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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Sep 10, 2006

War's heroes and villains: Two sides of the same coin

By Roger Pulvers

For two days, on Aug. 18 and 19, 1966, Australian soldiers fought a battle at the village of Long Tan in South Vietnam. Though vastly outnumbered, they held their ground. Subsequently, they were given medals for bravery by the then-government of South Vietnam; and in May 1968, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 9, 2006

Sisyphean war against a virtual enemy

PRAGUE -- Five years have passed since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of September 2001, yet it seems that policymakers have learned little about how terrorist cells operate, and what their weaknesses are. The Bush administration still uses the phrase "war on terror" and behaves as...

COMMENTARY

Sep 8, 2006

Recovery from failed policy

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- Some U.S. and British politicians argue that to tackle terrorism effectively human rights must be subject to increasing limitations. In wartime Britain (1939-45), human rights were curtailed and some innocent people were locked up. The British accepted this at the time as necessary to combat...

COMMENTARY

Sep 8, 2006

A faux debate to justify aggressive war

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush has faced surprisingly little serious opposition to his disastrous foreign policy. The left was divided over Iraq and many of those who opposed Bush did so for partisan or even personal reasons. Unfortunately, little has changed.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 7, 2006

Can the IMF avert a global meltdown?

By Kenneth Rogoff

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- When world financial leaders meet in Singapore this month for the joint World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings, they must confront one singularly important question: Is there any way to coax the IMF's largest members, especially the United States and China, to help...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 7, 2006

A.Q. Khan remains a hero in Pakistan

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- If there is one man who can be held singularly responsible for nuclear proliferation, it has to be Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Khan was a metallurgist before he became a nuclear businessman. That's what he was: He ran a "Nuclear Wal-Mart," according...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 6, 2006

Concept of war on terror plagued by weaknesses

By George Soros

PRAGUE -- Israel's failure to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One weakness is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause. In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel...

COMMENTARY

Sep 6, 2006

Japan fishing for trouble with Russia

By Gregory Clark

In a recent Sunday TV talk program, commentator, writer and former Japanese Cabinet minister Taiichi Sakaiya queried Foreign Minister Taro Aso about the recent incident involving the Russian capture of a Japanese fishing boat. The boat was caught poaching in Russian-controlled waters near the Habomai...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 5, 2006

Change needed at Yasukuni

By Hisahiko Okazaki

In the Washington Post article that ran on this page Aug. 22, "Much to-do about a shrine," conservative U.S. commentator George Will suggests that Shinzo Abe, the front-runner in the Liberal Democratic Party's presidential race, stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial for Japan's war dead, if he...

COMMENTARY

Sep 4, 2006

Declining sources of pride

By Keizo Nabeshima

The 9/11 terrorist attacks five years ago added a new page to world history, posing a new threat to global security. Following the attacks, the Bush administration in the United States demanded that the international community choose between democracy and dictatorship, between good and evil. Calling...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 4, 2006

Morality of boss's pay can't be legislated

By Raphael Hadas-Lebel

PARIS -- Ever since 2001, when France enacted a law requiring listed companies to reveal their executives' pay packages, newspapers have had a field day denouncing greedy bosses. Not only are fixed salaries revealed, but so are bonuses, fees for serving on boards of directors, returns on stock options,...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 4, 2006

India may finally embrace capitalism

By Christopher Lingle

ATLANTA -- For most of India's postcolonial era, the views guiding economic policy and those expressed by opinion makers reflected a deep-seated contempt for markets. Despite the failings of socialist economic policies at home and the successes of market reform elsewhere, India has been slow to embrace...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

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