David Ignatius
11/19/2009
Ramallah, a Palestinian settlement on the West Bank, is making great progress toward functionality and prosperity. But the peace process has imploded and opportunities have been missed as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and President Obama have failed to reach effective terms in their negotiations. The author suggests following the example of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, who is largely responsible for the current successful state of Ramallah. Fayyad has drawn up a detailed, two-year plan for its transition into statehood, with the ultimate goal being for Palestinians to have “strong, competent institutions”. The author believes that Fayyad’s plan is the only hope for the region and that the United States should strongly support it.
Ignatius is a twice-weekly columnist for The Post, writing on global politics, economics and international affairs.
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Three decades after Iranian college students overran and occupied the American Embassy in Tehran, Bowden considers how we continue to deal with that country’s revolution. America’s reductionistic way of remembering the “hostage crisis” ignores its larger significance in Iran and impedes our understanding of the political drama unfolding there today. The movement to oust the Shah was primarily a nationalist one. Many of those in the streets in 1978 and 1979 desired the establishment of a theocracy in order to cast off authoritarianism and found a democracy. Bowden explains how the Islamists schemed to take power. However, 30 years after seizing control, the mullahs of Qom find themselves in a difficult spot. Younger Iranians want real democracy and the revolutionary rhetoric of change is no longer anti-American and Islamist.
Friends of both countries are hesitant to point out these failures for reasons best understood by them alone. Corruption exists in large parts of the world and its existence in Pakistan and Afghanistan is not a unique phenomenon. It is only that the Global War on Terror has produced increasing complexity and urgency in the matter. Undoubtedly, corruption is a major problem in the Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Davis asserts that it is a mistake to try some detainees in federal courts and others by military commissions. Military commissions satisfy the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, which are the source of the detainees’ rights. The rights in federal courts surpass the Geneva Conventions requirements and give detainees more than their status and the law demand. This discrepancy will perpetuate the perception that Guantanamo and justice are mutually exclusive. Davis believes we need to change the negative perceptions that exist about Guantanamo and our commitment to the law, which will only be reinforced by the formal establishment of a legal double standard.
The real strategic challenge for the Western allies lies not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. Pakistan is the prime example of a country where the potentially deadly dangers of nuclear weapons cross with the rising influence of jihadism. The West propped up General Pervez Musharaff’s regime with $12bn of military aid over ten years only to see the extremists running about out of control while the Pakistani army remains fixated with India. The problems of the whole central and south Asia region will remain unresolved while Pakistan’s world view remains India-centric.
Kristof looks at statistics about US health care to debunk the myth that we have the best health care system in the world. Among 19 developed countries that have succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” the US ranks last, and it did not rank first on any other comparison list. In most countries people do have longer waits to see specialists, but they also have longer hospital stays and more medication. In addition, Americans pay 118 percent more per pill for that medication, and insurance companies, not the government, decide whether to offer or deny life-saving treatment. After Americans reach age 65, they can expect to live longer than people in other nations because they have universal health care called Medicare.
This week’s elections bore out several important themes in advance of next year’s midterm congressional campaign. The governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey both showed that a strong conservative candidate can succeed in traditionally liberal states. Moreover, President Obama campaigned heavily for the incumbent Governor Corzine in New Jersey, so that defeat carries a particular weight. However, the congressional race in New York does show a significant tension between moderates and conservatives in the Republican Party that must be resolved if they are to capitalize on this momentum next year.
McArdle looks at the concept of geoengineering to develop large-scale projects to decrease the CO2 in the atmosphere. She says the scale of the carbon reductions that will be required in developed nations are massive. However, the political will to achieve them is very weak, even in Europe. Even if we somehow develop the political will, unless we also make some radical advances in cheap renewable energy technology, China is going to burn all of her coal, plus all of the oil we don’t buy from the Saudis, rendering most of our efforts moot. Geoengineering has to be an international undertaking or every country will just play to its own agenda.
Food companies and restaurants in Sweden may be listing the fossil fuel emissions that went into the production of the food. Smith says so far it’s an experiment to test whether people change their buying habits to purchase the supposedly eco-friendlier foods. However, there are problems because politics and science seem to be colliding as Swedish locally grown food gets the lowest ratings, which indicates that buying imported food is not only economically bad for the country but also environmentally.
