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John Bolton says if Obama wants to debate foreign policy, McCain should jump at the chance.
… Like all human activity, negotiation has costs and benefits. If only benefits were involved, then it would be hard to quarrel with the “what can we lose?” mantra one hears so often. In fact, the costs and potential downsides are real, and not to be ignored.
When the U.S. negotiates with “terrorists and radicals,” it gives them legitimacy, a precious and tangible political asset. Thus, even Mr. Obama criticized former President Jimmy Carter for his recent meetings with Hamas leaders. Meeting with leaders of state sponsors of terrorism such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il is also a mistake. State sponsors use others as surrogates, but they are just as much terrorists as those who actually carry out the dastardly acts. Legitimacy and international acceptability are qualities terrorists crave, and should therefore not be conferred casually, if at all.
Moreover, negotiations – especially those “without precondition” as Mr. Obama has specifically advocated – consume time, another precious asset that terrorists and rogue leaders prize. Here, President Bush’s reference to Hitler was particularly apt: While the diplomats of European democracies played with their umbrellas, the Nazis were rearming and expanding their industrial power.
In today’s world of weapons of mass destruction, time is again a precious asset, one almost invariably on the side of the would-be proliferators. Time allows them to perfect the complex science and technology necessary to sustain nuclear weapons and missile programs, and provides far greater opportunity for concealing their activities from our ability to detect and, if necessary, destroy them. …
The American.com with a great piece comparing and contrasting Botswana and Zimbabwe. The countries sit side by side just north of South Africa and couldn’t be more different. Botswana has become the jewel of developing Africa. Zimbabwe has become a hell hole since being blessed by America’s worst president and worst ex-president – Jimmy Carter.
“We used to look at Botswana as our poor cousin, but now we do all of our shopping there,” said David Coltart, an opposition member of the Zimbabwean parliament, when I met him a few months ago. The Coltarts are doing relatively well. David’s successful legal practice and parliamentary salary enable them to shop in Botswana—if only to buy basic necessities. Most of their countrymen do not have that option.
Zimbabwe suffers from an 80 percent unemployment rate and, according to the International Monetary Fund, an inflation rate exceeding 150,000 percent. Since 1994, the average life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe has fallen from 57 years to 34 years; among men it has dropped from 54 years to 37 years. Some 3,500 Zimbabweans die every week from the combined effects of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and malnutrition. Half a million Zimbabweans may have died since 2000, while some 3 million fled to South Africa alone.
A country that used to be called the “jewel” and the “breadbasket” of Africa is now an Orwellian nightmare. With the economy in ruins and political freedom eviscerated, Zimbabwe’s state-run media rail against a phantom international conspiracy consisting of Western powers and led by “liar” George Bush, “gay” Tony Blair, “uncle Tom” Colin Powell, and “a slave to white masters” Condoleezza Rice.
I visited Zimbabwe twice during the 1990s. Back then, the country was in the midst of an earlier economic crisis caused by sluggish growth and excessive government spending. The IMF stepped in with an “economic structural adjustment program” worth hundreds of millions of dollars that, alas, bore little fruit. Still, I was shocked to see the extent of Zimbabwe’s economic decline when I returned there last November.
I crossed the border between Zimbabwe and Botswana at the Kazangula junction, just a few miles from the spectacular Victoria Falls. While the other tourists drove up to the beautiful, though now almost completely empty, Elephant Hills Hotel that overlooks the falls, I remained in the town below to see for myself the outcome of Robert Mugabe’s 27-year rule.
The once charming town of Victoria Falls that used to teem with tourists from around the world looked run-down and empty. About half of the shops were either empty or closed altogether. The main shopping center looked more like a warehouse. It offered few products thinly spread out on half-empty shelves—an obvious attempt to mask the widespread shortages of consumer goods. A handful of tourists, mostly young backpackers from Canada and Australia, wandered around the town center in futile search of edible food. Like them, I could not find meat or bread anywhere.
Few ordinary Zimbabweans would agree to talk to me about their problems. Those who did, looked over their shoulders, worried that someone from Mugabe’s omnipresent Central Intelligence Organization might be listening. They are right to be afraid, for Zimbabwe today is a police state where armed gangs of government supporters harass, beat and kill members of the opposition with utter impunity.
How different, I thought, was Zimbabwe from Botswana, the latter of which is safe and increasingly prosperous. But what accounts for such striking differences between the two neighbors? It turns out that much of the difference stems from the degree of freedom that each populace enjoys. …
Michelle Cottle of The New Republic assembles a post-mortem from Hillary’s staff.
Endings are rarely as joyous as beginnings–and in the case of a long, wearing, and ultimately disappointing campaign, they can be downright brutal. But they also have the potential to be educational, for participants and gawkers alike. So it is that we asked (begged, really) a range of Hillarylanders for their up-close and personal lists of “What Went Wrong?” Not everyone wanted to play. Many stubbornly pointed out that their candidate is not yet dead. But, on the condition of total anonymity, a fairly broad enough cross-section of her staff responded–more than a dozen members all told, from high-level advisors to grunt-level assistants, from money men to on-the-ground organizers.
Many answers fell into a handful of broad themes we’ve been hearing for months now. (She shouldn’t have run as an incumbent. She should have paid more attention to caucus states. She should have kept Bill chained in the basement at Whitehaven with a case of cheese curls and a stack of dirty movies.) Others had a distinct score-settling flavor. One respondent sent in a list of Top 25 screw ups, the first three being:
1. Patti
2. Solis
3. DoyleWhile from another corner came another list, reading:
1. Mark Penn
2. Mark Penn
3. Mark Penn …
Jim Taranto figures out Tom Harkin.