Resistance to Iraq attack crumbles

The Washington Times

Over the course of 48 hours last week, the opposition to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq collapsed like a house of cards. August was a heady month for administration opponents. They thought they were gaining ground. In fact, they were mainly attacking the administration for planning to do things it had no intention of doing. Once that revelation came, mainly with Mr. Bush’s speech at the United Nations, there was little to do but splutter.

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Turkish strands of secular and sacred

The Washington Times

Wherever Turks dwell, from the Europeanized behemoth city of Istanbul in the north to the stunningly beautiful Anatolian coastal region below, where hazy mountains rising steeply from the deep blue Mediterranean unmistakably evoke arrival in Asia Minor, the two ubiquitous sights rising above the streets are the minarets of the mosques and the innumerable national flags, the bright white crescent and star on a brilliant vermilion field.

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Playing it straight on the straits

The Washington Times

Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian kicked up a fuss earlier this month with his statement that there are two countries facing each other across the Taiwan Strait, China and Taiwan, and proposing a referendum on Taiwan about its future status, including the possibility of independence. China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province whose destiny is reunification with the mainland, was clearly displeased.

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Taxing distortions on dividends

The Washington Times

I published in Policy Review’s June-July edition an article by a California portfolio manager, Steve Stein, called “Taxes, Dividends, and Distortions.” It was a rather brilliant discussion of the drastic decline [to the point of near-demise] of the practice of corporations paying annual dividends to their shareholders. Where once dividends were the rule and retained earnings drew the scrutiny, now the opposite is the case.

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Trade “strategery” for a trade strategy

The Washington Times

The good news is that the president is getting trade promotion or “fast-track” authority from Congress. The bad news is that congressional support for liberalizing trade hangs by a wire. The Bush team needs to be as attentive to rebuilding the domestic case for free trade as it needs to be aggressive in negotiating new pacts in both the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks and bilateral agreements.

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Humiliation as public policy

The Washington Times

There’s that sight again: The captain of industry or titan of Wall Street emerges from his palatial home in the early morning light. But this time he is in handcuffs, being led by a squad of police and prosecutors, who have visited him at six in the morning to arrest him on charges of nefarious financial wrongdoing and lead him away as his bleary-eyed wife and children look on and the cameras roll and click.

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Republican role reversal

The Washington Times

The question of whether [or perhaps now, how much] the administration of George W. Bush and Republicans in general will be tainted by the ongoing corporate scandals and the slump in the stock market, and accordingly punished by the electorate, is certainly an interesting one. But may I suggest that there is something rather more important here than that, namely, the future of global economic liberalization?

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Reach out and touch someone

The Washington Times

In November, NATO countries will meet in Prague to issue invitations for alliance membership to a number of the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Prime ministers from the current group of aspirants, numbering 10 in all, gathered here last week for a fifth and final time before Prague to reiterate the commitment they first set out in Vilnius, Lithuania, two years ago – to work together and in support of each other toward alliance membership.

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