324. That's the number of days left for George W. Bush to deliver on his January pledge of a signed Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But what seemed like Bush's cockeyed optimism just weeks ago now verges on fantasy. With Israeli forces and Hamas fighters battling in Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday announced the suspension […]
Category: Foreign Policy
In a rare moment of humility, President Bush during this morning's press conference acknowledged that he knew little about Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Responding to NBC reporter David Greg's dubious assertion that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama seemed to know much about Medvedev, Bush owned up to his own ignorance, […]
Just yesterday, I documented George W. Bush's hilarious - and pathetic - history when it comes to Kosovo. Now with Serbian rioters storming the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, Bush's dubious grasp of the implications of an independent Kosovo doesn't seem so funny any more. That the United States would come to grief in the Balkans […]
Generations yet unborn will speak of the intellectual confusion of George W. Bush. But no issue may be more emblematic of President Bush's ongoing cognitive crises than Kosovo and the 1999 American intervention to end ethnic cleansing there. Speaking yesterday at, of all places, the Rwanda genocide museum, President Bush defended American inaction in Darfur, […]
On his five nation swing through Africa, President Bush once again revealed the two inescapable truths of his AIDS diplomacy. First, as I noted last May, Bush never hesitates to use AIDS funding to provide air cover in his failing struggle to sway global opinion. And second, even thousands of miles from home, George W. […]
While George W. Bush may be a recovering drinker, he apparently has now developed a gambling problem. Just 10 days into 2008, the Bush White House has placed big bets on everything from a Middle East peace treaty to the prospects for a U.S. recession, even his own popularity and legacy. Unfortunately, the odds are […]
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has given the White House hopefuls of both parties ample opportunities for grandstanding. While Hillary Clinton predictably played up her past relationship with Bhutto, John McCain touted his foreign policy experience. The co-chair of New Hampshire's Veterans for Rudy Giuliani declared his candidate would chase Muslims "back to their caves." […]
The similarities between President Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, it would appear, are seemingly endless. On Wednesday. Putin followed in Bush's footsteps as the 2007 recipient of the Time Man of the Year. And now, Putin too has grand plans to reap a financial windfall upon leaving office. As it turns out, though, […]
As Condoleezza Rice prepares to host the Middle East summit in Annapolis this week, her State Department has issued an updated historical timeline of American efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The timeline is a fascinating document both for what it reveals and what it leaves out. The rise of Hamas and its election victories […]
In Washington today, George W. Bush reinvigorated his counterproductive and anachronistic crusade against the Castro regime in Cuba. As the New York Times reports, President Bush used an address to an invitation-only audience of Cuban exiles to proclaim "the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one […]