Word: prism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Obviously, 9/11--when the U.S. was attacked from Afghanistan, a terrorist-infested basket case--changed things. But while the Bush Administration turned its attention to the Middle East, it kept the same basic prism seeing terrorism as the product of (allegedly) rising, threatening powers like Iraq and Iran...
...Saddam Iraq.) The weak-state concept also makes Democratic foreign policy broader than its Republican equivalent. In Bush-esque speeches this spring, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani tried--unconvincingly--to cram virtually all of American foreign policy into the war on terror. Weak states, by contrast, offer Democrats a prism that isn't confined to the Islamic world...
...shifting dynamics of the fighting in Darfur illustrate why the prism through which the war is commonly explained--ethnic animosity between Arabs and blacks--may be less applicable than other factors, including the environment. Because of Darfur's harsh, dry terrain, the region's Arab herders and its non-Arab farmers have had to work together in the past: the farmers allowed the herders' livestock on their land in exchange for goods such as milk and meat. As resources become more scarce, that history of cooperation may help persuade some local Arabs and non-Arabs to join forces against...
...much of the democratic foreign policy establishment, that's still the prism--look at Obama's push for U.N. or even NATO intervention in Darfur, or Edwards' tough talk about Vladimir Putin's rollback of democracy in Russia. Blairism, at its heart, is optimistic. It assumes that the U.S., working with its allies, can make other countries freer, healthier and richer. It assumes those countries will generally want our help. Above all, it assumes that the key to U.S. security is building a world that looks more like us. Blairism may be less militaristic than neoconservatism, but it's still...
...wish he wouldn't. In theory, thinking about your legacy should be humbling. But in Bush's case, it's making him increasingly reckless. Bush knows that historians will see him through the prism of Iraq: if the war is a failure, so is he. So he's paying any price to win. Were he focused on the present, he might see that the war is already lost. Instead, he's gazing over the horizon, trying to dig himself out of his Iraq hole and making it ever deeper as a result...