Sen. Barack Obama’s promise to “immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq” is the centerpiece of his campaign, and his straightforward stance on the war and vision of an endgame is the factor that arguably attracts most of his supporters. “When I am commander-in-chief,” he vows, without a hint of hedging or nuance, “I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war.” The U.S. has witnessed similar moments in presidential politics. In 1952, with the nation bogged down in a bloody and unpopular war on the Korean peninsula, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower campaigned on a [...]
HONG KONG — The sight this weekend of an emotional Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon surveying the devastation wreaked by the Sichuan earthquake should allow the rest of the world to breath a collective sigh of relief. Gone was the Beijing-manufactured nationalistic nonsense that had been gaining in fiery strength with every leg of the Olympic torch relay. Instead, the human face of China was visible, humbled by a tragedy inflicted with a brute force that only mother nature is capable of delivering. It wasn’t always like that. Initial offers of help for quake victims [...]
WASHINGTON D.C. – Financial, FATA and fuel security concerns dominated Congressional foreign policy committee meetings this week – no surprise, given the dismal economic and political news simultaneously coming out of Wall Street and Islamabad. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs began the week with a hearing to determine the full impact of sovereign wealth funds and, according to Chairman Howard L. Berman, “the power that these massive funds may have over U.S. national security interests.” But contrary to Berman’s opening remarks, the experts seemed to agree that SWFs are symptomatic of U.S. economic downturn, if not a changing world [...]
