IN THE NEWS
Earlier, I wrote about how Bush's emphasis on freedom as a foreign policy objective has echoes of the Carter Administration. Ironically, many of the same people who now applaud Bush's crusading spirit earlier chided Carter for pursuing the same goals. Democracy, human rights, freedom--these are goals worth pursuing, but as Carter's conservative critics pointed out, they led to "incoherence" in foreign policy. Some countries we could squeeze for their human rights records; others, because of their strategic significance (like Saudi Arabia) or insignificance, were not worth either the risk or the payoff for US national security concerns.
The latest echo of this critique is Burma. As this article from Slate points out, the Burmese opposition might think that, based on the Bush Administration's public statements, the 101st Airborne Division will be arriving any day now to oust the tyrannical Burmese regime. Unfortunately for them, Burma falls within the "too insignificant to merit special attention" category, especially now that the price tag for the Iraq war has reached the $200 billion mark. Unfortunately for Americans, it only took a few days after the State of the Union address to point out how "incoherent" Bush's freedom doctrine is.
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