There wasn’t much point to holding a runoff election in Afghanistan after one of the two candidates, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew. Still, the decision doesn’t add any legitimacy to President Hamid Karzai’s government, which is widely seen as corrupt and ineffective and was accused of rigging the last election.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got blunt in Pakistan, speaking to newspaper editors: “Al-Qaida has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002. I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to. Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know.”
Meanwhile, a new book by former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe confirms that Clinton came close to being vice president. “I think Bill may be too big a complication,” Plouffe writes, quoting Barack Obama. “If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship.”
As the U.S. military keeps up the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, here’s a question: Does the U.S. government need a Department of Peace? “The United States has to take steps to overcome violence,” wrote Kansas City Star columnist Lewis W. Diuguid. “The first step is for Congress to pass and President Barack Obama to sign legislation creating a Cabinet Department of Peace. It would provide people with examples of best practices in solving all conflicts through nonviolent means.”
Iran has strained credulity for years with assurances that its nuclear ambitions were peaceful, our editorial today notes. The recent disputed elections and the brutality of the crackdown on protesters furthered distrust in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics. The tension ratcheted up last week with the revelation by the Obama administration, France and Britain that Iran had a secret underground uranium enrichment facility in the works. Then came Iran’s several tests of missiles capable of striking Israel, parts of Europe and U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Diplomacy may not defuse the situation. But engagement must be tried in order to work. And it will be easier to build and sustain a global coalition against Iran if its leaders are given every opportunity to stave off tough economic sanctions or other action.
Even if you don’t believe global warming is real, here is what columnist Thomas Friedman says is indisputable: “The world is on track to add another 2.5 billion people by 2050, and many will be aspiring to live American-like, high-energy lifestyles. In such a world, renewable energy — where the variable cost of your fuel, sun or wind, is zero — will be in huge demand.” Yet Friedman noted that America is allowing other countries to become leaders in developing alternative energy. “China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform,” Friedman wrote, adding how “if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.”
Former President Clinton’s success as hostage liberator has columnist Al Hunt wondering whether the Comeback Kid will continue to be unleashed. “Could he play a bigger, broader role as a special envoy or troubleshooter on nuclear proliferation, China or any number of other challenges? Some Clintonistas already have visions of the new senior statesman of the world,” Hunt wrote. But that kind of role would seem to invite problems, given that Clinton’s wife is secretary of state and the former and current presidents are hardly close. “Publicly, the president praised Clinton,” Hunt noted. “Privately, the White House downplayed the importance of Clinton’s role, with a top National Security Council official trashing the former president on background.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s characteristic restraint gave way Monday in Kinshasa, Congo, when she snapped at a student who nervously asked her what former President Clinton, as well as former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, thought about an international loan. “Wait. You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” Clinton responded. “My husband is not the secretary of state; I am. So you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I’m not going to be channeling my husband.” The student later said he meant to refer to President Obama, not President Clinton — leaving Americans to wonder whether the secretary of state overreacted because she felt overshadowed by her husband’s success in liberating two U.S. journalists from North Korea last week.
“These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world,” Greg Mortenson, author of the best-seller “Three Cups of Tea,” told columnist Thomas Friedman about the schools for girls that he has built in Pakistan and Afghanistan villages. Friedman and Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently attended the opening of Mortenson’s newest school in a remote Afghan village. Mortenson said religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict where there is little education. That’s why, Friedman wrote, “since 2007, the Taliban and its allies have bombed, burned or shut down more than 640 schools in Afghanistan and 350 schools in Pakistan, of which about 80 percent are schools for girls.”
After watching footage of freed journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee crying as they were reunited with their families, it should be difficult for anyone to criticize former President Clinton’s successful efforts to secure their release from North Korea. Yet John Bolton, former Bush administration U.N. ambassador, is up to the challenge. He criticized the Obama administration for “negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages” and said that the Clinton trip was “a significant propaganda victory for North Korea.” But columnist Maureen Dowd responded: “The former Bush bullies have no credibility on diplomacy. They spent eight years wrecking it, and the score for them on North Korea is 0-6; zero meetings with Kim (Jong Il) and enough plutonium for six nuclear bombs.”
Ukraine and Georgia sure made an impression on Joe Biden. On his trip home from those democracies, the vice president played Lear’s jester by speaking the truth about their erstwhile master, Russia. In an interview, Biden pointed out that the U.S. and Russia aren’t strategic equals. “I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold,” he said, noting that Russia’s economy and population are “withering.” As for the arsenal Russia inherited from the U.S.S.R., Biden said, “They can’t sustain it.” Biden’s commonsense observations undermine President Obama’s rationale for a “reset” with Russia built on arms control and a softening of U.S. support for Eurasia’s democracies. For example, why lock in lower numbers of U.S. nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles such as bombers and missiles in a new arms deal if Russia can’t afford to maintain its stockpile of either? Biden may not like the comparison. But in his willingness to speak the truth about Russia, Biden reminds us of Dick Cheney. — Wall Street Journal editorial
Vice President Joe Biden recently claimed that, because Russia’s economy is “withering,” Moscow will have to bend to the West, specifically on issues relating to the former Soviet republics and the reduction of its nuclear arsenal. But what Biden seems to be forgetting is the important role that Russia can play in the war in Afghanistan. Russia has no obligation to bend one way or the other. The country still exerts strong influence over most Central Asian states, including those directly bordering Afghanistan. In fact, Russia recently allowed — after nearly eight years of war — the United States to use its airspace to transport troops and military equipment into Afghanistan. After Biden’s comment, there appears to be a gap between the administration’s objective of stabilizing Afghanistan and the means with which it hopes to achieve it. Gratuitously antagonizing Russia risks prompting officials in Moscow to either retract their concession on Afghanistan, to pressure Central Asian republics to act in kind, or both. — Malou Innocent, RealClearWorld.com
President Obama’s approval ratings have dropped in the United States, but internationally he is significantly boosting America’s image. A survey by Pew Global Attitudes Project found that the image of the United States has improved markedly in most parts of the world in large part because of global confidence in Obama. For example, 86 percent of people surveyed in Great Britain said they trust Obama to do the “right thing” in world affairs, compared with 16 percent last year who said they trusted President Bush.
While President Obama is in Moscow this week, he ought to take time to deliver a Cairo-style speech to the Russian people, suggests Paula Schriefer, director of advocacy at the nongovernmental organization Freedom House. Currently, she said, the media mostly spout nationalist propaganda and portray freedom and democracy as bad things. Speech is stifled. Elections are meaningless. “Russians don’t like being preached to by foreigners any more than Egyptians, Turks, Iranians or, for that matter, Americans do,” Schriefer wrote. “Yet they may respond to a frank and respectful speech that emphasizes America’s real desire — not for a weak and subservient Russia — but rather a strong Russia that shares its democratic values and that can be a real partner in tackling some of the world’s growing list of crises.”
When the president of Honduras was arrested by soldiers and exiled Sunday after a controversial referendum, the Americans in the country included Andy Brownback, a son of Sen. Sam Brownback. He’s a Kansas State University senior studying at the Panamerican School of Agriculture at Zamorano. Classes have continued, but students are no longer permitted to leave campus, he wrote in the Topeka Capital-Journal. “The response to the news by students at the university was remarkably disinterested,” he wrote. “The majority of students come from Latin American countries in the region, all of which are accustomed to varying degrees of civil unrest.” Brownback is scheduled to leave July 12.
World opinion of the United States is improving, according to a new Ipsos/Reuters global poll. Of 22 surveyed countries, which account for 75 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, respondents holding a favorable view of the United States increased 6 percentage points between November 2008 and April 2009. Our reputation increased by double digits in several countries, including Germany and Canada. Turkey was the only country with a dominant Muslim population that was surveyed, and our approval rating there jumped 25 percent.
There is plenty of skepticism about President Obama’s speech today at Cairo University. But columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman said not to underestimate the potential long-term positive impact of Obama’s visit. “When young Arabs and Muslims see an American president who looks like them, has a name like theirs, has Muslims in his family and comes into their world and speaks the truth, it will be empowering and disturbing at the same time,” Friedman wrote. “People will be asking: ‘Why is this guy who looks like everyone on the street here the head of the free world and we can’t even touch freedom?’”
Though President Obama said Monday that the United States and its allies would “stand up” to North Korea, his options are limited, the New York Times reported. For the response to have a significant impact, China — which supplies about 90 percent of North Korea’s oil and 45 percent of its food — needs to go beyond the strong condemnation it issued Monday. The Clinton and Bush administrations were unsuccessful at getting China to put real pressure on North Korea. That’s because, according to Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China “fears a unified, democratic, prosperous Korea allied with the United States” and “wants a puppet state in North Korea.”
“So much of the discussion today is about value, not values,” U2 lead singer Bono wrote in a New York Times commentary about foreign aid and Easter. “Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under 4 million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.”
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, ripped President Obama for lifting Cuban travel and money transfer restrictions. “Instead of standing with the people of Cuba who are waiting for their day of freedom, the Obama administration is sending a message of approval to the Castro dictatorship,” Tiahrt said. But Rep. Jerry Moran (in photo), R-Hays, who will be competing against Tiahrt for a Senate seat in 2010, had the wiser response in calling the move “a good step toward allowing U.S. democratic principles to reach Cuba.” Moran, who has been lobbying for years to increase U.S. agriculture exports to Cuba, also said that Obama stopped short of enacting real economic reform. “For a change in policy to have any impact on Kansas,” Moran said, “the president needs to remove the 2005 regulations that unnecessarily restricted agricultural exports to Cuba.”
A new study released by my organization, the Violence Policy Center, looks at U.S. court records from southwestern states and clearly shows that illegal gun traffickers involved in smuggling firearms to Mexico seek semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing handguns and .50-caliber anti-armor sniper rifles from U.S. gun shops. Many of these guns are imported, underscoring the urgent need for the Obama administration to use its executive powers to strictly enforce existing restrictions on the import of such nonsporting weapons. Of course, this is a case of “enforcing the gun laws on the books” that the NRA would rather ignore. The NRA’s unsubstantiated claims are allowed to gain a toehold because of the information vacuum created by a federal measure backed by the organization known as the Tiahrt amendment. Up until 2003, comprehensive crime gun trace data was available under the Freedom of Information Act. This all changed with the Tiahrt amendment (named after its sponsor, Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt), a spending prohibition that bans the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from releasing such information. Now, we don’t even know the top crime gun in America. Bad for public safety. Good for the NRA, gunmakers and criminals. Right now a battle is being fought to repeal the measure — an action endorsed by President Obama during the campaign. — Josh Sugarmann, the Violence Policy Center, on the Huffington Post
Nobody can substantiate claims that U.S. guns cross the border “by the thousands” or “account for 95 percent of weapons used by Mexican drug gangs.” Because it isn’t true. In Senate subcommittee hearings, William Hoover, assistant director of field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said, “The investigations we have, that we see, for firearms flowing across the border don’t show us individuals taking thousands of guns a day or at a time flowing into Mexico.” Everything Mexico’s murderous thugs are doing is already illegal. At issue is not the absence of law, but the absence of political will to enforce the laws that both nations already possess. Those that make possible Mexico’s colossal corruption wear the garb of not only drug lords and gun runners, but also of too many city mayors and police chiefs, state bureaucrats and military officers. A $40 billion criminal enterprise could not exist without the complicity of these powerful co-conspirators. And these cartels are being abetted by American media and politicians who blame our freedoms for it. We should seal the border. Punish the guilty. And use existing gun and drug laws against violent drug syndicates here and in Mexico. But leave American freedoms alone. — Wayne LaPierre, National Rifle Association, on CNN.com
It will be interesting to learn more of the backstory on the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from the Somali pirates. The Navy SEALS showed remarkable skill in being able to kill three of the pirates with just three shots, which, as Associated Press noted, were “fired in darkness from the stern of a ship 25 yards away on rolling waters.” Concerns now shift to what may happen to the 230 other hostages being held by pirates, and what should be done to better protect ships.
Former President Bush has had invective and even shoes hurled at him for making decisions that cost lives in Iraq and elsewhere. But he saved many lives in Africa, according to an impressive assessment of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief begun in 2003. Though the $15 billion program did not lead to fewer infections, it cut the AIDS death toll in the targeted dozen African countries from 2004 through 2007 by 1.2 million, or 10 percent a year. “We wanted to see if this program can have a palpable effect,” said study author Eran Bendavid of Stanford University. “The answer is: without a doubt. They spend a lot on treatment and treatment has worked.”
Though President Obama said Sunday on “Face the Nation” that he is thinking of increasing National Guard troops along the Mexican border to help quell the drug-related violence, he and Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a point of praising President Felipe Calderon (in photo). Obama said Calderon “has been very bold and rightly has decided that it’s gotten carried away. The drug cartels have too much power, are undermining and corrupting huge segments of Mexican society. And so he has taken them on in the same way that when, you know, Eliot Ness took on Al Capone back during Prohibition,” Obama said. “Oftentimes that causes even more violence. And we’re seeing that flare up.”
On Fox News, Gates said “President Calderon has acted with enormous courage and forcefully in sending troops in to try and get control of that situation,” also calling the chances “very low” that the Mexican government will lose control of part of the country or become a failed state.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates (in photo) sounded a grim note on “Fox News Sunday” in predicting that North Korea “probably will” test-fire a missile soon and that “we’re not prepared to do anything about it” — unless “it was headed for Hawaii or something like that.” Gates also seemed pessimistic about the idea of diplomacy countering the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran. “The opportunity for success is probably more in economic sanctions in both places than it is in diplomacy,” Gates said.
The U.S. financial problems could go from bad to catastrophic if China stops lending us money. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (in photo) expressed concern today about the safety of China’s $1 trillion investment in American government debt. “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S.,” he said. “Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.”
Here are the top five most influential women in the world for 2009, according to Real Clear World:
No. 5. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina.
No. 4. Yulia Tymoshenko, prime minister of Ukraine.
No. 3. Indra Nooyi, chairwoman and CEO of PepsiCo.
No. 2. Hillary Clinton, U.S. secretary of state.
No. 1. Angela Merkel (in photo), chancellor of Germany
