Lift the Sanctions on Iran
by Jim Holmes
 The economic embargo against Iran - the
centerpiece of U.S. policy - supposedly discourages support of international terrorism. In
reality, it harms American businesses and workers while generating frictions between the
United States and its allies. All of this while producing no discernible change in
Iranian behavior. Indeed, the sanctions reinforce stereotypes of America as an implacable
foe of Islam – helping to shore up the theocratic regime in Tehran.
[read complete commentary]
Give Non-violence a Chance
by Maria J. Stephan
Palestinian leaders, including clerics, academics,
residents of areas frequently targeted by Israeli gunfire, and government officials are
beginning to openly question the PLO’s strategy of encouraging (implicitly and
explicitly) violent reprisals against Israeli troops in support of the Palestinian
nationalist cause. A picture of 9-year-old Palestinian Odai Darraj, recently killed by an
errant Israeli bullet in Al Bireh, West Bank symbolized the combined grief and frustration
that Arabs are now feeling about the largely PLO-orchestrated violent response to Israeli
occupation. A serious dialogue has begun in Palestine about transforming the violent
intifada into a nonviolent one.
[read complete
commentary]
 Religion, Conflict, and Cultural Genocide in
Afghanistan
by Mustafa Popal
Afghanistan has once again made headlines for the wrong reasons with the recent
destruction of the Buddha statues. For many observers of the region, the plight of that
country's ongoing years of conflict seem endless.
[read complete commentary]
|
|
LETTERS
Two Perspectives on the Greeneville-Ehime Maru Collision and the Role of Civilian Tours
by Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes
Toshi's View: The USS Greeneville was
providing an important service for the American public and the nation.
Civil-military interactions of this kind are conducive both to understanding a
professional military organization that has suffered several public relations disasters in
recent years and healing a deepening alienation from the mainstream American political
culture. Proper and meaningful civil-military relations can only be maintained through
constant contact and exposure.
Jim's View: Navy leaders
must avoid the temptation to cure the symptom, visits by distinguished
civilians, rather than the disease - a casual
attitude towards safety by officers and crews. Granted, the presence of
sixteen visitors in a small control room may have created an atmosphere of
confusion for the team on watch. But the Greenville didn't kill
nine innocent Japanese because there were VIPs on board. It killed nine
innocent Japanese because the captain and his crew were derelict in
obeying the safety regulations already in place for emergency surfacing.
[read complete commentary]
What Haiti
Needs Now
by Joseph Marcel-Saint Louis
 Haiti made a leap
backwards of approximately two centuries by, once again, naming a "parallel
president". A coalition among Haiti's political opposition parties, as a result of
contested legislative and presidential elections, named Gerard Gourgue "parallel
president" alongside Jean-Bertrand Aristide the elected president. In an atmosphere
of reciprocal non-recognition, their respective partisans have begun to fight one another
in a way that announces the coming civil war if an entente is not negotiated.
[read complete commentary]
|
