Month: March 2005

The last few days have seen an interesting, lopsided debate rankle American politics. This debate is one that pits the majority of the public against the majority of the country’s leadership. Continue reading “Stay Focused”

These days, Afghanistan is held aloft by the Bush administration as the shining star of democracy’s inexorable spread. Truth be told, since the American-led war that ousted the Taliban three years ago, the signs of life coming out of Kabul and the wider country at large are encouraging, but Afghanistan is a test case for the difficulties inherent in the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Continue reading “The Shining Star”

The election in Iraq is a success to this point. The large numbers of Iraqis that turned up at the polls shows that I was mistaken when I wrote earlier that the Iraqis may not be ready for, or even want, democracy. They turned lives that had been lived under a brutal dictator, without a nascent movement for democracy, into a clamor for democratic self-rule within a matter of months of the beginning of the American occupation. Many people were surprised at the fervor shown by so many Iraqis not just on election day, but in the months leading up to it. The political mood in Iraq can easily be characterized as one of vigorous debate. Continue reading “Ends and Means”