I Value Them but I Won't Cry If the Time Was Wiped Out- August 28, 2008 Robert Farley flagged this from the BBC: Ethiopia is prepared to withdraw troops from Somalia even if the interim government is not stable, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said. ... He told the UK's Financial Times paper that financial pressures had to be taken into account and said the commitment was not open ended. ... "The operation has been extremely expensive so we will have to balance the domestic pressures on the one hand and pressures in Somalia on the other..http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4142 Not Tear Gas Nor Baton Charge- August 27, 2008 Matt Yglesias discusses the tendency to misconstrue morality in intention and consquence when analyzing foreign policy options - especially relevant after the latest round of preening surrounding the conflict between Russia and Georgia (though the stench of "Bomb Burma for the Sake of the Burmese" still lingers in the air). ...I think a lot of people have a tendency to wave the flag of morality or idealism in foreign policy as a way of evading responsibility for the consequences..http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4140 Gotta Give a Shout Out to the Large Professor- August 26, 2008 There have been some pretty serious developments with respect to the Maliki government's position vis-a-vis the Sunni AwakeningsSons of Iraq groups over the past couple of weeks. The nickel version is that the Maliki government is shifting from a mere refusal to integrate the AwakeningsSOI into the Iraqi Security Forces (or grant them civil positions in the government), to an active military campaign to forcibly disarm and disband those same militias. Arms have been seized,...http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4139 Infidels Shiver in the Stench of Belief- August 22, 2008 Britain's MI5 recently conducted an extensive review of hundreds of case studies in order to attempt to create a profile of would-be terrorists (via Calpundit 2.0, not to be confused with the 3.0 model). While MI5 was unable to establish a holistic profile, they were able to dispel certain myths and shoot down other would-be indicators of a propensity to engage in terrorist acts. One such counterintuitive conclusion is as follows: ....The British terrorirsts are mostly British..http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4137 Do You Want More- August 22, 2008 Matt Duss passes along a recap of a recent incident that offers yet one more indication that McCain's foreign policy will be, in almost every crucial respect, a redux of the Bush administration's circa the first term - if not more reckless. Just observe how his campaign reacted to a relatively innocuous event held in Syria, in pursuit of an agenda that is, ostensibly, shared by the governments of Israel and the United States. Yesterday, the McCain campaign held a press call trying...http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4136 |