Reassessing Obama’s Foreign Policy “Success”
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on November 1st, 2011 4:31 am by HL
Reassessing Obama’s Foreign Policy “Success”
Michael Barone, Examiner
The argument is being made in some quarters that, however unsuccessful Barack Obama's domestic policies have been, his record in foreign policy has been successful. But when you examine the claims of success, they seem a bit peculiar.Take the widely read New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Last week, he argued that Obama's “lead from behind” approach to Libya worked much better than what turned out to be the Bush administration's protracted involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.He's certainly right in saying our troops are not mired down in Libya. But…
Why 2012 Is Going to Be Ugly
William Galston, The New Republic
With little more than a year until the presidential election, two new reports—a survey from CBS/NYT and a CBO brief on household income—illuminate the treacherous terrain on which the campaign will be waged. The candidates will be fighting for the sympathies of an electorate that is utterly dispirited and in no mood for promises of uplift from either party. They say they want change, but they have lost confidence in the public sector as the agent of change.That would seem to give the edge to the Republicans, but unfortunately for them, most people think they’re…
What Business Wants From Washington
Jim McNerney, Wall St. Journal
America works best when American business and government complement one another: Business plays the vital role in economic expansion and job creation, while government oversees the environment in which business can innovate and compete. This approach fueled prosperity for generations and produced the world's largest and most powerful economy. We seem far adrift of that ideal today.Washington's political gridlock and volatility threaten to derail an economic recovery that wants to take flight. Observers are right to perceive a collective failure to govern, and that perception creates…
Bombs, Bridges and Jobs
Paul Krugman, New York Times
A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his colleagues: weaponized Keynesians, defined as those who believe “that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.”Right now the weaponized Keynesians are out in full force — which makes this a good time to see what’s really going on in debates over economic policy.
The Last Days of Moammar Gaddafi
Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker
How does it end? The dictator dies, shrivelled and demented, in his bed; he flees the rebels in a private plane; he is caught hiding in a mountain outpost, a drainage pipe, a spider hole. He is tried. He is not tried. He is dragged, bloody and dazed, through the streets, then executed. The humbling comes in myriad forms, but what is revealed is always the same: the technologies of paranoia, the stories of slaughter and fear, the vaults, the national economies employed as personal property, the crazy pets, the prostitutes, the golden fixtures.Instinctively, when dictators are toppled, we…
