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August 18, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Mar 31, 2003

U.S. coalition unnerves allies

By Brad Glosserman

SAN FRANCISCO -- Although the United States didn't go to the United Nations for explicit authorization of an attack against Iraq, the Bush administration never abandoned attempts to craft a multilateral coalition in support of those efforts. But this government's view of "multilateralism" differs from...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 31, 2003

Posturing of 'truths' failed to derail U.N.

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK -- One of the first casualties of any war -- although often overlooked -- is language. Perhaps this has never been more true than in the present war against Iraq. Diplomacy, we are told, "failed." The United Nations, we are told, has become "irrelevant." The attack against Iraq, we are told,...

EDITORIALS

Mar 31, 2003

Mr. Fukui makes a good start

With the war in Iraq clouding economic prospects, the immediate task for the new governor of the Bank of Japan, Mr. Toshihiko Fukui, is to shore up sagging confidence in the nation's economy, particularly the financial system. In this respect, he has made a good start. Several days after he took office...

COMMENTARY

Mar 31, 2003

Debt owed to those inclined to be soldiers

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- Americans have grown used to nearly costless wars. The New York Times headlined one story: "Invading Forces Capture Key Bridge -- More American Deaths." It left readers to ponder which was the more interesting news nugget -- that a bridge was taken, or that U.S. soldiers died taking it....

COMMENTARY

Mar 31, 2003

Folly of liberation by force

By Takamitsu Sawa

The Pentagon calls the U.S. military campaign in Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom." This is clearly intended to reflect U.S.-British justification of their attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and "liberate" Iraq without a United Nations resolution.

COMMENTARY

Mar 31, 2003

Win the peace with Muslims after the war

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Location, in politics as well as in real estate, is almost everything. When British Prime Minister Tony Blair came calling on U.S. President George W. Bush, America's foremost ally raised with Washington the tender issue of repairing badly damaged relations with America's "old Europe"...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Mar 31, 2003

Modesty marked this great man of letters

By Hiroaki Sato

NEW YORK -- Herbert Passin, whom I had the honor of knowing, died on Feb. 26. Like kabuki expert Faubion Bowers, whom I also knew, Passin was a top graduate of the Military Intelligence Service Language School, which was established in 1941 in preparation for the coming war with Japan. Both did wonderful...

EDITORIALS

Mar 30, 2003

No escape from this war

All war, all the time: It's not healthy. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio are universally consumed with the unfolding drama of advances and skirmishes, threatened aerial bombardments and possible civil uprisings in Iraq. It does have a horrible fascination -- the ultimate reality show in action....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 30, 2003

Risks of selected 'free trade'

By Ramesh Thakur

A marked trend in world affairs since the 1980s has been a series of bilateral and regional free-trade agreements, or FTAs, in Australasia, the Americas and Asia, not to mention Europe. Japan, having largely stayed out of these, is now at least contemplating the idea with some selected trade partners....

EDITORIALS

Mar 29, 2003

One week into the war

It has been nine days since the United States launched its attack against Iraq. The war has not gone as many expected. The difficulties encountered by the U.S.-led coalition have raised questions about Washington's strategy and the assumptions that undergirded the allied assault. Although those doubts...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2003

Age of shifting coalitions

By Jonathan Fenby

LONDON -- Despite the failure to gain backing from the United Nations, the war on Iraq has brought together a growing "coalition of the willing," as Washington dubs those who support the attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It may have few active military members -- the United States, Britain plus...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2003

Bovine absurdity is taking India by storm

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- The Indian cow is not mad. But it has enough clout to cause insanity among the country's political classes, and even the masses.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.

The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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