ItoBlog

Can somebody do something?

Saudis off the hook again

"President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers."

Link: Bush Waives Saudi Trafficking Sanctions.

Karen Hughes, Stay Home!

Fred Kaplan asks the right quesiton in a column he wrote for Slate yesterday:"What on earth is Karen Hughes doing in the Middle East? "

I had to rub my eyes when i read that Bush had named her head of US public diplomacy for the Middle East. Sigh...sheer absurdity. How low will Bush go?

Here we have an insipid, moronic and culturally ignorant religious fellow texan who is abolutely clueless about Middle Eastern culture and history, let alone geography (she's as well-traveled as Bush Jr before he became president) and for crying out loud, she doesn't even speak arabic (or any other language for that matter)!!!)

It's as if a non-english speaking muslim woman in a Burqa, who had never set foot in the US and had no knowledge of american culture came to speak at American universities to improve Islam's image.

Hmmm...and the verdict of Karen Hughes' first speaking tour of the Middle East? Fiasco total.

Link: Karen Hughes, Stay Home! - What on earth is she doing in the Middle East? By Fred Kaplan.

Today in Despotism

Ever wonder what North Korean's read in their daily paper? The New Republic had a clever idea today, to start a new column in their online magazine giving a brief (and humorous) recap of what's newsworthy in today's outposts of tyranny.

Realpolitik

Great article by Hitchens on how Bush critics struggle with consistency. The Bush administration's pathetic evasive remarks after the horrors committed in Uzbekistan a couple of weeks ago, gave Bush's critics lots of fresh meat to chew on. Yes, Uzbekistan is ruled by Islam Karimov, a ruthless tyrant who orders his army to shoot demonstrators who dare question his authoritarian rule and who is known to have "boiled" political prisoners...among other things. The country is of course a crucial strategic US ally, given its proximity to Afghanistan, and is one of the several tyrannical allies who make the US lose so much credibility. Bush critics are right to lambast his administration for doing nothing and for its flagrant double-standards. The interesting irony though is that these same critics are those who vehemently attack and ridicule Bush's regime-change policy. In Hitchens' words "[...]those who criticize Karimov's internal conduct are not asking that we repudiate such help (or are they?). They are, at any rate ostensibly, demanding that we use our influence to amend Uzbekistan's internal affairs. So it seems as if, when all the rhetoric is examined, the regime-change position is only being criticized for its inconsistency."

The thankless task of promoting democracy

Most of the democracy promotion that the U.S. government does involves giving small grants to active civic groups and courageous newspapers in fledgling democracies, hardly the stuff of subversion.