Word: aptness
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Foreign affairs seem particularly apt to bring out a presidential capacity for hypocrisy. Kindly William McKinley, who used U.S. troops to suppress the fledgling Philippine republic in 1898, said he had prayerfully searched his soul before deciding it was his duty to "civilize and Christianize" the Filipinos. Theodore Roosevelt, who encouraged an insurrection in the Colombian province of Panama so that he could build a canal through it, liked to consult with Attorney General Philander Knox about the legality of his various aggressions, but Knox was not the sternest of critics. "Ah, Mr. President," he asked on one occasion...
...closest allies from the days of a failed coup he staged in 1992 or from the early period of his government have dropped away from power or have become part of the opposition. When Chavez shuffles his cabinet - as he very often does - his new appointees can seem less apt to challenge...
...nominees for Best Picture with The Queen and The Departed. Other possibilities are the indie fave Little Miss Sunshine and the polyglot Babel, which was a surprise winner of the top Globe prize: Best Motion Picture - Drama. But Babel, whose story spans four countries and five languages, was as apt a choice by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes for the Globes, as the actor-laden, L.A.-set Crash was for last year's Oscar voters...
General Augusto Pinochet picked a symbolically apt moment to die. The former Chilean dictator succumbed Sunday at age 91 after suffering a massive coronary earlier this month while finally awaiting trial for the murders and torture that terrorized Chile in the wake of his 1973, U.S.-backed military coup. His passing comes near the end of a year in which the leftist political forces he worked so violently to expunge have swept back into power in presidential elections all over Latin America - including Chile, where socialist Michele Bachelet now rules. As a result, pundits from Mexico City to Buenos Aires...
...might argue that if the Arab dictators were deprived of the Great Excuse, they might begin to rule with greater concern for their constituents' needs. But why should they be allowed to wait--in the meantime cynically selling their people the Israel Myth--especially since the wait is apt to be long? The Baker commission is quite right in wanting to see sooner rather than later a viable Palestinian state. But the report's airy prescription for frog-marching Israelis and Palestinians into new peace talks perpetuates another persistent fiction: that U.S. involvement is the key to a breakthrough. That...