News Roundup - Hour 2
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-01-28/news-roundup-hour-2
Egyptian police continue to battle anti-government protesters. A Hezbollah-backed billionaire is set to become Lebanon's new prime minister. And Russian Prime Minister Putin vows retribution against those behind the Moscow airport bombing. A panel of journalists joins Diane for analysis of the week's top international news stories.
Guests
Nancy Youssef
Pentagon correspondent, McClatchy newspapers.
David Sanger
chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times; a co-author of The New York Times' first e-book, "Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy," available January 31.
Michele Kelemen
diplomatic correspondent, NPR.
Comments
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The reason why Hezbollah was able to accomplish what it did in Lebanon was because the Obama administration did not learn from the past: it not only supported a young man who is largley viewed as a rich boy who had the throne handed to him on a silver plater but more importantly, it did it openly. Thereby, making him seen as a US/Saudi pupet.
Furthermore, it underestimated not only the power of Iran but more importatnly , Hezbolla who represent almost 1/3 of the population.
With the Obama administration hesitant to support the democratic protests by the middle eastern people, they are making a mistake. We (The US) are being seen as inconsistent with the message to promote democracy and freedom of information by going after Assange and now not showing support for the people in the Middle East. The US is missing out on an opportunity to establish good relations with the people who will eventually replace their government regimes in the middle east.
If new governments come into power, the US still has its own international influence to build relationships with new governments.
Hunter
Austin, Tx.
The United States cannot continue to support totalitarian dictators, torturers and murders, from the Shah of Iran to Saddam to the people who run places like Yemen and expect not to be targets. We need to get energy independence through alternatives and conservation, and we need to stand up for our core values- peace, freedom, democracy, self-determination and justice. When we do that we will find our lives a lot easier and less costly, and we will find we have more friends in these places than we did. But until we do, we will continue to reap the whirlwinds...
All this talk about how important the Yemeni government has been in the war against Al Qaeda: isn't our support of strongmen like the leaders of Yemen a major boon to Al Qaeda's recruitment efforts?????? If we stopped supporting these Arab dictators, and showed ourselves on the side of economically viable, democratic societies in the MIddle east, wouldn't Al Qaeda become less and less relevant??
I believe your speaker Nancy, just misspoke. For years, US foreign aid (including economic and military) to Egypt has been 1.5 billion +/- .5 billion and foreign aid to Israel has been 3 billion.