The dramatic news about Osama bin Laden’s death, especially when taken in combination with the ongoing “Arab Spring,” offers a remarkable window of opportunity for U.S. policymakers seeking to encourage what President Obama has called an “alternative narrative” for a disaffected generation in the Islamic world.For years after Sept. 11, 2001, military and counterterrorism efforts dominated the U.S.

The death of Osama bin Laden rightly brings to Americans a sense of justice, even revenge. But the death of the world’s most wanted man is more than payback for the past.It instead suggests that ideology may be changing in the Arab world. Bin Laden’s ideology of death ― for Americans, Europeans, Arabs and others ― was a reaction to the misery to which many Arabs were consigned in the modern world.

Over the years, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has served in a variety of capacities in national security for administrations of both parties. He has been a steady hand and he will be sorely missed.But his intention to leave this year was well-known. What was surprising about Wednesday’s news was the sweeping nature of the national-security shuffle expected to be announced by President Barack Obam

The entire world trembles at the so-called “China effect,” a testament to China’s unpredictability. The world cannot begin to fathom China’s reasons for resisting the revaluation of the yuan despite the nation’s large foreign exchange reserves and explosive growth in exports. The world cannot understand China’s tolerance, justification and even support for the apparent barbarisms of North Korea. T

While turmoil threatens the regimes of many of its neighbors, conditions in Jordan have remained relatively calm. Although we have had more than 150 protests across Jordan since before the fall of the Tunisian regime, all demanding accountability, better living conditions, and an end to corruption and wider political reform, nobody has called for regime change ― so far.The reason is simple. King A

NEW YORK ― In October 2010, the current brothers of George W. Bush’s former fraternity at Yale, Delta Kappa Epsilon, marched through the first-year quad chanting, “No means yes! Yes means anal!” They held up signs reading, “We love Yale Sluts.”Sixteen graduate and undergraduate students, male and female, felt that the university’s administration then did little to push back against such encroachme

It has long been accepted for the Japanese prime minister and other Cabinet members to cancel official visits to foreign nations because of Diet deliberation schedules. Japan’s standing on the diplomatic stage is thus degraded, and national interests are negatively affected. Such a long-standing but wrongheaded custom must end now.Ruling and opposition parties have agreed to allow Foreign Minister

“Well, I’ll be damned. It looks OK!”That was Chicago’s own Andy Martin ― self-proclaimed “King of the Birthers” ― on the phone with a reporter for Mother Jones magazine after the White House released a copy of President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate on Wednesday.Martin, who announced in December that he’s running for president on the Obama-wasn’t-born-here ticket, brags that he starte

An audience of 750 million tuned in July 29, 1981, to watch Lady Diana Spencer marry the Prince of Wales.In America, little girls were glued to the television from before dawn, enthralled by Diana’s dress with its billows of silk taffeta, 10,000 pearls and 25-foot train. To a young girl’s eye, the only blemish of this perfect day was that the bride’s signature feathered hair succumbed to the summe

Salvador Dali or M.C. Escher? This question leaps to the mind navigating the ruins of Japanese cities like Tagajo. Skylines now look as if Dali’s surrealist brush had a hand in rendering things so out of place. Escher’s mind seems at work, too. Interlocking shapes that shouldn’t exist in the three-dimensional world litter cityscapes that before March 11’s earthquake and tsunami were pretty run of

The government is renewing its efforts to advance the service industry. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance has disclosed a new action plan that called for, among other things, a basic law on the promotion of the service industry, the introduction of for-profit hospitals and allowing sales of nonprescription drugs at supermarkets and convenience stores.The renewed push for the service sector is w

The Financial Supervisory Service is in need of drastic reform. The recent series of problems at financial companies and corruption cases involving FSS officials have shown the regulator is not only ineffectual in promoting stability and soundness of the financial market but is corrupt to the bone. In his inaugural address on March 28, FSS Chairman Kwon Hyuk-se disclosed his vision of making the r

When pro-democracy protesters began rallying a few weeks ago, Syrian President Bashar Assad set out to change their tune. He has succeeded, though not quite as he hoped.At the beginning, demonstrators wanted the longtime dictator to embrace political reform, and he made some gestures in that direction, such as lifting a 48-year-old state of emergency law. Now, they don’t want him to embrace reform

WASHINGTON ― Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security adviser, has a reputation as a “process guy,” meaning that he runs an orderly decision-making system at the National Security Council, and as a “political guy” with a feel for Capitol Hill and the media. Now, facing the rolling crisis of the Arab Spring, Donilon has had to transform himself into the ultimate “policy guy” ― coordinating

With the war on terrorism far from over, Indonesia has seen mounting attacks on corruption fighters, despite the nationwide acceptance that graft is an extraordinary crime, separate from terrorism. A plan by the House of Representatives to revise Law No. 30/2002 on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is widely seen as the latest foray intended to weaken the anticorruption drive.Sadly, the

Such is the Indian and Pakistani leadership’s obsession with high-profile “event-oriented” diplomacy that they sought to exploit the craze for cricket to revitalize people-to-people contact without taking two realities into consideration. One, that the cricketing calendar was overcrowded, the players so heavily committed, that squeezing in even a short bilateral series was virtually impossible; tw

The coming royal wedding in England and the beatification of Pope John Paul II in Rome will afford the world a chance to see how two ancient institutions ― the monarchy and the papacy ― reinforce their claim to perpetuity and continuing relevance by a show of pomp and pageantry. Supposed to be historical rivals, especially considering their religious wars since the 16th century, these two institut

KIEV ― It began as a grey and muddy spring day, like so many others in my homeland. It ended in dread and mourning.Of course, none of us knew the precise moment when catastrophe struck at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Back then, we lived under a system that denied ordinary people any right whatsoever to know about even essential facts and events. So we were kept in the dark about the radiation leaking f

Fox Business reporter Peter Barnes began his televised interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner last week with this question: “Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating? Yes or no?” Geithner’s response: “No risk of that.” “No risk?” Barnes asked. “No risk,” Geithner said. It’s enough to make you wonder: How could Geithner know this to be true? The short answer i

So Naoto Kan is a goner. That’s the word in traumatized Tokyo. Japan’s prime minister had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get his mojo back in the five weeks since a record earthquake and tsunami. He failed, and pundits wonder if he will make it to his first anniversary in office in June. Kan would be the fifth to go in five years. Investors harbor a well-honed cynicism about Japanese leaders. They