The Hope Debate
Lots of interesting stuff today. Seems like we're headed for either a healthy debate or just more of the same, depending on who you read or talk to.
Roger Cohen, in a posting today in the NY Times Select section http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2006/12/27/world/IHT-27globalist.html, posits an interesting hypothetical speech that Bush (or maybe someone with bit more vision) might give to the Iraqi people laying out the opportunity before them, if only they would step up and take it (by taking a longer view of things forward, and not focusing on the past.
Interesting ideas, and probably too late, but if a policy of hope could actually emerge, which would obviously require far more than the nice words in this hypothetical speech, then we might have our own opportunity to debate a reasonable way for us to help the Middle East now that we've opened up the Pandora's box of religious and ethnic retribution that has been tamped down by authoritarian regimes for so long, and to look at what liberty, freedom, democracy, etc really mean and in what context the US can and should support it.
On the downside, two commentaries in today's SF Chronicle, one by Robert Scheer http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/27/EDGOULJ6PK1.DTL, a persistent and consistent critic of the war and the machinations behind it, and Alexander Cockburn, a muckraking journalist of the finest order http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/27/EDG58N61K31.DTL, show how the debate is being squelched even now and even by the newly major Democrats. Disappointing to say the least, if true.
January will be an interesting month to see how any of this gets played out.
Roger Cohen, in a posting today in the NY Times Select section http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2006/12/27/world/IHT-27globalist.html, posits an interesting hypothetical speech that Bush (or maybe someone with bit more vision) might give to the Iraqi people laying out the opportunity before them, if only they would step up and take it (by taking a longer view of things forward, and not focusing on the past.
Interesting ideas, and probably too late, but if a policy of hope could actually emerge, which would obviously require far more than the nice words in this hypothetical speech, then we might have our own opportunity to debate a reasonable way for us to help the Middle East now that we've opened up the Pandora's box of religious and ethnic retribution that has been tamped down by authoritarian regimes for so long, and to look at what liberty, freedom, democracy, etc really mean and in what context the US can and should support it.
On the downside, two commentaries in today's SF Chronicle, one by Robert Scheer http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/27/EDGOULJ6PK1.DTL, a persistent and consistent critic of the war and the machinations behind it, and Alexander Cockburn, a muckraking journalist of the finest order http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/27/EDG58N61K31.DTL, show how the debate is being squelched even now and even by the newly major Democrats. Disappointing to say the least, if true.
January will be an interesting month to see how any of this gets played out.
posted by Paul Salinger at 10:15 AM
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