Roundup: Media's Take

Luis Alberto Moreno: Lessons in liberation from Latin America

[The writer is president of the Inter-American Development Bank.] As Egypt, Tunisia, and other Middle Eastern nations eye the perilous transition to democracy, President Barack Obama is giving voice to a rapidly growing sentiment: they should look to the recent experience of Latin America. During his just-concluded trip to the region Mr Obama saw the extraordinary advances the region has made since the “lost decade” of the 1980s, when military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Pe

Meir Javedanfar: Iran and Saudi Arabia cold war has entered a new era

[Meir Javedanfar is an Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst and co-author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran.] Democracy is arriving in the Middle East, albeit slowly. But what is making progress at a much faster pace is the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Some described the fall of the Mubarak government, preceded by the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, as the Middle East's Berlin Wall moment. The parallels with the cold war in E

Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Tony Blair's Kiss of Death

[Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a British journalist and contributor to the Guardian.] Just before Tony Blair left Downing Street in the summer of 2007, he was interviewed in the Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash, the transatlantic writer on international affairs. At a time when Blair’s stock had fallen low, and when his own party was desperate to see the back of him, he was presented with glowing enthusiasm: “Tony Blair bounds into the garden of 10 Downing Street, looking as if he's ready for

Yulia Latynina: West Goes From Commanders to Cowards

[Yulia Latynina hosts a radio talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.] Let me reveal a secret: The real reason the West is bombing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is to put al-Qaida in power. Take for example Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of Libya’s National Transitional Council. He defends radical Islam. In my opinion, all of the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East is the natural consequence of recent decades in which the world’s open society has weakened militarily and mor

John B. Judis: How the Left Got Libya Wrong

[John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.] I remember sitting by a pool in August 1990 with my friend Fred Siegel discussing George H.W. Bush’s “drawing a line in the sand” after Iraq had invaded Kuwait. “My comrades on the left can’t be against this,” I announced to Fred, but I was dead wrong. Within days, my own publication, In These Times, and others had raised specters of another Vietnam and of

Lawrence F. Kaplan: Obama, Libya, and the Dubious Ethics of Modern Air Wars

[Lawrence F. Kaplan is a contributing editor for The New Republic.] Fittingly enough, the world’s first airstrike came exactly a century ago, on an autumn day in 1911. Eerily enough, it came in Libya, where, one day during the Italian-Turkish war of 1911-1912, Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti flew his paper-thin Taube monoplane over a camp of Turks and Arabs, dropped four hand grenades (having pulled the pins out with his teeth), and generated headlines such as this: “AVIATOR LT. GAVOTTI T

Bret Stephens: We're (Almost) All Neocons Now

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] As Moammar Gadhafi's man in Washington, Ali Aujali used to deliver the standard bromides of the Arab ambassadorial class. But now that he's defected to the opposition, he has a new message for Americans: "You should not feel guilty for helping people to regain their democracy and make their future," he told me Saturday. "Without your help, Gadhafi will destroy every city in Libya.&q

Steve Forbes: Reagan's Legacy and the Current Malaise

[Mr. Forbes, chairman and editor in chief of Forbes Media, is co-author of "How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy" (Crown Business, 2009). He is also a trustee of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.] Today, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Manhattan Institute and The Wall Street Journal will host a morning seminar concerning the economic legacy of Ronald Reagan. The get-together couldn't be

Robert Fisk: Right across the Arab world, freedom is now a prospect

[Robert Fisk is The Independent's award-winning Middle East correspondent.] In the dying days of the Ottoman empire, American diplomats – US consuls in Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo and other cities – NGOs across the region and thousands of American missionaries, pleaded with the State Department and with President Wilson to create one modern Arab state stretching from the shores of Morocco to the borders of Mesopotamia and Persia. This, they believed, would bring a large part of the Mus

George F. Will: Is It America's Duty to Intervene Wherever Regime Change is Needed?

[George F. Will is an op-ed columnist for the WaPo.] The missile strikes that inaugurated America’s latest attempt at regime change were launched 29 days before the 50th anniversary of another such — the Bay of Pigs of April 17, 1961. Then the hubris of American planners was proportional to their ignorance of everything relevant, from Cuban sentiment to Cuba’s geography. The fiasco was a singularly feckless investment of American power. Does practice make perfect? In to

Jacob Heilbrunn: America's Foreign Policy Valkyries: Clinton, Power, and Rice

[Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at the National Interest, is the author of "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons".] Contrary to popular opinion, the Iraq War was not was not simply the product of neoconservatives. It was also championed by liberal hawks. An alliance between the two factions propelled the debate forward. It was forged in Bosnia, welded together by Iraq, then seemed to fall apart as the liberal hawks went AWOL. Now the liberal hawks have retu

Ariel Dorfman: Ghosts of Chile

[Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean-American writer, is a professor at Duke University. He is the author of "Death and the Maiden" and the forthcoming "Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile."] When Barack Obama arrives in Chile on Monday for a 24-hour visit, something crucial will be missing from his agenda. There will be succulent seafood, speeches praising Chile's prosperity, bilateral agreements and meetings with the high and mighty. But there are no pl

Robert Fisk: First Saddam. Then Gaddafi. Now there's a vacancy for the West's favourite crackpot tyrant

[Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent.] So we are going to take "all necessary measures" to protect the civilians of Libya, are we? Pity we didn't think of that 42 years ago. Or 41 years ago. Or... well, you know the rest. And let's not be fooled by what the UN resolution really means. Yet again, it's going to be regime-change. And just as in Iraq – to use one of Tom Friedman's only memorable phrases of the time – when the latest dictator goes, who

Janet Daley: If the Founding Fathers could see Obama now

[Janet Daley is an American-born British journalist who is currently a columnist and leader writer for the Daily Telegraph.] So the West got it together in the end. By the time you read this, it may be clearer whether that happened at five minutes to midnight or five minutes past. If the latter – if it proves to be too late for the people of Libya – then the blame will lie almost entirely at the door of the Obama administration. After weeks of dithering and mixed signals (remember t

Alex Spillius: Obama and Bush – different approach, similar outcome

[Alex Spillius is The Daily Telegraph's Washington Correspondent.] After eight years of George W Bush, a majority of Americans wanted a president who didn’t shoot from the hip, and that is certainly what they have got in Barack Obama. When it came to taking action against Libya, the leader of the free world kept his pistol in its holster until the last possible minute. We now learn that it was only last Tuesday night, at the end of an extremely tense meetin

David Frum: Obama is in no hurry to see Gaddafi go

[David Frum is a Canadian American journalist active in both the United States and Canadian political arenas.] Would President Obama prefer a Gaddafi victory? If that sounds implausible, then just look at the record. On March 3, Obama announced that Gaddafi "must go". Two weeks have passed since then – and more than a month since the uprising began on February 15. In the interim, the tide of war has turned in Gaddafi's favour. Yet Obama has done nothing to make his own wor

Adrian Hamilton: Emperor's stunning intervention with only one precedent ... the 1945 surrender

[The Independent’s comment editor, Adrian Hamilton writes a weekly column largely on international affairs with particular focus on the Middle East, Iran and foreign policy issues.] For the Japanese to wheel out their Emperor to make a televised address yesterday on the nuclear crisis is virtually unprecedented. To produce the country's most sacred figurehead in this way and to risk involving him in a situation which could become deeply political shows just how concerned the governm

Harold Meyerson: From Japan's Devastation, Our Lisbon Moment?

[Harold Meyerson is an op-ed columnist for the WaPo.] First came the earthquake, then the tsunami and the fires, and then, over time, a critical decline in belief in a benevolent God. The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 killed about a fifth of the city’s 200,000 residents and leveled 85 percent of its buildings, including almost every major church — on a church holiday, when they were packed with parishioners. It also shook 18th-century philosophers to the core. “Candid

Zalmay Khalilzad: Obama Needs a Mideast Grand Strategy

[The writer, a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.] President Obama has reportedly settled on a country-specific strategy for the Middle East uprisings. Instead of crafting a regional plan, the United States will deal with protests for democracy and freedom in each state on its own terms. This approach is inadequate to both the challenges and the opp

Doug Bandow: Libya's Lesson for Europe

[Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction).] After the Arab League urged creation of a no-fly zone over Libya, Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the Libyan Transitional National Council, said, "We hope the Europeans will deliver now." But with divided opinions and shrinking militaries,