This Week On America Abroad
This week on TPMCafe's America Abroad, the bloggers are talking about...
A Decision Comes Down In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
The Supreme Court's 5-3 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, declaring that the Bush Administration's plan to put detainees from Guantanamo Bay before military tribunals was outside the bounds of the law, sparked much discussion on America Abroad this week. Juliette Kayyem analyzed the possibilities for a Democratic response to the decision: "The Administration didn't predict Hamdan, but they deserve it. Their theories often ask the right questions -- who is covered by Geneva, what do we do with some of these folks, ought there be interrogation tactics that fall outside the Conventions -- but they consistently come up with the wrong answer. The burden on the Dems is not to deny the questions -- they are real, and they are important -- but to answer them in a better fashion." Meanwhile, Anne-Marie Slaughter hailed the decision. "Reading Hamdan made me very proud to be a lawyer...the detail of the opinion itself, the battling back and forth in the text and the footnotes on the precise meaning of statutes, precedents, and treaties is what the “rule of law” actually means."
Will Wounding Iran Ultimately Hurt the U.S.?
New blogger Rachel Kleinfed, the co-director of the Truman National Security Project, introduced herself this week and began by posting in opposition to Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon's proposal to take out some of Iran's nuclear program. "I was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, where one learns early that you don't annoy a bear--you shoot to kill, or you don't shoot at all if you plan on leaving the woods alive. As someone who has lived in, and dearly loves, Israel, I can't see how a strike that just wounds can possibly help that country--or ours...A wounded, angry Iran can strike back via five to ten different terrorist organizations they sponsor throughout that region--in Israel, and against our soldiers in Iraq. And they could still develop nuclear weapons afterward."
In Other News On America Abroad
* As trade negotiations collapsed in Geneva, Ernest Wilson criticized the Bush Administration for not taking the talks more seriously and tied the success of trade talks to the war on terrorism.
* Rachel Kleinfeld recommended Democracy: A Journal of Ideas as "a deeply needed venue for people of the left to hash out and fight over the foundational, intellectual ideas that should ground our belief system."
* Michael Levi referred readers to Joe Cirincione's commentary on the fall out with North Korea.
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July 11, 2006 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink