 years, aside from the occasional defector, it was impossible to cross the demilitarized zone dividing the Korean Peninsula.
Ironically, as the Pentagon proposed to close 33 military bases in the United States, including four in Georgia, Congress passed a spending bill for the Iraq war that included half a billion dollars for permanent military bases and another half billion for building the world’s largest embassy on Iraq’s soil.
Congress has approved a $284 billion bonanza for highway construction and transportation projects through 2009. This record spending level will no doubt prove immensely popular with America’s motorists, mall developers, and construction firms.
The reluctance of several Republican senators to embrace John Bolton’s nomination as U.N. ambassador marks a serious defeat for the Bush administration. This development may signal a historically significant shift away from the triumphal bluster that has recently imprisoned America.
A year ago, President Bush boldly said: “Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America.” Yet Congress is posed to finalize the president’s $82 billion request for the Iraq war that includes a half-billion dollars for permanent military bases and another half-billion for building the world’s largest embassy. Despite the president’s assurances, the United States is preparing for a lengthy stay in Iraq.
The federal budget “process”-that sausage making you don’t want to see up close-is well underway. Providing for the common defense is job one, both constitutionally speaking and in the security-conscious minds of post-9/11 Americans. So when in the process did the broad discussion take place on how best to do that job? The answer is, it didn’t.
Like other Americans, Floridians might want to ask their elected representatives to explain where we’re headed in Iraq. The Iraq war has been poorly planned and badly executed from the start. And the costs and consequences have been devastating.
In her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted that the Western Hemisphere is “extremely critical” to the United States.