Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
April 9
Chicago Tribune, on Obama’s surge:
For years, Afghanistan has been The Other War. The one overshadowed by Iraq. The one that Americans thought they’d won years ago. The one that NATO was supposed to be leading.
Now, as the Iraq war recedes, Afghanistan takes center stage. And here is the central paradox of this war: NATO is winning every battle. Yet it is losing the war. …
President Barack Obama recently announced a new strategy that borrowed heavily from the successful “surge” that quelled violence and tipped the balance in Iraq. He said the U.S. would send 21,000 troops, including 4,000 to help train the Afghan army and police. …
Obama’s surge is a canny move. As in Iraq, it isn’t just about more troops on the ground, but finding the right pressure points _ not all of them military _ to quell the insurgents and bolster elected leaders.
Just as important, the U.S. must set some clear benchmarks for progress, as President Bush did in Iraq. That means clear, measurable goals and regular public reports on progress. President Obama promises those benchmarks. The sooner he delivers, the better.
Obama intends to win this war. But what about America’s NATO allies? While America troop levels soar to about 68,000 by the end of the year NATO essentially stands pat. It is fielding a force of about 32,000 non-American soldiers in Afghanistan.
That means what has been a European-predominant force will become an overwhelmingly American one.
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On the Net:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0409edit1apr09,0,4910569.story
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April 14
The Cincinnati Enquirer, on the rescue of a U.S. captain and crew from Somali pirates:
The rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates Sunday was an exercise in basic sovereignty. …
Piracy is not a dispute between nations. It is not a problem to be resolved by diplomacy between disagreeing parties. And history has certainly shown it is not a problem that goes away by paying the ransoms demanded by the pirates. Piracy is an act of international lawlessness. Negotiating with pirates makes as much sense as negotiating with a mugger.
President Barack Obama followed the correct action earlier in the weekend when he approved operations by Navy Special Forces to take whatever action was necessary if it appeared Phillips’ life was in danger. …
Somalia, a strategically placed land with little in the way of an effective central government, has become a haven for pirate activity in recent years. Small, fast motorboats move in on unarmed civilian vessels and overpower the civilian crews. …
… Obama promised Monday to work with other nations “to halt the rise of piracy” that now threatens shipping off the Horn of Africa. Naval vessels from several other nations have been patrolling near Somalia, but coordinated, forceful action is needed to eliminate the threat.
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On the Net:
https://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090414/EDIT01/304150005/1019/EDIT
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April 14
The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, on the need for President Barack Obama to tackle immigration reform:
Adding to an already ambitious first-year legislative agenda, President Barack Obama is going to push ahead with immigration reform, hoping to succeed where President George W. Bush failed. …
Obama has promised to secure the borders with more agents and better technology and to reduce the incentive to sneak across the border by reforming the “dysfunctional” immigration bureaucracy that forces would-be legal entrants to wait years to enter the United States.
The most controversial provision is likely the path to citizenship, allowing illegal immigrants to “come out of the shadows” by paying a fine, learning English and going to the back of the line for citizenship. …
Politically, this is perhaps not the most opportune time to tackle immigration. With the economy in recession, advocates on different sides of the debate said that immigration could become a polarizing issue in a year when Obama has other major battles to fight. …
Bush’s experience, when the economy was good and his party controlled both houses of Congress, shows that there is no really right time.
But the only excuse for not acting on immigration reform is if Congress and the country find the status quo _ 12 million illegal immigrants _ acceptable.
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On the Net:
https://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/apr/14/immigration-issue-not-going-away/
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April 11
The Denver Post, on electronic health records:
President Obama’s announcement this past week that his administration will beef up care for veterans and create comprehensive electronic health records for them is a step forward for those who have protected this country.
It’s also an opportunity for the country to test drive the reform ideas the president sees as central to healing the nation’s broken health care system.
A transition to e-health records will be a complicated and expensive task, but projected efficiencies and improvements in health care quality make the idea worthy of exploration. …
As the drive toward digitizing health care records has gained momentum in recent years, so too have concerns about patient privacy.
Any time there is easy access to vast stores of personal information, there is a risk of that access being abused.
Patients must retain control over the privacy of their records no matter how the system ultimately is configured and Congress must ensure measures are in place to offer privacy protections.
As it stands, American hospitals and doctors’ offices have been slow to go electronic, and the main holdup is money. It is enormously expensive to buy such a system.
The president’s stimulus plan, which includes money for the transition both in the veterans system and the private sector, will push such change.
Even though the president has encouraged the development of an encompassing e-health care record system, it’s clear such a reality is a long way off.
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On the Net:
https://www.denverpost.com/editorials/ci_12118979
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April 13
Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, on Congress and the budget:
Before departing for the Easter recess, the U.S. House and Senate approved budget plans, each calling for roughly $3.5 trillion in federal spending in the coming fiscal year. Predictably, Republicans cudgeled the Democratic proposals. …
Worth attention is that the increased spending seeks to protect the economy, the federal government making up (temporarily) for declining economic output. If anything, this is a responsible course, an effort to cushion the recessionary blow. …
By Washington standards, the president proposed a refreshingly honest budget. If its assumptions about economic growth are optimistic, the White House didn’t duck the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or pretend that the Alternative Minimum Tax would not be adjusted to protect many taxpayers.
Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill haven’t been as candid. …
When Congress returns from its break, Democrats will begin reconciling differences between the House and Senate plans. They might try reconciling with reality. Yes, Republicans howled about fiscal carelessness and then touted new tax cuts. Democrats shouldn’t pretend the president’s ambitious agenda permits so much room for the usual sleight of hand.
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On the Net:
https://www.ohio.com/editorial/opinions/42889132.html
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April 13
San Antonio Express-News, on Congress and farm cuts:
With government bailouts generating so much populist anger, at least one area has been excluded from outrage _ agriculture.
The question is why?
In hard times, it’s now conceivable for the government to provide some form of assistance to failing businesses. But thriving industries that put out their hands make a mockery of the system.
Call it welfare for the rich.
Most of the subsidies go to large farm operations with annual incomes averaging more than $230,000, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.
President Barack Obama tried and failed to do something about it recently, crafting a plan to prohibit “direct payments” to farms with annual gross receipts exceeding $500,000.
What seemed like an eminently fair and sensible proposal was too draconian for the powerful farm lobby and the lawmakers who bow before it.
In both the House and Senate, lawmakers from farm states argued against the limits, saying that the president went too far in his efforts to scale back the subsidies. …
In the end, White House officials acknowledged the plan may have been too “ambitious,” although it represents a sad state of affairs when prudence and common sense are regarded as overreaching. …
As those conversations evolve, politicians must realize that the American voters are the true “stakeholders,” and that their rage can spread to those beyond Wall Street.
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On the Net:
https://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion
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April 10
The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, on former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens:
Based on what is known about Ted Stevens’ conduct, the Alaskan didn’t deserve to be re-elected to his seat in the U.S. Senate. But even more importantly, based on what is now known about the conduct of the federal prosecutors who secured a corruption verdict against him last year, he didn’t deserve to be convicted, either.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the conviction based on prosecutors’ admission that they botched the case. …
And then the judge took the highly unusual step of ordering a criminal investigation of those prosecutors. He was right on both counts. …
The only good to come out of this episode is that the country’s new attorney general, Eric Holder, voluntarily revealed the Justice Department’s failure to abide by the rules and moved to drop the charges. That’s a good sign for Americans who were appalled at the Bush administration’s politicization of the Justice Department. Oddly, though, it was Bush’s Justice Department that prosecuted Stevens who, like the former president, is a Republican. …
The prosecutors who handled the trial were removed from the case. Sullivan called their behavior “outrageous” and held them in contempt in February.
Outrageous hardly begins to cover it. If the Justice Department will illegally prosecute a U.S. senator of the president’s own party, then who among us can be safe?
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On the Net:
https://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/editorials/story/635641.html
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April 15
Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal, on filing taxes and the federal tax code:
Today, millions of Americans will file their taxes. They are not only funding the federal government, they have already shouldered a second tax burden, the cost of determining how much they must pay.
From the homeowner who pays $50 for software to compute his taxes, to the small business forced to hire an accountant, to the corporations that have to hire legions of tax attorneys, American families and businesses spend billions each year just to figure out their taxes. …
The need for taxes is understandable. It takes money to run the government. Taxpayers may not like the reality, but they understand the necessity of some taxes. This second burden is completely unnecessary.
We face this tremendous expense because of the monstrous complexity of the federal tax code. That code is 6.7 million words, and it changes all the time. There were 500 changes made last year. …
Congress needs to replace the federal tax code with a simpler system that doesn’t impose a massive burden on taxpayers. Americans realize they have to fund the government, but they shouldn’t have to pay billions on top of that burden just to determine their tax bill.
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On the Net:
https://www.goupstate.com/section/opinion
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April 13
The Times, London, on the political crisis in Thailand:
Few governments have ever suffered the humiliation of having to airlift visiting foreign leaders out of the country to protect them from mobs. The cancellation of the 16-nation summit of the Association of SouthEast Asian nations in Thailand at the weekend is not only a national embarrassment; it is a potentially fatal blow to the credibility of the Government, brought low by the tactics that its own supporters used only six months ago to overthrow their rivals. …
The red-shirted demonstrators who stormed the summit venue in Pattaya, unchecked by police or security forces, are not the only ones to blame for the current mayhem. … From the start of the latest street protests a week ago, the Government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the British-born Prime Minister, has appeared at a loss. …
Mr. Abhisit called for tough action against the protesters. But he found the police and the Army unwilling, as they had been during the airport blockade in November, to intervene. The demand yesterday by his deputy that they “fully and forcefully carry out their job” only underlined the Government’s impotence. …
Thailand is an important Western ally. Its democracy, however chaotic, has been a beacon in a region where repressive governments have often been the norm. The last three years, however, have seen an erosion of tolerance. Street demonstrators may think they are battling for freedom and justice. The danger is that they may be heralding the extinction of both.
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On the Net:
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6083383.ece
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April 15
Stavanger Aftenbladet, Stavanger, Norway, on the rescue of an American sea captain held by pirates off Somalia:
The Americans have a new hero, and President Barack Obama can bask in the glow of a successful rescue action. It is good that it turned out well. Had the action gone wrong and the American sea captain been killed by pirates, the pipe of public opinion would have been playing a different tune.
There is also a risk that the action can affect the more than 200 hostages currently being held prisoner by Somali pirates, and cause the pirates to respond to American challenges by getting better weapons and equipment.
Obama has promised to stop the steadily increasing pirate activity. But how? More naval ships in the area and a more active pursuit of the pirates is a possibility. Weapons aboard the merchant ships that sail in the area are also being discussed. That is probably a dangerous solution. What about convoys through the waters?
The real solution in on land: Building up Somali’s authorities and economy. It will take time, but there are places to start.
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On the Net:
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April 9
Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on Israel’s new government:
Israel’s new coalition government is headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the hawkish Likud Party and a pronounced hard-liner on the Palestine issue. His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, heads the far-right Yisrael Beitenu Party. These developments raise concerns about the future of the Middle East.
The establishment of a Palestinian state is the fundamental premise of Mideast peace talks, but Netanyahu refuses to even mention it. …
Foreign Minister Lieberman is a vocal proponent of expelling all ethnic Arabs _ Palestinians _ from Israel.
We cannot but feel that Israel’s new government is going against the global current. …
Obviously, it is impossible to envision security in this region without factoring in Israel’s concerns. Still, we could never condone any extreme hard-line national security policy by the Netanyahu government of the sort that led to the invasion of the Gaza Strip late last year. …
Everyone must work harder to soften the international environment surrounding Israel and urge Tel Aviv to return to a pacifist stance.
For that, the international community must recognize Hamas in one way or another. Hamas, after all, is a democratically elected majority power. In both Israel and Palestine, hard-liners have the support of their respective voters. We have no choice but to accept this.
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On the Net:
https://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200904090070.html
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April 10
Jerusalem Post, President Barack Obama’s dealings with the Middle East:
… (President Barack) Obama has returned to Washington after his most significant trip abroad since taking office. …
On the issues that most concern Israelis, paramount among them Teheran’s nuclear ambitions, Obama reiterated that he had “made it clear to the people and leaders” of Iran “that the United States seeks engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. Now, Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people.” …
Obama has been convinced _ partly by venerable cold warriors such as Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger _ that it might be easier to garner international support for stopping pariah states from going nuclear if the U.S. shows a willingness to sharply reduce its own atomic arsenal. …
Thus far into his presidency, it’s already apparent that Obama seeks to harness idealism with pragmatism. Yet if the G-20 (on the economic crisis), NATO (on Afghanistan-Pakistan) and Russia (on Iran) remain unmoved by appeals to multilateralism, expect Obama, like (former President Franklin D.) Roosevelt, to go with whatever works.
What this means for Israel in pursuit of its highest national interest, blocking Iran from fielding a nuclear bomb, is that Binyamin Netanyahu needs to convince Obama that doing anything short of stopping the mullahs would be dangerously reckless.
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On the Net:
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