[Editorial] Act of courage

It must undoubtedly have been humiliating to President Lee Myung-bak to abandon one of his campaign promises ― building a new international airport. On the other hand, it was an act of courage, given that his administration did so at the risk of a voter revolt.On Wednesday, the Lee administration scrapped a plan to construct an international airport in South Gyeongsang Province. A viable alternati

March 31, 2011

U.S. president makes his case on Libya

Before President Obama’s address to the nation about Libya, three questions about U.S. involvement there loomed large: Why, among all the places with vulnerable civilian populations, did the U.S. and its allies choose to intervene in Libya? Was the mission designed to prevent civilian suffering or to topple Moammar Gadhafi? How (and how quickly) would the U.S. extricate itself from this engagement

March 31, 2011

[Doyle McManus] Obama’s nuanced call to arms

The Obama administration says the goals of its bombing campaign in Libya are crystal clear, but it has tied itself in knots trying to explain them.This isn’t a war, White House spokesman Jay Carney said last week, “it’s a time-limited, scope-limited military action.”“What we are doing is enforcing a (United Nations) resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan peop

March 31, 2011

[Dick Polman] The left goes to war

I wonder how many liberals would’ve voted for Barack Obama if he had stumped the nation with this campaign vow:“We’re fighting two wars, but as president I pledge to change that policy by ordering up a third. And I will do so by exercising the prerogatives of the imperial presidency. George W. Bush felt it was necessary to get congressional authorization for the war in Iraq, but I will do him one

March 31, 2011

[William Pesek] Amish life in Tokyo will cause backlash

What’s up with the blue jackets?This is suddenly the question I’m getting when speaking with folks overseas or reading my emails. It’s not whether I feel safe, or if I’m drinking Tokyo’s radioactive tap water or if I plan to make a beeline out of the Fukushima zone. It’s why, oh why, are Japanese leaders dressed like auto mechanics?It’s to show, of course, they are in full-blown crisis-management

March 31, 2011

[Marifeli Perez-Stable] Latin America scores high on ‘happiness’ index

Life satisfaction ― commonly known as happiness ― is what it’s all about. What makes us happy is another matter altogether. The adage that money can’t buy happiness, it turns out, is mostly wrong.If by money we mean luxury cars, McMansions and exquisite jewelry, then there might be some truth to it. If, on the other hand, we mean individual and national well-being, money does buy us happiness.In T

March 30, 2011

Questions about president’s wartime powers

Did President Obama break the law when he ordered U.S. planes to bomb Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya? Some critics think so. But as with all discussions of the wartime powers of Congress and the president, the law is less clear than partisans would like to admit.The principal legal argument against Obama is that he should have obtained a declaration of war or its equivalent from Congress. But e

March 30, 2011

Manufacturers must lead Japan’s recovery

Many automobile and electric appliance makers have been forced to suspend output as their production centers were crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that hit the Pacific coast of the Tohoku and Kanto regions.The road to full recovery from the disaster will be bumpy, but the manufacturing industry must play the role of a locomotive to drive the national economy. Manufacturers are urged

March 30, 2011

[Simon Johnson] Maestro nurtures a new too-big-to-fail crisis

Just tell the government to back off and all will be fine. That’s what former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan seems to say in “Activism,” an article published in the Spring issue of International Finance available on the Council on Foreign Relations’ website. “Current government activism is hampering what should be a broad-based robust economic recovery,” he writes. If we follow his advice

March 30, 2011

[Kevin Hassett] Fed seat stalemate leaves diamond in the rough

If a modern-day Aesop were to write a fable that illustrates the essential character of the American government, he could model it on the story of Peter Diamond.Of the 67 winners of the Nobel Prize in economics, only a handful could be considered giants, thinkers whose names will echo in the halls of academia centuries from now. Diamond, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is

March 30, 2011

[Matthew Lynn] Portuguese bailout costs more than money alone

Is it 50 billion euros? Or perhaps 70 billion euros? The cost of bailing out Portugal varies according to who makes the calculation. No one will know the real price until officials from the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank tell us.But it isn’t the actual amount that counts. It is the price the euro area is paying for having a single currency.And on that measure, a rescue p

March 29, 2011

Multilateralism prevails in Libya calculation

Unlike the Iraq war, which smacked of go-it-alone cowboyism, the Libyan intervention has been for the most part a multilateralist’s dream: an idealistic granola bar of an operation, carefully orchestrated to win broad support from nations around the world. Not only did President Obama seek and receive the blessing of the U.N. Security Council, the Arab League and many of America’s traditional alli

March 29, 2011

[Albert R. Hunt] Only Gadhafi’s ouster defines success in Libya

Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich raises the possibility of impeaching President Barack Obama for aggressive air strikes against Libya, while Mitt Romney, a potential Republican presidential candidate, says the policy shows the commander in chief to be “tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced.”Obama can brush aside these criticisms. Every modern president would have been impeached under Kuci

March 29, 2011

[William Pesek] Kim Jong-il knows what he can do with $500,000

The more someone purports to know what’s in Kim Jong-il’s mind, the more skeptical you should be. What about the North Korean dictator’s heart?This question is much on the minds of Japanese after Kim donated $500,000 to help their nation deal with a record earthquake and tsunami. The gesture is as fascinating as its timing. It came on the same day a United Nations agency said Kim urgently needs ab

March 29, 2011