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Highlights This Month

With Fidel Castro stepping aside, it’s time for a bridge to Cuba

The Editorial Board, Austin-American-Statesman/TX

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

Now that Fidel Castro’s long, brutal reign over Cuba is ending, it’s time to begin the process of thawing America’s frozen relationship with the island nation.

It’s past time, really, to look for overtures from the new regime and respond to them favorably. Continuing the economic embargo only gives power to the repressive regime and hurts the Cuban people without helping this country one iota.

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Lisa Benson

The Children of Palestine and Israel are Cannon Fodder for the Rapture

For John Hagee, McCain's controversial 'spiritual guide,' dead children is the price one pays for rapture.

Robert Weitzel , Middle East Online

Robert Weitzel says that since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, over 1,000 Palestinian and Israeli children have been killed by bullets and bombs. According to Pastor John Hagee and his evangelical organization, Christians United For Israel, this is an acceptable -- if not desirable since a majority of the children were Muslim -- price to pay to bring about Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Hagee endorsed McCain's presidential bid, and McCain "was very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support."

*****

Safa Abu Saif, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl, was visiting a friend's apartment when the bullet fired from an Israeli rifle slammed into her chest, punching a gaping exit wound in her back. No ambulance could reach her because of the fighting. Safa died in her father's arms three hours after being shot.

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Five Years Later

According to interviews with detained members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the most powerful recruitment tool for Islamic extremists is ... the war itself.

Spencer Ackerman, The American Prospect

The Pentagon sponsored a conference call Monday (March 17) with a Air Force colonel named Donald Bacon in Baghdad, who presented what he characterized as the findings of a major effort to understand al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the United State's most implacable enemy in the war. These are the irreconcilables, the extremists, the bloodthirsty, the relentless; the ones who the president has promised will follow us home if they aren't defeated. The U.S. military command and the Bush administration have explained away AQI's tiny percentage within the Sunni insurgency by saying it is disproportionately dangerous, accounting for most of the suicide bombings and high-profile catastrophic attacks. And it's explained away the tiny proportion of foreigners within the mostly-Iraqi AQI by saying that the foreigners are both the organization's leadership and its suicide-bomber cadre.

So now the U.S. military command in Iraq has put together a new profile of the foreign cohort within AQI. It's based on debriefings of 48 foreign members of AQI currently in U.S. custody. In other words, Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), the proper name for the U.S. military leadership, wanted to spread the word about what its most-implacable foe really is. Here is what that enemy looks like. I'll call him Mr. AQI.

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Simanca Osmani: Iraq 5th Year Anniversary

Obama's Sweeping Foreign Policy Critique

• Barack Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. But will voters buy it?

• Democrats should not have to act like Republicans to pass some test on national security. It's time to end the politics of fear.

Spencer Ackerman, The American Prospect

When Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama met in California for the Jan. 31 debate, their back-and-forth resembled their many previous encounters, with the Democratic presidential hopefuls scrambling for the small policy yardage between them. And then Obama said something about the Iraq War that wasn't incremental at all. "I don't want to just end the war," he said, "but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place."

Until this point in the primaries, Clinton and Obama had sounded very similar on this issue. Despite their differences in the past (Obama opposed the war, while Clinton voted for it), both were calling for major troop withdrawals, with some residual force left behind to hedge against catastrophe. But Obama's concise declaration of intent at the debate upended this assumption. Clinton stumbled to find a counterargument, eventually saying her vote in October 2002 "was not authority for a pre-emptive war." Then she questioned Obama's ability to lead, saying that the Democratic nominee must have "the necessary credentials and gravitas for commander in chief."

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