— President Obama in a White House Statement accepting Susan Rice’s Withdrawal for Consideration for Secretary of State.
![The Future of Conservative Foreign Policy
The Republican Party needs a new message on foreign policy that is true to the conservative principles of the base and yet has a broad appeal to the American public. It so happens that one already exists, has a proven track record of electoral success, and is only slightly used: the ”humble foreign policy” that candidate George W. Bush espoused during the 2000 campaign but abandoned with the Global War on Terror and the Iraq invasion.
Bush’s wisdom during the October 12, 2000 debates is striking in hindsight. “If we’re an arrogant nation,” he warned, “they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that’s why we’ve got to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.”
Now, to a large degree, that’s platitude rather than policy prescription. But it’s the right mindset from which to approach policy analysis.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdqxdl9NVd1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
The Future of Conservative Foreign Policy
The Republican Party needs a new message on foreign policy that is true to the conservative principles of the base and yet has a broad appeal to the American public. It so happens that one already exists, has a proven track record of electoral success, and is only slightly used: the ”humble foreign policy” that candidate George W. Bush espoused during the 2000 campaign but abandoned with the Global War on Terror and the Iraq invasion.
Bush’s wisdom during the October 12, 2000 debates is striking in hindsight. “If we’re an arrogant nation,” he warned, “they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that’s why we’ve got to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.”
Now, to a large degree, that’s platitude rather than policy prescription. But it’s the right mindset from which to approach policy analysis.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
In Focus: Afghanistan, September 2012: The End of the Surge
In the month of September 2012, the United States completed its withdrawal of the 33,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan in the “surge” of 2009. However, the U.S. still has 86,000 troops engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom, even as some coalition members are now finishing up their deployments. Also this month, coalition troops have curtailed joint operations with Afghan Army and police forces, due to increased attacks on foreign soldiers by members of the Afghan forces — and heightened tensions resulting from widespread anger over an anti-Islam movie produced in the U.S. Gathered here are images of those involved in this conflict over the past month, as part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.
See more. [Images: Reuters/AFP/Getty Images, AP]
![Targeted Killing, Pro and Con: What to Make of Obama’s Afghan Drone Policy?
Is there a better alternative to drone strikes for counterterrorism in northwest Pakistan?
[…]Looking at how residents in the FATA have behaved in other violent campaigns is instructive. In early 2009, the Pakistani Army announced its campaign to “clear” the Swat Valley, north of Islamabad, of terrorist groups that had been systematically murdering elders and tribal policemen and destroying hundreds of schools and other government buildings. As the campaign proceeded, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 300,000 people fled the fighting. By the end of the campaign, more than 1 million people got displaced by the army-Taliban fighting in Swat, which left the region completely devastated.
There have been no reported mass movements of people fleeing the drones in the last four years. The mere threat of a Pakistani army offensive into Waziristan, however, prompts thousands to flee in terror. There are several possible explanations: for example, people in heavily affected drone areas might be terrified to leave their houses.
But there is a simpler explanation: Perhaps drones are not as scary as opponents claim.
Read more. [Image: Ho New/Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mayqkbYjNK1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Targeted Killing, Pro and Con: What to Make of Obama’s Afghan Drone Policy?
Is there a better alternative to drone strikes for counterterrorism in northwest Pakistan?
[…]Looking at how residents in the FATA have behaved in other violent campaigns is instructive. In early 2009, the Pakistani Army announced its campaign to “clear” the Swat Valley, north of Islamabad, of terrorist groups that had been systematically murdering elders and tribal policemen and destroying hundreds of schools and other government buildings. As the campaign proceeded, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 300,000 people fled the fighting. By the end of the campaign, more than 1 million people got displaced by the army-Taliban fighting in Swat, which left the region completely devastated.
There have been no reported mass movements of people fleeing the drones in the last four years. The mere threat of a Pakistani army offensive into Waziristan, however, prompts thousands to flee in terror. There are several possible explanations: for example, people in heavily affected drone areas might be terrified to leave their houses.
But there is a simpler explanation: Perhaps drones are not as scary as opponents claim.
Read more. [Image: Ho New/Reuters]
![A Glimpse of the Real Romney Foreign Policy Approach
If the foreign-policy controversy currently engulfing the campaign is just a matter of timing and propriety, it’s not a particularly revealing contrast between the candidates. The real question is what substantive critique lies behind Romney’s criticism, and what it tells us about how he would conduct foreign policy differently. And here, beneath the campaigns’ petty back-and-forth, there is a real and revealing debate to be discerned[…]
To Obama and his team, the best leadership is cautious, thoughtful, and situationally based. To Romney, true leadership means being at the front of every parade. It means reacting with clarity, certainty and a ringing reiteration of American strength to every crisis, a certainty born of underlying ideals so secure that it is not altered by intervening events or changing facts on the ground.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maatsbiA4x1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
A Glimpse of the Real Romney Foreign Policy Approach
If the foreign-policy controversy currently engulfing the campaign is just a matter of timing and propriety, it’s not a particularly revealing contrast between the candidates. The real question is what substantive critique lies behind Romney’s criticism, and what it tells us about how he would conduct foreign policy differently. And here, beneath the campaigns’ petty back-and-forth, there is a real and revealing debate to be discerned[…]
To Obama and his team, the best leadership is cautious, thoughtful, and situationally based. To Romney, true leadership means being at the front of every parade. It means reacting with clarity, certainty and a ringing reiteration of American strength to every crisis, a certainty born of underlying ideals so secure that it is not altered by intervening events or changing facts on the ground.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
![The Real Roots of Sexism in the Middle East (It’s Not Islam, Race, or ‘Hate’)
Picture a woman in the Middle East, and probably the first thing that comes into your mind will be the hijab. You might not even envision a face, just the black shroud of the burqa or theniqab. Women’s rights in the mostly Arab countries of the region are among the worst in the world, but it’s more than that. As Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy writes in a provocative cover story for Foreign Policy, misogyny has become so endemic to Arab societies that it’s not just a war on women, it’s a destructive force tearing apart Arab economies and societies. But why? How did misogyny become so deeply ingrained in the Arab world?
As Maya Mikdashi once wrote, “Gender is not the study of what is evident, it is an analysis of how what is evident came to be.” That’s a much tougher task than cataloging the awful and often socially accepted abuses of women in the Arab world. But they both matter, and Eltahawy’s lengthy article on the former might reveal more of the latter than she meant.
There are two general ways to think about the problem of misogyny in the Arab world. The first is to think of it as an Arab problem, an issue of what Arab societies and people are doing wrong. “We have no freedoms because they hate us,” Eltahawy writes, the first of many times she uses “they” in a sweeping indictment of the cultures spanning from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. “Yes: They hate us. It must be said.”
But is it really that simple? If that misogyny is so innately Arab, why is there such wide variance between Arab societies? Why did Egypt’s hateful “they” elect only 2 percent women to its post-revolutionary legislature, while Tunisia’s hateful “they” elected 27 percent, far short of half but still significantly more than America’s 17 percent? Why are so many misogynist Arab practices as or more common in the non-Arab societies of sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia? After all, nearly every society in history has struggled with sexism, and maybe still is. Just in the U.S., for example, women could not vote until 1920; even today, their access to basic reproductive health care is backsliding. We don’t think about this as an issue of American men, white men, or Christian men innately and irreducibly hating women. Why, then, should we be so ready to believe it about Arab Muslims?
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m31webHzzB1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
The Real Roots of Sexism in the Middle East (It’s Not Islam, Race, or ‘Hate’)
Picture a woman in the Middle East, and probably the first thing that comes into your mind will be the hijab. You might not even envision a face, just the black shroud of the burqa or theniqab. Women’s rights in the mostly Arab countries of the region are among the worst in the world, but it’s more than that. As Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy writes in a provocative cover story for Foreign Policy, misogyny has become so endemic to Arab societies that it’s not just a war on women, it’s a destructive force tearing apart Arab economies and societies. But why? How did misogyny become so deeply ingrained in the Arab world?
As Maya Mikdashi once wrote, “Gender is not the study of what is evident, it is an analysis of how what is evident came to be.” That’s a much tougher task than cataloging the awful and often socially accepted abuses of women in the Arab world. But they both matter, and Eltahawy’s lengthy article on the former might reveal more of the latter than she meant.
There are two general ways to think about the problem of misogyny in the Arab world. The first is to think of it as an Arab problem, an issue of what Arab societies and people are doing wrong. “We have no freedoms because they hate us,” Eltahawy writes, the first of many times she uses “they” in a sweeping indictment of the cultures spanning from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. “Yes: They hate us. It must be said.”
But is it really that simple? If that misogyny is so innately Arab, why is there such wide variance between Arab societies? Why did Egypt’s hateful “they” elect only 2 percent women to its post-revolutionary legislature, while Tunisia’s hateful “they” elected 27 percent, far short of half but still significantly more than America’s 17 percent? Why are so many misogynist Arab practices as or more common in the non-Arab societies of sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia? After all, nearly every society in history has struggled with sexism, and maybe still is. Just in the U.S., for example, women could not vote until 1920; even today, their access to basic reproductive health care is backsliding. We don’t think about this as an issue of American men, white men, or Christian men innately and irreducibly hating women. Why, then, should we be so ready to believe it about Arab Muslims?
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
![Robert Wright on Newsweek and Foreign Policy
Actually, the only clash here is over which part of the woman should be covered in black and which part should be exposed—and on this issue the two magazines are completely at odds. They are in broad agreement about how to get people to pay attention to your magazine.
I wonder how these covers affect how the cover stories—Newsweek’s by Katie Roiphe and FP’s by Mona Eltahawy—are being received. Eltahawy’s is a particularly interesting case. Her piece is a passionate indictment of the way women are treated in Arab countries. And I would imagine that some of the people in those countries who most resist her message might try to use the cover to discredit it. (Though it’s hard to tell in this thumbnail image, the woman is covered only by paint, and the lower part of her breast is visible.) Then again, there’s an Arabic edition of FP, and it wouldn’t shock me if its cover has a different look.
[Images: Newsweek, Foreign Policy]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m31mp4cK7n1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Robert Wright on Newsweek and Foreign Policy
Actually, the only clash here is over which part of the woman should be covered in black and which part should be exposed—and on this issue the two magazines are completely at odds. They are in broad agreement about how to get people to pay attention to your magazine.
I wonder how these covers affect how the cover stories—Newsweek’s by Katie Roiphe and FP’s by Mona Eltahawy—are being received. Eltahawy’s is a particularly interesting case. Her piece is a passionate indictment of the way women are treated in Arab countries. And I would imagine that some of the people in those countries who most resist her message might try to use the cover to discredit it. (Though it’s hard to tell in this thumbnail image, the woman is covered only by paint, and the lower part of her breast is visible.) Then again, there’s an Arabic edition of FP, and it wouldn’t shock me if its cover has a different look.
[Images: Newsweek, Foreign Policy]
Inside Colin Powell’s Decision to Declare Genocide in Darfur
In September 2004, then-U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, became the first member of any U.S.administration to apply the label “genocide” to an ongoing conflict. Interviews I conducted for Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide revealed that despite a thorough investigation into the atrocities in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, the legal advice given to Powell was that the resulting evidence (on which he based his genocide determination) was inconclusive. Now a newly declassified State Department memorandum sheds further light on why Powell nonetheless decided to label the situation in Darfur genocide.
Read more of Rebecca Hamilton’s excellent report in The Atlantic
In one of the film’s stupidest choices, Nick ends up in a sanitarium after Gatsby’s death. His pure...
an autobiography
Attention All Photography Enthusiasts
Voting for our annual photo contest ends today! Browse through 50 stunning finalists and pick your...
The loss of the Fung Wah bus service between Boston and New York inspired this parody: http://nyr.kr/XGaaWx
Lyrics and performance by Marc...
Cinemas.
In Nairobi Slum, Finding Safety In A Public Bathroom
by Julienne Gage“Step into Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera slum and it’s...
Here’s today’s Daily GIF!
![Why the Afghan Surge Was a Failure, In One Chart
[Image: NATO via Wired]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb0pwhEs231qcokc4o1_1280.png)