U.S. NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY — A column of blue-gray smoke rose on the horizon Wednesday as we drove slowly up a winding road to what military officials here call the “Northeast Gate” — a heavily guarded opening in the line that separates this patch of U.S. soil from the rest of Cuba. The smoke column was a strange enough site to cause the mind to wander briefly from the fast-paced frenzy surrounding the creation of a special war crimes tribunal here, and the pending guilty plea of Australian detainee David Hicks (the fate and details of which are expected [...]
Charlie Rose Tuesday aired a couple of interesting conversations with Madeleine Albright and Newt Gingrich. He asked them what advice they would give the next president about U.S. foreign policy. One area of agreement: improve America’s image abroad, and learn to work better with other countries, where possible. Albright: “We have in many ways now come across as a bully.” “The biggest problems . . . are ones that require even a country as powerful as the United States to develop partnerships with other countries.” Gingrich: “We have to practice listening at levels we do not understand as a country.” [...]
Darfur activists are getting more muscular in their prescriptions for ending the genocide in Sudan. In a March 13 column, Nicholas Kristof documented this new zeitgeist. Assuming that such activists are well represented among Kristof readers, and judging by the feedback he received, it seems the lack of progress toward peace in Sudan has made Darfur watchers downright hawkish: Six weeks ago, I invited readers to send in their own suggestions for what we should do about Darfur, and the result was a deluge of proposals from all over the world. The common thread was a far more muscular approach. [...]
