British PM to Address United Nations
ABC NewsBritish Prime Minister Gordon Brown planned to use a speech Tuesday at the United Nations to press countries, businesses and individuals to back ambitious plans to revive a stalled global development plan.
His call for a push on aid and diplomacy follows a two-day summit with President Bush, where the new British chief pledged support for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan and tough measures to tackle terrorism.
British officials have insisted Brown's foreign policy will be marked by his desire to mix the use of force and sanctions with backing for development and economic aid programs. Brown has called it a balance of "hard power and soft power."
His attempts to lead the international community in efforts to break an impasse on stalled world trade negotiations and on halting violence in Sudan's Darfur region are read by some as a bid to atone for predecessor Tony Blair's unpopular backing for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The New Prime Minister
It looks like Gordon Brown is proving to be a worthy successor to Tony Blair. Hopefully, his strong stance against genocide will rub off on the Presidential candidates who have said that they're unwilling to utilize U.S. troops to stop genocide in Darfur (Clinton and Obama) or are willing to pull U.S. troops from Iraq even if it causes genocide (Obama).
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5 comments:
Wait, so is Bush sending troops to Darfur?
No, he isn't, but he should be. The U.N. finally got around to sending troops, but it's still been three years since Colin Powell went to the U.N. and asked for something to be done.
Of course he should be.
Its not very partisan to point out that both Clinton and Obama would refuse to send troops to Darfur (with a negative connotation), and fail to mention that our current president refuses to do so as well.
non-partisan, i meant.
long day....
The difference between Bush's actions and the actions of Clinton and Obama, however, is that Bush hasn't said that he wouldn't send troops. Clinton and Obama have both said that under no circumstance would they send troops to Darfur. Obama one-uped the situation by stating that even if he was 100% certain that removing troops from Iraq would result in genocide, he'd go ahead and do it anyway.
Bush hasn't sent any so far, but he did ask Colin Powell to go to the U.N. to request U.N. resolutions on a peacekeeping force and hasn't categorically ruled out troops.
Has he done enough on the situation? Absolutely not. He hasn't categorically refused to do anything which, at least, is a tiny step ahead. In the next few months while they assemble the peacekeeping force, I'll be keeping a close eye to see if it has an American component. If it doesn't have at least 5,000 troops (20%) coming from the U.S., you can bet that I'll be castigating whomever is blocking that -- Republican or Democrat.
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