Terrorism Archives - Page 42 of 137 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Barack Obama on Diplomacy

by Emily Schwartz Greco, Stephen Zunes | Jan 17, 2008

The rise in popular support for Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy reflects the growing skepticism among Democratic and independent voters regarding both the Bush administration’s and the Democratic Party establishment’s foreign policies. Indeed, on issues ranging from Iraq to nuclear weapons to global warming to foreign aid, as well as his general preference for diplomacy over militarism, Obama has also staked out positions considerably more progressive than the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Nukes and the Elections

by Frida Berrigan, John Feffer | Jan 4, 2008

In this extra-long (and far from finished) campaign season, we have heard a lot from the candidates. We have seen them in many debates and public forums — engaging with one another and with the animated snowmen and gun-toting hunters that populated the YouTube debates.
But all this exposure has not resulted in an abundance of substance. Hot issues like immigration and gun control provide juicy sound bites and smoking zingers on both sides but fail to inform voters on the candidates’ stances on looming and critical foreign policy issues. Perhaps even more importantly, this flavor-of-the-week approach fails to engage or activate the millions of Americans alienated from electoral politics.

Islam and Pakistan

by John Feffer, Najum Mushtaq | Dec 21, 2007

From its Cold War role as a bulwark against the irreligious, evil empire of the Soviet Union to its status as a major non-NATO ally in the post-9/11 war on terrorism, Pakistan has flaunted its various religious credentials. Vacillating from jihad to enlightened moderation, Pakistan’s ruling civil and military elite has unscrupulously employed religion as a means to gain domestic and international legitimacy.

How Not to Handle Nuclear Security

by Zia Mian, Emily Schwartz Greco | Dec 14, 2007

The United States recently admitted that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, it has been helping Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons and the materials used to make them. Pakistan has welcomed this assistance. A former Pakistani general who was involved in the nuclear weapons complex has said that “We want to learn from the West’s best practices.”

Revisiting Intelligence Reform

by John Feffer, Tim Shorrock | Dec 6, 2007

As the Bush administration winds up nearly seven years of intelligence fiascos, a quiet revolution has been going on at the Pentagon, which controls more than 80% of America’s $60 billion intelligence budget. Since taking over from Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in winter 2006, Robert Gates has greatly scaled down the Pentagon’s footprint on national security policy and intelligence. Working closely with Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Michael McConnell, he has slowly begun to assert civilian control over the key spy agencies funded by the defense budget and halted the Pentagon’s efforts to create its own intelligence apparatus independent of the CIA. The recent intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in contradicting early administration assertions, is perhaps the most significant sign of this newly won independence.
Those are significant actions. Under Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had become the dominant force in U.S. intelligence, with vast new powers in human intelligence and counterterrorism, both at home and abroad. By 2005, it was deploying secret commando units on clandestine missions in countries as far afield as the Philippines and Ecuador, sometimes without consulting with the local U.S. ambassadors and CIA station chiefs. At some point, President George W. Bush and his national security team apparently decided that the genie had to be put in the bottle, and sent Gates – a former CIA director who had worked closely with Vice President Dick Cheney during the first Bush administration – to put the kibosh on Rumsfeld’s private intelligence army.

Plan Mexico

by Laura Carlsen, John Feffer | Oct 29, 2007

After months of talks, President George W. Bush finally announced the “security cooperation” plan for Mexico. On October 22, he sent a request for $500 million in supplemental aid for 2008 as part of a $1.4 billion dollar multi-year package.

A Foreign Policy for Foreign Religions

by Patricia M. Y. Chang, John Feffer | Oct 11, 2007

Nine years ago Congress, under President Clinton, unanimously passed the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The Act authorized the formation of a bi-partisan Commission on International Religious Freedom to monitor the status of religious freedom around the world and identify countries that are inadequately protecting religious freedom within their borders. The legislation’s unanimous approval in both the Senate and the House reflected characteristics of the political situation of the late 1990s and of the Act itself.

A Welcome Page in the Newspaper

by Erik Leaver, Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.) | Sep 17, 2007

Most readers of the September 7, 2007 Washington Post who stayed with the news (i.e., non-sports, non-fashion, non-entertainment) sections of the paper probably went to the story headlined: "Petraeus Open to Pullout of 1 Brigade." Nothing remarkable about that; given that General David Patraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, were due to testify before Congress starting Monday September 10.

On Political Poetry

by John Feffer, Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi | Aug 17, 2007

The poet Samuel Hazo, at his installation as the first state poet of Pennsylvania in 1993, declared that “we should learn to listen to our poets here and now — and not wait for history to confer on them their already earned validity.” Poets like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Lorca, Yeats, Whitman, and Frost, he continued, would be remembered long after their contemporaries – the military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and celebrities – have been forgotten. “One reason for the unforgettability of poets is that they somehow speak for more than themselves,” Hazo continued. “Day by day we are so used to hearing voices that speak for individual constituencies or institutions that we tend to be deaf to those voices that speak from and to our common humanity.”

Counting Troops in Iraq

by John Feffer, Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.) | Jul 17, 2007

This past week, both the House and the Senate debated and voted on legislation affecting the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq. In the Senate, the issue was the length of time soldiers and Marines would have at home between deployments to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the House, Ike Skelton (D-MO) introduced a bill requiring the secretary of defense to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within 120 days of the legislation becoming law and complete the drawdown to a “limited presence” – a heretofore unknown parameter – by April 1, 2008.