The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week’s notable op-eds. Will the United States bomb Iran? Is that exactly what Iranian hard-liners want? Those questions and others, including ones on Sri Lanka’s civil war, Pakistan’s Taliban collusion and global warming, made their way into opinionated print the week of Feb. 4 through Feb. 9. Noting the Bush administration is “beating the drums of war with Iran,” Lenoard Weiss and Larry Diamond wrote in the Feb. 5 Los Angeles [...]
Here inside the beltway, the launch of the political newspaper and Web site The Politico has gotten a lot of attention. As we spend all our time following international politics, rather than the domestic political scene, we’re not really in a position to comment on the quality of the Politico’s core product. However, leafing through the latest print copy of the new tabloid-format paper, garnered for free from the Politico dispenser that recently joined the long line of newspaper boxes in front of our local Starbucks, one Politico feature did catch our eye. It’s a column called Suite Talk, which [...]
Photo: Participants in the U.S. military’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa “Host Nation Conference” at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, Jan. 9. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Pentagon plans to establish an Africa Command, or AFRICOM. WPR contributor Richard Weitz wrote about the need for such a command back in November. Here’s what Weitz said: The escalating war in Somalia, coming on top of the conflicts in Sudan and the Congo, underscores the need for the United States to develop an improved means for managing African security issues. For many [...]
