Most discussions of foreign policy these days -- in print, on the web, and on radio and TV -- are consumed with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the possibility of war with Iran. To the extent that most Americans think about Africa at all, it is often as a place of chaos, violence, and disease, where the United States government and private citizens (like the two Bills, Gates and Clinton) are trying to do what they can to help despite steep odds. This view stereotypes an entire continent based on a list of admittedly intractable problems, but it gives little or no attention to positive activities undertaken by civil society groups in Africa.

As for our government, whatever motivation it may have to help address Africa's problems is rapidly being overwhelmed by a narrow military-driven agenda. My colleague Frida Berrigan has described Africa as the Bush administration's "third front" in the war on terror in her recent article for Foreign Policy in Focus.

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Is war with Iran inevitable? The short answer is no. My colleague Steve Clemons has a provocative article to this effect posted on today's front page of Salon. I agree with the thrust of the piece, although I will not go into the same level of depth provided in Steve's analysis.

The biggest bar that I see to war with Iran is that the U.S. military leadership is strongly opposed to it, whether in the form of air strikes or boots on the ground. The second major roadblock involves the cluster of potential negative consequences that such an ill-considered move would provoke, from increased Iraniann support for Hamas and Hezbollah to a dedicated effort by Tehran to get nuclear weapons as a possible bar to future U.S. military action.

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