Avoiding a Summer of Bloodshed
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 23rd, 2011 4:31 am by HL
Avoiding a Summer of Bloodshed
David Ignatius, Washington Post
“Peace is at hand,” Henry Kissinger famously announced in October 1972 after a seeming breakthrough in Vietnam negotiations. But it wasn't at hand. It took three more months to complete the Paris Peace Accords, which collapsed in 1975 when North Vietnam overran Saigon.This Vietnam history is a caution against premature optimism about diplomatic solutions to deeply embedded conflicts, such as the one in Afghanistan. But the fact remains, as is so often stated, that there is no military solution to such conflicts. The challenge is creating a dialogue among people who…
Obama to Unveil Troop Drawdown
Alexis Simendinger, RealClearPolitics
President Obama will deliver a brief White House speech tonight marking the July 2011 start of a phased drawdown of the U.S. forces he sent to Afghanistan 18 months ago when he committed 30,000 additional troops to that country.Members of Congress were briefed on Tuesday to expect the president to announce a withdrawal of 10,000 troops by the end of 2011, followed by a drawdown of 20,000 troops by the end of 2012, with some flexibility to account for conditions on the ground.When he announced the so-called “surge” during a prime-time address at West Point in December 2009, the…
Boosting Unions at the Expense of Jobs
Bret Jacobson, New York Post
Here's a truth-in-advertising warning to foreign investors about this week's glossy White House sales pitch: Even as President Obama promises he's “taking steps to ensure that we remain the destination of choice for investors,” his National Labor Relations Board is putting the screws to America's employers.The most obvious example is the NLRB's ham-fisted attack on aircraft-manufacturer Boeing. Arguing that the company moved production of some of its Dreamliner jets to right-to-work South Carolina from Washington state in order to punish a union, the…
Rev. Wright Back with Anti-American Crusade
Marta Mossburg, Balt Sun
Forget hope and change; victimization is in. Dropped by the president and dismissed as a racist by many Americans, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright still draws crowds with his sometimes crotch-grabbing, always riveting soliloquies about black oppression.The former pastor of Barack Obama drew thousands last week to the 8,000-member Empowerment Temple in Baltimore City. Overflow lots at the church were filled, and five blocks on either side of the massive stadium-like stucco building in Park Heights — a part of town where Orthodox Jews mix sometimes uneasily with blacks — were wall…
Spend, Cut, Tax and Invest
Thomas Friedman, New York Times
There is something crazy about what is going on in our country today. Our fiscal condition continues on an unsustainable path, the European currency is heading for a crackup, the Arab world is in the midst of a crackup, unemployment is creeping upward and basically our two parties are telling us that they will not make the reforms that we know are necessary because it would involve too much pain and could imperil their chances of winning the presidency in 2012.Ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legendary “First 100 Days” in office — which…
