A welcome homecoming
President Barack Obama's end to the United States' fighting war in Iraq will understandably be met with scepticism. Some 50,000 American troops remain in the country to provide a military keel to a fragile Iraqi civilian regime. And didn't George W. Bush once declare an end to major military operations in an ill-advised bit of political theatre? [...]
A Pointless War
There is a symmetry to the way the Iraq war began and ended with televised addresses by US President George W Bush and his successor Barack Obama. In between the two lie seven years of violence and dubious gain, a fact reflected in the equivocal nature of Obama's speech. Keeping aside the manner in which the US stumbled into invading Iraq enough [...]
The tragic, pointless war in Iraq
We were glad to see US President Barack Obama go to Fort Bliss on Tuesday before his Oval Office speech on Iraq, to thank those Americans who most shouldered the burdens of a tragic, pointless war. One of the few rays of light in the conflict has been the distance America has come since Vietnam , when blameless soldiers were scorned for decisions [...]
The War in Iraq
We were glad to see President Obama go to Fort Bliss on Tuesday before his Oval Office speech on Iraq, to thank those Americans who most shouldered the burdens of a tragic, pointless war. One of the few rays of light in the conflict has been the distance America has come since Vietnam, when blameless soldiers were scorned for decisions made by [...]
Cast in doubt
Politics has broken out in Iraq,” said US Vice President Joe Biden, describing his expectation that clashing sects would channel their grievances into the electoral process. However, much sectarian bloodletting has already occurred during the campaign and on election day, as Iraq voted to elect a new parliament. The going is hard, as the [...]
Iraqis Vote
Final results from Iraq’s parliamentary election may not be available for days, but this much we can already say for sure: Iraq’s citizens once again showed tremendous courage and determination, defying bombs and a flawed pre-election process to cast their ballots. We hope that Iraq’s political leaders will show at least as much courage [...]
Sanjaya Baru: Look west policy
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has so far received only three visiting heads of state at the Delhi airport — President George Bush, President Vladimir Putin and King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. That simple fact should have placed Dr Singh’s much-delayed visit to Riyadh last week in perspective. Saudi Arabia is not just about [...]
Hasan Suroor: Brown’s makeover to connect with voters
Indian politicians should regard themselves lucky that they are not required to hug babies, humour demanding mums or chat up lonely pensioners to show their “human” side and prove that they are able to “connect” with voters. The touchy-feely, emotionally literate politician is a uniquely western phenomenon. And, in the 24-hour television [...]
Banning pernicious weapons
The global ban, from this August, on the pernicious cluster bombs that drop deadly explosives in their hundreds over vast areas inflicting indiscriminate death and devastation cannot conceal the utter contempt the big powers had for the post-World War II Geneva Conventions on humanitarian law (laws of war) that seek to protect civilian populations [...]
V V: Stiglitz sees the future and it doesn’t work
Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for Economics (2001) for his work on asymmetric information, the notion that markets do not work as perfectly as textbooks suggest. “It is almost impossible to reconcile the description of the economy provided by the mainstream profession and what has actually been going on. These are not minor wrinkles. They [...]