Word: expectation
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...might expect from one of the world's most repressive regimes, the Burmese junta's version of democracy comes with plenty of catches. First, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader who has spent more than a decade under house arrest, will be barred from the 2010 elections because of a peculiar clause in the constitutional draft that disqualifies candidates who have family members who are foreigners. (Suu Kyi's husband, who died in 1999, was English, and her two sons hold British passports.) Second, despite several mentions of the word "democracy" - albeit always attached...
...Except that it isn't. In reality, it's just a bureaucratic shuffle and an exercise in political branding, a shout-out to interest groups as well as to an influential former rival who loves making impassioned statements about poverty. There's no reason to expect this new slot on an org chart to do any more to win the war on poverty than the creation of a cabinet-level drug czar 20 years ago did to win the war on drugs. Hillary suggested it would enhance accountability by making one person responsible for ending poverty: "No more excuses...
...Senator who mined this turf most profitably was ... Barack Obama (a surprise, since you never expect a presidential peacock to be succinct or acute enough in these bloviathons). Obama hit Petraeus and Crocker with an artful series of questions about the two main threats: Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran. He noted that al-Qaeda had been rejected by the Iraqi Sunnis and chased to the northern city of Mosul. If U.S. and Iraqi troops succeeded there, what was next? He proposed: "Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace of al-Qaeda...
...Obama asked Crocker about Iran: We couldn't expect Iran to have no influence in Iraq, could we? "We have no problem with a good, constructive relationship between Iran and Iraq," Crocker replied. "The problem is with the Iranian strategy of backing extremist militia groups and sending in weapons and munitions that are used against Iraqis and against our own forces." Obama then pursued Barbara Boxer's previous line of questioning: If Iran is such a threat to Iraq, why was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted with open arms and apparently a lot of official kissing in Baghdad last month...
That's not an admission you'd expect to hear from Mugabe. We need a new political and economic ethos in Zimbabwe. And for that, we need to develop a totally different paradigm in terms of what leadership means. I have known Mugabe for many years. [What he does not understand is] being firm does not have to mean that you are a dictator. Providing leadership does not mean you are not able to rule by consensus. We try to ensure we are democratic. We are also aware that at the end of the day, decisions have to be taken...