New York Times
President Bush wasted little time in naming Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor, to replace Henry Kissinger as chairman of the 10-member commission charged with reviewing the government's handling of terrorist threats before the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Kean should prove an able steward of the commission.
Mr. Kean, the president of Drew University, is a moderate Republican known for his integrity and independence. These traits help offset his lack of experience on national security matters. Other commission members, and their staff, will be more familiar than Mr. Kean with the ins and outs of America's intelligence-gathering agencies. But if this commission, which can exercise its subpoena power only when six members vote to do so, is to engage in credible fact-finding of its own on behalf of the American people, its chairman must quickly set a tone of unyielding independence, despite the fact that half its members are appointed by each party.
Mr. Kean seems well suited for that challenge. So is the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, a former congressman and longtime student of foreign affairs. The commission would be further strengthened, though it now appears unlikely, if Republicans awarded the last seat to Warren Rudman, the former senator who headed the prescient national security review panel that in early 2001 warned of America's vulnerability to terrorism.
A member of a New Jersey political dynasty that traces its roots back to William Livingston, and before that to Peter Stuyvesant, Mr. Kean, who is 67, knows what is needed in his new post. Last June, according to The Newark Star-Ledger, he said: "I think there has to be a good nonpartisan look at the coordination, or lack of it, between our intelligence-gathering organizations, particularly the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. . . . we have to make sure that any inquiry is absolutely, without question, impartial and nonpartisan." We trust those will be his marching orders to the commission.
Tampa Tribune
President Bush is asking that all nations abolish tariffs on manufactured goods by 2015.
It's a bold proposal consumers should cheer because it would save the typical American family about $1,600 a year. High tariffs discourage trade and are bad for consumers and most businesses. But tariffs are not bad for all businesses, which is why a tariff-free world is unlikely.
Many developing nations impose high taxes on selected imports to give an advantage to their domestic industries that make the same products. In theory, all countries would eventually be better off with free trade and open competition.
Even the United States doesn't entirely buy the theory, as evidenced by the wide variety of taxes it applies to assorted imported products. ...
Bush's proposal is a good starting point for a discussion on how to increase trade on all fronts.
Charlotte Observer
Here's a spectacularly bad idea: The U.S. military would be authorized to conduct secret propaganda activities to shape public opinion inside friendly and neutral countries.
Examples could include efforts to undermine the influence of religious schools that teach anti-American views. The U.S. might even secretly finance schools teaching moderate Islamic positions including friendly descriptions of the faith as practiced in America. Some say the military might pay journalists to write favorable stories or hire third parties to organize pro-American rallies.
Information campaigns against wartime adversaries and hostile governments are routine, of course. But putting the military in the business of manipulating friendly countries would be a significant new step. ...
In other words, this is a classic case of the temptation to pursue desirable ends by unworthy means. The Pentagon has already had to scrap one such enterprise, a program to provide foreign journalists with news items that could have been false.
The United States will accomplish nothing of merit by becoming an untrustworthy ally. Trying to win new friends by meddling in the domestic affairs of old ones would be wrong in principle and fruitless, too.
Daily Oklahoman
Can there be more "economic freedom" at a time when part of the world is at war and the global economy is struggling? Yes, it is happening, and that obviously means good news for the United States and other countries that make it their business to export freedoms to the corners of the world that need it most.
For nine years the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have used an index that measures 50 different variables, grouped into 10 categories. Countries are rated one to five -- one being the best, five being the worst.
The ratings for 2003 underscore what's happened in each of the previous eight surveys: Economic freedom has increased every year.
As the survey's editors note, the findings are straightforward: "The countries with the most economic freedom enjoy higher rates of long-term economic growth and prosper more than those with less economic freedom."
The United States tied for sixth overall; Hong Kong, Singapore and Luxembourg are the top three. The least free? No surprises here: North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe.
In the new survey, 74 of the 156 countries graded became more economically free and 49 became less free. Still, most of the world's economies remain relatively "unfree." The bulk of the repressed economies are in Asia, while North America and Europe are home to the freest.
"Countries willing to unleash their economies invariably raise their standard of living," the editors note. Hard to argue, as the world reshapes itself economically from the Soviet era and in the early years of globalization.
Dallas Morning News
North Korea's announcement late last week that it will reactivate a nuclear reactor able to produce weapons-grade plutonium demands Washington's urgent attention. The bellicose and unstable communist country simply cannot be allowed to reactivate the reactor, which it idled in 1994 under Washington's threat of war. Whether by force or by reason - and one sincerely hopes that it is the latter - the reactor must not become part of the nuclear weapons development program that North Korea admitted to having in October. ...
To convince North Korea to relent will require the cooperation of all the region's powers - China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Not all are accustomed to coordinating their policies toward North Korea since all have different interests on the Korean peninsula. China in particular is loath to see a unified Korea in the United States' orbit. But China must understand that its economic and security interests also are undermined by a nuclear-armed North Korea. China's and Russia's recent joint declaration that North Korea must renounce nuclear weapons is a hopeful development that the Bush administration must try to exploit. ...
With most of its attention appropriately focused on disarming Iraq, the last thing the United States needs is trouble with another member of President Bush's "axis of evil." Yet trouble it has - and not just with North Korea. The State Department says U.S. intelligence has detected what appears to be a clandestine nuclear weapons development program at two nuclear plants in Iran. As much as the administration might wish to concentrate on Iraq, North Korea can't wait. Wishing it weren't so won't make the grave problem disappear.
Houston Chronicle
This is the traditional time of year when, for a variety of reasons, we focus more on the welfare of children.
The authors of a new United Nations Children's Fund report could not have missed that phenomenon when they chose this week to point out how governments and armed groups around the world are recruiting children for combat roles in unprecedented and alarming numbers.
Despite global treaties, children are being recruited as soldiers by governments in the Congo, Burundi and Liberia and are prevalent among rebel groups in Colombia, the Philippines, Uganda and Sri Lanka, the report states. An estimated 300,000 child soldiers are carrying arms, most in Africa and East Asia.
The annual report this year for the first time names the governments and groups.
"This shows the international community is serious and also that the community is watching," said Olara Otunnu, the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict.
Watching, yes. But for how long?
Los Angeles Times
The United States has a good story about democracy, free markets, individual rights. U.S. embassies should be telling it loudly abroad, their voices amplified by U.S.-financed broadcasting operations like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
The way not to tell it is by surreptitiously putting foreign journalists on the CIA or the Defense Department payroll. That taints the information and imperils reputations and lives when the payoffs become known, as they eventually do. Yet the Pentagon, for the second time in a little over a year, is reported to be debating secret propaganda operations in friendly or neutral nations. ...
The United States should tell its story. When the United States Information Agency was independent, it fought to keep libraries and information centers open, spreading its message far and wide. The State Department, always uncomfortable with that independence and sometimes preferring not to upset host countries, absorbed the USIA three years ago. Financing libraries overseas, even schools, is fine. Just identify them as U.S. creations. Tell the American story, the good and the bad, and depend on the truth to be persuasive.
Sacramento Bee
At a time when U.S. policy-makers are preoccupied with the terrorist threat and are gearing up for a possible war with Iraq, another member of President Bush's "axis of evil" -- North Korea -- is seeking to gain leverage by threatening to revive its nuclear weapons program.
The North Korean regime has declared that it will restart a nuclear reactor that was shut down as part of a 1994 accord with Washington. It may be a grand bluff to get its attention. It may also have been timed to affect South Korea's presidential election this week while popular resentment of the United States is high and one candidate favors a tougher stance toward the U.S. ally.
While there's obviously no way to defuse this problem overnight, the administration must not set it aside. The risk is too great that miscalculation or inattention could push Asia toward an arms race. ...
To break this impasse will require solidarity within the U.S.-led consortium, plus pressure from China (still an ally of North Korea) and perhaps Russia, historically its main source of military aid. But central to the process is engagement by the United States. At the same time, U.S. efforts must be matched by a North Korean willingness to abandon its crude attempt at nuclear blackmail as a substitute for serious diplomacy.
San Antonio Express-News
Venezuela is falling apart.
For two weeks, opponents of President Hugo Chávez have virtually paralyzed the South American nation with massive street protests and an economic shutdown.
The protesters want Chávez out, by force if necessary. They believe he wants to make Venezuela a communist state like Cuba. ...
The sooner a skillful negotiator intervenes, the better. The stability of the nation is at stake. In addition, Venezuela is the fifth-largest oil producer in the world and supplies 14 percent of the fuel Americans consume.
(Compiled by United Press International)
