Roundup: Media's Take

Benedict Rogers: Benchmarking Burma

[Mr. Rogers is advocacy officer for South Asia at Christian Solidarity Worldwide and the author of "A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma's Karen People" (Monarch Books, 2004).] The United Nations special envoy on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, is expected to arrive in Rangoon in the next few days for another round of talks with the country's military regime. If his visit is to have any meaning, he must move beyond the U.N.'s traditional diplomatic niceties and make

Garry Kasparov: How the West Fueled Putin's Sense of Impunity

Russia's invasion of Georgia reminded me of a conversation I had three years ago in Moscow with a high-ranking European Union official. Russia was much freer then, but President Vladimir Putin's onslaught against democratic rights was already underway. "What would it take," I asked, "for Europe to stop treating Putin like a democrat? If all opposition parties are banned? Or what if they started shooting people in the street?" The official shrugged and replied tha

Peggy Noonan: Obama and McCain Aren't "from" Anywhere—Not the Way Jefferson and LBJ Were.

The end of placeness is one of the features of the campaign. I do not like it. Pretend you are not a political sophisticate and regular watcher of the presidential race as it unfolds on all media platforms. Pretend, that is, that you are normal. OK, quick, close your eyes. Where is Barack Obama from? He's from Young. He's from the town of Smooth in the state of Well Educated. He's from TV. John McCain? He's from Military. He's from Vietnam Town

Matthew Omolesky: History Returns to the Caucasus

[Matthew Omolesky recently finished a researcher-in-residency at the Istitut za Civilizacijo in Kulturo in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is presently completing his first book, Striving Towards the Past, a study of the uses of history in contemporary Central and Eastern European politics.] In his 1953 collection of political essays, The Captive Mind, the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz described a visit by a Soviet journalist to Silesia in the aftermath of World War II. Mistaken for an Englis

John Barry: Appeasing Russia ... The historical reasons why the West should intervene in Georgia

[John Barry joined Newsweek's Washington bureau as national security correspondent in July 1985.] Is that "appeasement" we see sidling shyly out of the closet of history? Are we doomed to recall the infamous remark by a Western leader that it was "fantastic" to think Europe should involve itself in "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing"? As the United States and the Europeans feverishly debate how to respond to Russia's

Bartle Breese Bull: The Wrong Force for the ‘Right War’

BARACK OBAMA and John McCain have plenty of disagreements, but one thing they are united on is promising a troop surge in Afghanistan. Senator McCain wants to move troops to Afghanistan from the Middle East, conditional on continued progress in Iraq. Senator Obama goes much further, arguing that we should have sent last year’s surge to Afghanistan, not Iraq, that Afghanistan is the “central front” and that we must rebuild Afghanistan from the bottom up along the lines of the Marshall Plan.

Nicholas D. Kristoff: After the Games, Tibet

China’s cup runneth over. The Olympics are a milestone in Chinese history, a celebration of the Middle Kingdom’s return to international greatness after nearly two centuries of torpor and humiliation. Yet the Olympics could end up being the second-most-significant event in China this year. The Chinese leadership and the Tibetan government in exile have delicately discussed a possible visit by the Dalai Lama to China, nominally to commemorate the victims of the earthquak

Melik Kaylan: Failing to Stand Up to Russia Would Jeopardize Every International Gain Since the Cold War

Last year, President Mikheil Saakashvili invited me along on a helicopter flight to see Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital, from the air. We viewed it at some distance to avoid Russian antiaircraft missiles manned by Russian personnel. He pointed out a lone hilltop sprinkled with houses some 10 miles inside Georgian territory -- scarcely even a town. Much of the population, namely the Georgians, had long ago been purged by Russian-backed militias, leaving behind a rump population o

WSJ Editorial: Bush and Georgis, What Would Truman Do?

On June 13, 1948, the day after the Soviet Union took the first step in its blockade of Berlin, U.S. General Lucius Clay sent a cable to Washington making the case for standing up to the Soviets. "We are convinced that our remaining in Berlin is essential to our prestige in Germany and in Europe. Whether for good or bad, it has become a symbol of the American intent." The Berlin Airlift began 13 days later. Sixty years on, U.S. credibility is again on the line as the Bush

Jeffrey Lord: The Democrats' Missing History

[Mr. Lord is creator, co-founder and CEO of , a conservative video site. A Reagan White House political director and author, he writes from Pennsylvania.] As Democrats prepare to nominate Sen. Barack Obama to be the first black president, the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Howard Dean, have whitewashed the party's horrific and lengthy record of racism. The omission is in the section of the DNC Web site that describes the party's history. The missing history raises t

Ellen Barry: Calling Shots, Putin Salves Old Wounds

Vladimir Putin, who came to office brooding over the wounds of a humiliated Russia, this week offered proof of its resurgence. So far, the West has been unable to check his thrust into Georgia. He is making decisions that could redraw the map of the Caucasus in Russia's favor — or destroy relationships with Western powers that Russia once sought as strategic partners. If there were any doubts, the last week has confirmed that Putin, who became prime minister this spring after eight years as p

Steve Kornacki: What History Really Says About an '08 Landslide

I was trying to figure out where to lead things off today, and then I saw this Politico piece by David Paul Kuhn, which is already getting heavy play across the web. The main idea: Barack Obama will not win a landslide because history says that landslides are evident in polling by the end of the summer. Writes Kuhn: In five of the six post-war landslides (defined as a victory of 10 percentage points or more) the eventual winner was ahead by at least 10 percentage points in the polls

Marc Lacey: Cubans Used to Living in U.S. Shadow, but They Don't Like It

As a major terrorism trial was getting under way at the U.S. naval base not far from here last month, Guantánamo's municipal court, located in Cuban-controlled territory, had a contested divorce on its docket. It was the only case that afternoon. The aging Guantánamo courtroom, with its leaky roof and well-worn wooden benches, is a far cry from the fancy new judicial center that the Defense Department installed at its base across the fence. There are typewriters on the

Toby Harnden: Hillary Clinton's failed strategy inspired by Margaret Thatcher

[Toby Harnden is the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC.] "We are more Thatcher than anyone else - top of the university, a high achiever throughout life, a lawyer who could absorb and analyse problems," Mark Penn wrote to the former First Lady in a "launch strategy" document in December 2006. The Democratic candidate, he argued, had to show the kind of decisiveness the former British prime minister had shown when she was first elec

Myra MacDonald: Kashmir ... is this a re-run of 1989?

[Myra MacDonald posts at Reuters.] After months of relative peace which turned Kashmir into a near-forgotten conflict, the region has exploded again with some of the biggest protests since a separatist revolt erupted in 1989. What started as a dispute over land allocated to Hindu pilgrims visiting a shrine in Kashmir has snowballed into a full-scale anti-India protest, uniting Kashmiri separatists and reviving calls for independence. The dispute has also pitted Muslim

Jill Drew: In Tiananmen of Games, No Trace of '89 Massacre

The Tiananmen Square that Liu Xiaobo knows is not the same one Olympics fans are seeing on television. This Story In Tiananmen of Games, No Trace of '89 Massacre Three Killed in Renewed Violence in Western China Postmark Beijing With a jubilant, 55-foot-high "Beijing 2008" sign revolving at its center and 1 million newly placed potted flowers, the square this week and next is the scene of graceful dance and sports performances most mornings, a

Nicholas Riccardi and Maeve Reston: Between a Maverick and a Hard Place

John McCain and the adjective "maverick" were once seemingly inseparable, and his quixotic attempt in 2000 to win the Republican presidential nomination helped weld that link. But now that the Arizona senator is about to become his party's nominee, he finds himself in an uncomfortable spot: having to defend his reputation as a political independent. McCain's campaign unveiled an ad last week that calls him "the original maverick," and he has

William Rees-Mogg: Georgia: Another Sarajevo Moment Avoided

Who has heard of Freiherr von Musulin, apart from a few historians of Austria-Hungary and students of the diplomatic causes of the First World War? In 1925, he published his memoirs, which were reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement by the eminent historian, Lewis Namier. Musulin called his memoirs Das Haus am Ballplatz, which was the name of the Austrian Foreign Office. Baron Musulin is not an outstanding figure in the history of European diplomacy; he was infinitely far from be

Paul Krugman: The History of the Pursuit of Universal Health Care in America Is One of Missed Chances

The draft Democratic Party platform that was sent out last week puts health care reform front and center. “If one thing came through in the platform hearings,” says the document, “it was that Democrats are united around a commitment to provide every American access to affordable, comprehensive health care.” Can Democrats deliver on that commitment? In principle, it should be easy. In practice, supporters of health care reform, myself included, will be hanging on by their fingernail

Eduardo Porter: Contemplations on Being of Mixed Race in America

As a multiracial and somewhat foreign person I have on occasion found myself on the receiving end of the same kind of unease that many Americans seem to have about Barack Obama’s ambiguous identity. He is either not black enough or too black. His name sounds odd. He had a weird childhood with kids who didn’t speak English. Mr. Obama is not just politically atypical. He is unusual demographically. A recent paper by economists from Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago said tha