Archive for the ‘Asia’ Category
UPDATE: Notebook, 17 May 2012: Covered in Glory
Sorry, Diane Dimond, but regarding Sgt. Robert Bales and the armed forces of the United States, your opinion means nothing. For that matter, neither does mine.
In her HuffPo piece, and certainly on her talk radio show (that should send a red flag up right there. This was in error on my part. When called on it by Diane Dimond (here, I rechecked my source for that and found that I should have read her HuffPo bio more carefully. She is correct. She is not a talk show radio host, but a moveable feast, who writes for The Daily Beast and appears frequently on television news outlets) she stands In Defense of the United States Military and in the process, manages to trash Sgt. Robert Bales. She must feel very comfortable. She must have that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you take a position you feel is unassailable. A position you know many “right thinking people” will rise to defend on your behalf.
Which probably explains a lot.
Notebook, 13 May 2011: Washington Whitewash. . . Updated
Somethings are hard to do, but I cannot let this one go unremarked.
Let me first of all commend (yes, commend, you read that right) the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a body I’ve frequently held in the deepest disrepute, for holding a hearing this week on the Peace Corps at 50, and mostly concerned with the conduct of the Peace Corps regarding the safety of volunteers overseas. My praise, however isn’t unqualified, for the hearing was prompted by a story which appeared from 20/20 about the criminally shabby treatment of rape victims by the Peace Corps:
A Peace Corps volunteer who says she became pregnant after a Peace Corps employee raped her alleges that Peace Corps officials forced her to make a choice: get an abortion or quit the organization.
“I was not pro-choice until that moment,” said Carol Clark, now a schoolteacher in North Carolina, who says she was devastated that the organization she trusted treated her so callously.
Clark says she has come forward to tell her story after more than 25 years because of an ABC News “20/20″ report about former Peace Corps volunteers who allege that they were mistreated by the Peace Corps after they were victims of sexual assault while serving overseas.
Witness testimony details rape victims being abandoned, mistreated by supposed care providers and told to keep quiet about their experiences while serving as Peace Corps volunteers.
Evidently, this has been standard Peace Corps practice for decades and like I said, criminal. Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams ought to lose his post in disgrace for not addressing this ongoing situation, but committee chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (told you this was hard) did the right thing by holding a full committee hearing on the subject.
Another prized American institution shows rot at the core, so let’s hope the needed reform results.
Read the rest of this entry »
Progress in Egypt is Slow While China Regresses.
One step forward, one step back. It seems that reports that the Supreme Military Council in Egypt was as eager to crush the peaceful protests in Tahrir Square could very well been true, that the thugs are still hard at work suppressing dissent.
Freedom House reports that Maikel Nabil Sanad, and Egyptian blogger has been arrested:
by Egyptian military police on March 28 on charges that he allegedly defamed the armed forces
To the generals running Egypt: civil societies are NOT subject to military discipline. Military enrollment is a contract under which an enlistee agrees to accept such discipline. Civilians, by definition, have not agreed to accept being treated like raw recruits. That’s their job.
One wonders when they’ll get that. One also wonders when our own officials will understand that expanding military and police powers does exactly the same damned thing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Our Laws Regarding Free Speech Don’t Apply to Afghani Culture
Julie Water’s point about the terms we use to describe what Terry Jones did provides me with a wonderful opportunity to illustrate why we need to be crystal clear about which context we’re talking about when dealing differing societies having different norms.
Julie Waters: Do we not understand the difference between incitement and offense?
It also provides me with an opportunity to point out that after an intervention (in this case, and invasion), trying to impose a democratic regime on a society may be a fools errand.
What was originally going to be a lengthy reply seems better as a short, concise diary.
Read the rest of this entry »
More Reaction to UNSC Res. 1973 w/ Update
Joshua Keating and David Bosco at Passport report:
“The fissure in the UN between a Western-led interventionist group and a “sovereignty bloc” led by Moscow and Beijing, but with real appeal to key emerging powers like Brazil, South Africa and India… may be one of the most critical dynamics at the UN. For the moment, the West still has the pull to carry the day. Whether that will be true a decade from now is anyone’s guess.”
Which brings up some real questions about the future.
Read the rest of this entry »
A sane strategy for Pakistan…
“The only thing we learn from history is that people learn nothing from history”
— Georg Wilhelm Hegel
Inspired by post on Foreign Policy Magazine’s Passport blog.
It began in an unassuming way: the American commanding general in theater sent a memo to Washington informing his superiors that an important enemy target had been tentatively located, but that it was over the border in a neighboring country whose status in all conflicts was neutral and that the territory in question was for all intents and purposes, though inhabited, ungoverned and ungovernable by the central government.
LQD: No Consensus on 9/11
I usually stay away from stories concerning terrorism because they’re just too predictable, but I found this one interesting, and as I consider the implications on the idea of legitimacy of the positions and acts of the US government, I thought I’d share it. From July 15 to August 31, World Public Opinion conducted a survey in 17 countries asking the open-ended question, Who do you believe was behind the 9/11 attacks?. The topline results here.
The results surprised me. On average, 46% of respondents thought Al Qaeda was guilty, and in no country outside of Africa, did an overwhelming number of people say they believed Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. In some cases, a significant number of people thought the US government was behind the attacks. Particularly in Mexico and Germany, where 30% and 15% respectively of the people who were asked said they thought the US government itself was responsible.
All of which seriously undermines the perception of legitimacy of our invasion of Afghanistan (forget Iraq, I’m not even going there). To take matters a little further, all of this is something Indian officials should give serious consideration to in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, and their aggressive stand against Pakistan. Especially in light of of the possibility that this story in the Economist may have more than a grain of truth.
Here’s what you get when you give classics scholars a little leeway. The Crimson reports that the Hapsburgs may be asked to reign over the student body at Harvard.
