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Stumbling around the world

"With Iraq sliding off a cliff, and now tugging another 20,000 young Americans along as well, it's worth wrestling with a larger question: Why is America so awful at foreign policy?

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize, dropped by the other day, and she made the same point with characteristic bluntness. "It amazes me that the United States, with all its scientific accomplishments, is so shortsighted in its foreign policy," she noted.

It is pathetic. We can go safely to the moon but not to Anbar Province. We can peer into the farthest reaches of the universe, but we fail to notice (until it's too late) that many Iraqis loathe us. We produce movies that delight audiences all over the world, but we can't devise a foreign policy that anybody likes."

So starts an insightful piece by Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times and re-produced in the IHT. It's a balanced and objective assessment, by an American, on why the US just doesn't seem to get it right when it comes to matters of foreign policy around the globe.

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