Excerpts of editorials from newspapers around the world:
Daily Telegraph
Sending humans to Mars
LONDON — How easy to be cynical about President Bush’s desire to put a man on Mars. How tempting to dismiss it as an election-year gimmick. After all, the project would cost hundreds of billions of dollars — a price that, like astronomical distances themselves, is not easy for the human brain to conceptualize. Robots are a far cheaper way to explore the solar system, and probes are currently en route, not only to Mars, but to the outer planets. In strictly practical terms, manned space missions make little sense.
But Americans, thank Heaven, do not always think in strictly practical terms. …
For 35 years, NASA has lacked the resources to attempt another moon landing, let alone try anything bigger. Yet no other country has the resources even to contemplate interplanetary travel. Mr. Bush’s plan recognizes that, as the unchallenged superpower, the United States has a responsibility to carry mankind’s loftiest ambitions. It would be nice if those who habitually dismiss the president as selfish and insular would for once acknowledge his largesse. … To begin such an endeavor at a time when the U.S. government is already running a large budget deficit is, in its way, heroic.
Irish Times
Decline of the greenback
DUBLIN — The decline of the U.S. dollar has been the main feature of international financial markets in recent months.
There are … clearly fundamental imbalances behind the dollar’s decline. To address these would first require some sign that the Bush administration has a long-term strategy to address its own budget deficit. This is unlikely to happen until after November’s presidential election. However, the more the United States relies on foreign capital to finance the excess of expenditure over income in its economy, the more vulnerable its markets — and its currency — become to any decline in investor confidence.
Sydney Morning Herald
Afghanistan’s new constitution
SYDNEY, Australia — At times, it looked like it could not be written. Yet, Afghanistan’s new constitution is about as fine a catalogue of ideals, principles and promises as could have been hoped for. Here is a document which defines a democratic Islamic state bound by the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a model which will be undoubtedly seized upon by the United States, in particular, as evidence that Islamic law and … modern democracy can, at least theoretically, coexist. …
Yet, there is no democratic tradition upon which to draw. The Soviet invasion of late 1979 turned the country into a Cold War battlefield. Washington funded Islamic “jihad” fighters to harass the occupying Soviet forces from the Pakistani border. … The U.S. military continues to tolerate warlords, because it wants their help to keep the Taliban at bay. …
The United States is keen to withdraw its forces and Secretary of State Colin Powell recently declared Washington wants “speed, speed, speed.” The precarious security situation inside Afghanistan demands a continued international military presence. … The United Nations’ special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, was wise to warn Mr. Powell that the road to reform must be “slow, slow, slow.”
Nation
Clan violence in Somalia
NAIROBI, Kenya — The clan warfare raging in Somalia has serious ramifications internally and on the neighboring countries. The neighbors have had to deal with an influx of refugees and the spillover of violence as weapons are smuggled across borders.
The ongoing Nairobi peace talks, though welcome, are the 14th time such discussions have been held. And this latest round which has lasted over a year is making pretty little progress.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the current head of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, couldn’t have put it better in his warning to the rival warlords that the international community is losing its patience.
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