Andanh.com

As President Bush made his farewell tour of Europe, one could almost be forgiven for thinking the continent had become an afterthought for the United States.

Yet such a view would ignore the fact that a strong trans-Atlantic alliance is needed now more than ever, as America shares many more values, challenges and goals with the democracies of Europe than with any other nations.

This was evident during a recent seminar organized by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the German Ministry of Defense. As a Manfred Woerner Seminar Fellow, I had the opportunity to join with more than two dozen American and German professionals in discussions with key German, NATO and European Union foreign policy and security leaders.

The United States, Germany and the other European democracies all share common values, and many of our people share common ancestries. We all desire secure yet open societies where people have a voice in their government and are free to pursue happy, productive lives. This much is clear.

What was also made clear during the seminar was that while our shared values and history point to a desire for greater trans-Atlantic cooperation, the similarity of the challenges we face demand it. The democracies of the West cannot hope to be successful without working together.

When the terrorists attack again -- as Homeland Security repeatedly has warned us they will -- how many survivors will be consoled because the U.S. Supreme Court looked out for the "rights" of terrorists before the rights of their dead loved ones?

Will the dead be wrapped in a copy of the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling granting foreign detainees -- whose mission is to destroy our Constitution, our country and way of life -- the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention, a right that should be reserved only for American citizens?

Granting terrorists seized on the battlefield access to civilian courts also sends another message: America is not serious about winning the war. It tells them they can "game" the system, demanding rights and protections unknown in their countries of origin.

Justice Antonin Scalia said 30 former detainees allegedly have returned to the battlefield to kill American troops and others. On whose hands should be their blood? Who should be held accountable for the blood of Americans killed by terrorists who have gained their freedom courtesy of a federal judge, a judge who has usurped the authority and judgment of the executive branch and the military?

This is bound to demoralize our soldiers, who will wonder why they should bother to seize terrorists at all if they are just going to be released.

One way Americans can save money on travel this summer? How about we stay home and send our luggage on vacation instead?

Because of a new fee schedule at American Airlines, for a mere $80, two suitcases will be able to fly round-trip to the destination of their choice.

As of Sunday, American is now charging $15 each way for the first checked bag, or $30 for the round-trip. The airline has already started charging $25 for the second checked bag on each leg of the journey.

What this means is that for $80, a two-bag set of luggage can have a pretty good time going to, say, Cape Cod for the summer.

Of course, if you want to go along with the bags, it'll cost extra.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right (known as habeas corpus) to challenge the legality of their detentions in federal district court. It did not authorize the release of a single detainee.

The decision infuriated Justice Antonin Scalia. It "will make the war harder on us," he asserted in dissent. "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Scalia's overheated rhetoric harms a crucial national decision that must be made about what to do next with the detainees. Be afraid! he says. And know whom to blame when the next terrorist attack comes. It's exactly this kind of demagoguery, designed to limit debate, that got us where we are today, with the Congress adopting a detainee law based on fear rather than effective policy and American principles.

The sad truth is that Guantanamo has been an epic failure. For more than six years, hundreds of individuals have been held there, some on the flimsiest of evidence and some undoubtedly dangerous, devoted terrorists. Fewer than 300 remain today. None has been tried by the military tribunals set up by President Bush in 2001 and ratified by Congress in 2006. Hundreds have been released to their home countries after an opaque process in which the military determined that they "no longer" pose a threat. Some have returned to battle.

Scalia seems to believe that Guantanamo has made Americans safer. But we know that Guantanamo and its harsh interrogation policies have attracted global disapproval and made it difficult for our allies to cooperate with us on counterterrorism issues. And are we safer today than we would have been if the president, in 2001 or early 2002, had established a legally sustainable process for determining whether individuals brought to the prison at Guantanamo were in fact associated with the Taliban or al-Qaida, as the U.S. State Department advised?

The most urgent foreign policy problem that the next U.S. president will face won't be Iraq. Nor will it be Iran.

The next terrorist attack on America is likely to originate, according to the top U.S. military commander, Adm. Mike Mullen, in a place you've probably never heard of: the FATA. That's the acronym for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northern Pakistan.

The FATA is a lawless expanse along the Afghan border where al-Qaida, the Taliban and other jihadi groups are now based.

From these safe havens, they attack NATO troops in Afghanistan, plan terrorist attacks abroad and threaten Pakistan itself -- a nuclear state.

Neither Pakistan nor the Bush administration has a strategy to curb FATA's jihadis. Indeed, the situation seems to be getting worse.

World leaders fight terrorism all the time, with summit meetings and sound bites and security initiatives. But they have studiously ignored one of the most common and brutal varieties of terrorism in the world today.

This is a kind of terrorism that disproportionately targets children. It involves not weapons of mass destruction but simply AK-47s, machetes and pointed sticks. It is mass rape -- and it will be elevated, belatedly, to a spot on the international agenda this week.

The United Nations Security Council will hold a special session on sexual violence Thursday in New York City, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leading the debate. This session, sponsored by the United States and backed by a Security Council resolution calling for regular follow-up reports, just may help mass rape graduate from an unmentionable to a serious foreign policy issue.

The world woke up to this phenomenon in 1993, after discovering that Serbian forces had set up a network of "rape camps" in which women and girls, some as young as 12, were enslaved. Since then, we've seen similar patterns of systematic rape in many countries, and it has become clear that mass rape is not just a byproduct of war but also sometimes a deliberate weapon.

There are two reasons for this. First, mass rape is very effective militarily. From the viewpoint of a militia, getting into a firefight is risky, so it's preferable to terrorize civilians sympathetic to a rival group and drive them away, depriving the rivals of support.

A few words about white trash. I've always found that term offensive, its ubiquity notwithstanding. I have a number of reasons, but the most important is that it is a gratuitous insult to the white poor. Of course, they are one of the few groups remaining one can insult with relative impunity.

Granted, Vice President Dick Cheney did not actually use the term "white trash" in the "joke" he recently attempted at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He didn't need to. It was there, understood, without being spoken.

The remark came in a discussion of the Cheney family tree. "We have Cheneys on both sides of the family," he said. "And we don't even live in West Virginia."

Get it? Ha-ha-ha. I mean, you know how it is up there in the hills and hollers of that state where the population is 95 percent white and the median family income is $10,000 below the national average: cousins marry cousins, brothers bed their pipe-smoking sisters. Pardon me while I slap my knee.

The comedy stylings of Dick Cheney drew bipartisan condemnation from West Virginia lawmakers, and Cheney quickly issued an apology, which is good enough as far as it goes. Still, it's too bad there does not exist -- at least, not to my knowledge -- a national organization, an NAACP for poverty, as it were, that could provide us with context, help us see Cheney's "joke" not as an isolated episode but as part and parcel of a national pattern of neglect, if not outright scorn, for the have-nots among us.