Roundup: Media's Take

Kishore Mahbubani: America's Conflicting Destinies

[Kishore Mahbubani is dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and the author of “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.”] President Barack Obama’s departure for his first trip to Asia as president was delayed by a day to allow him to attend the memorial service for victims of the Fort Hood massacre. The delay symbolized well the tension between America’s two destinies. The United Sta

Moshe Dann: Palestinians taking their cues from Israeli leaders, American president

[The author, a former assistant professor of History (CUNY) is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem] Declarations of virtual Palestinian statehood by asking the UN and international community for diplomatic recognition are a blunt way of avoiding the requirements for statehood. According to the Montevideo Convention this includes: "(a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other state … The prim

Robert Naiman: Our Corrupt Occupation of Afghanistan

[Robert Naiman is senior policy analyst at Just Foreign Policy.] Is it just me, or is the pontification of Western leaders about corruption in Afghanistan growing rather tiresome? There is something very Captain Renault about it. We're shocked, shocked that the Afghans have sullied our morally immaculate occupation of their country with their dirty corruption. How ungrateful can they be? But perhaps we should consider the possibility that our occupation of

Ray McGovern: Afghan Lessons From the Iraq War

[Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst at the CIA for 27 years, and is on the Steering Group of VIPS. ] You don’t have to go back 40 years to the Vietnam War to feel the sting of déjà vu. Returning to the Iraq War just three years ago will suffice. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the administration’s dilemma on Afghanistan in a single question: “How do we

Moshe Elad: US accepts Arab terminology in respect to Jerusalem neighborhoods

US Special Envoy Mitchell’s demand that the Israeli government refrain from building in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood is merely the prelude to a process meant to erode the legitimate status of Israel’s Jerusalem neighborhoods. These neighborhoods (including Gilo, Ramot Alon, French Hill, and Neve Yaakov) were built after the Six-Day War within the jurisdiction of Israel’s capital; now, they are finally being granted American recognition of their traditional Palestinian name: Settlem

Rami G. Khouri: The world tires of the Palestinian cause

[[Rami G. Khouri is director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star. This article was distributed by Agence Global.]] The atmosphere in Cairo this week tells us much about the contemporary Arab world’s view of the Pa­lestine cause in relation to domestic issues in every Arab country. Ordinary Arabs and their governments alike seem fed up with the incompetence of the Palestinian leadership, while remain

Pratap Chatterjee: Anatomy of an Afghan Culture of Corruption

[Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist and senior editor at CorpWatch. He is the author of Halliburton's Army: How A Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War (Nation Books, 2009) and Iraq, Inc. (Seven Stories Press, 2004).] Kabul, Afghanistan -- Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital,

WSJ Editorial: Iran, Its Hostages and the West

Iran's big news yesterday is that the government will formally kill five people who participated in June's pro-democracy rallies. Consider, though, the implications for the West's peace-brokers of the case of Frenchwoman Clotilde Reiss... ... In its 30 years, the Islamic Republic has used assassination squads, fatwas, terrorism and hostage-taking as tools of its war with the West. A nearly unbroken string of outrages connects the taking of the U.S. embassy in 1979 to the death sente

John Vinocur: Why Europe Feels Rejected by Obama

[John Vinocur is a journalist for the Paris-based newspaper The International Herald Tribune.] Why would an American president not come to a celebration marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with it, the triumphant end of the Cold War — one of the high points of the United States’ and Europe’s common 20th-century history? Whatever the exact answer — and it could be that a fatigued Barack Obama didn’t want the physical strain of a trans-Atlantic trip days before a wee

Kristen Breitweiser: Justice American Style

[Kristen Breitweiser, 9/11 widow and activist] Even after witnessing the horrors of 9/11 that included me helplessly watching the murder of my husband on live television, I still believe that we are a civilized nation of laws. And like the Nuremberg trials that brought the murderers of millions to justice, now more than ever, Americans need to trust our own judicial system to fully and openly prosecute the mass murderers of 9/11 while the rest of the world bears witness.

Marcus Buckingham: Women won the gender wars

[Internationally renowned and celebrated, Marcus Buckingham is the go-to consultant in his field, a sought-after speaker, and a New York Times bestselling author.] In its recent special on the State of Women, Time magazine announced that the gender wars were over and declared a tie. "It's no longer a man's world," Time concluded. "Nor is it a woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with bylaws under constant negotiation, and expectations that profits be equally shared.&qu

Johann Hari: Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again

[Johann Hari is a commentator for The Independent] Ever since I started meeting jihadis, I have been struck by one thing – their Britishness. I am from the East End of London, and at some point in the past decade I became used to hearing a hoarse and angry whisper of jihadism on the streets where I live. Bearded young men stand outside the library calling for "The Rule of God" and "Death to Democracy". In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe

Michael Lind: Shouldn't the government pledge allegiance to the people rather than the other way around?

[Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation. ] On Monday, Oct. 5, at an elementary school in Washington County, Ark., Will Phillips, a precocious 10-year-old who had been promoted from third to fifth grade, refused to join his class in standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. His parents have gay friends, and Will claimed that the denial of gay marriage means that the U.S. lacks "liberty and justice for all." After refusing to

William McGurn: Holder's al Qaeda Incentive Plan

[William McGurn is a Vice President at News Corporation who writes speeches for CEO Rupert Murdoch. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush.] When it comes to terrorists, you would think that an al Qaeda operative who targets an American mom sitting in her office or a child on a flight back home is many degrees worse than a Taliban soldier picked up after a firefight with U.S. Army troops. Your instinct would be correct, because at the he

Alan W. Dowd: The Wrong Battlefield (KSM in NY)

[Alan W. Dowd writes on defense and security issues.] It’s one thing to try out a new policy, especially when an existing policy isn’t working. That makes good sense. It’s quite another to dust off an old policy, especially when that policy has already been proven a failure. This is a fair description of what the Obama administration is doing as it prepares to haul Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists into the U.S. judicial system. We’ve tried this before, a

NYT Editorial: Obama's Judicial Nominations

The Obama administration is off to a slow start on judicial nominations, but the Senate, which has delayed in confirming the choices President Obama has made, also bears a good part of the blame. The administration and the Senate leadership should pick up the pace of nominations and confirmations in order to restore some balance to a federal judiciary that was pushed sharply to the right by former President George W. Bush. Appointing federal judges, who have enormous power and serve

HDS Greenway: Why couldn't the Vietnamese act more like Americans? Now we hear the same refrain for Afghanistan

[HDS Greenway leads the Opinion and Analysis section for GlobalPost. He has been a journalist for 50 years and recently retired from the Boston Globe after a distinguished career] When the history of America’s Afghan war is written, a memorable moment will be President Obama’s solitary walk in Arlington Cemetery’s gardens of stone on Veteran’s day — the young, inexperienced commander-in-chief, with a portentous decision to make taking a moment to walk among those who died in what ar

Roger Cohen: A Mideast Truce

[Roger Cohen is a columnist of The New York Times.] I’ve grown so pessimistic about Israel-Palestine that I find myself agreeing with Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman: “Anyone who says that within the next few years an agreement can be reached ending the conflict simply doesn’t understand the situation and spreads delusions.” That’s the lesson of early Obama. The president tried to rekindle peace talks by confronting Israel on settlements, coaxin

David Brooks: China seems to possess the optimism that once defined the U.S.

When European settlers first came to North America, they saw flocks of geese so big that it took them 30 minutes to all take flight and forests that seemed to stretch to infinity. They came to two conclusions: that God’s plans for humanity could be completed here, and that they could get really rich in the process. This moral materialism fomented a certain sort of manic energy. Americans became famous for their energy and workaholism: for moving around, switching jobs, marrying and

Curtis Flood: A Navy Lieutenant's Reflections on Veterans Day, 2009

[Curtis Flood is a U.S. Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade, just back from a year in Iraq. He gave this talk on Veteran's Day to his prep school alma mater, St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island.] Today we are gathered together to celebrate Veteran’s Day, an American tradition for the last 90 years.  During my years at St. George’s, Veteran’s Day was a celebration of past wars and those military veterans who served during them. In those days, there were n