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Denver Post: Diplomatic offensive needed, says Stith
In a guest commentary published in the March 30 Denver Post, Charles Stith, director of BU’s African Presidential Archives and Research Center and a former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, says that worldwide protest against the coalition’s war on Iraq “suggests that we need a strategy for a diplomatic offensive . . . Given the protracted nature of the present war against fanaticism and terrorism, there are a number of things the Bush administration (and any future administration) must do to avoid or soften the sort of mass protest precipitated by our actions against Iraq.” He advises that the administration “needs to call all its ambassadors back to the U.S. for comprehensive briefings. The president needs to address his diplomatic corps. After all, American ambassadors’ orders read that they are personal representatives of the president.” Stith says that regional state department bureaus “need a region-specific (or, when possible, a country-specific) rationale for the particular policy position we’re taking. . . . Finally, our diplomats need a tactical plan for engaging the governments, media, and nongovernmental organizations in the countries where they’re posted. You don’t need to be a public-relations maven to understand the extent to which this ‘Iraq thing’ has been a public-relations disaster. The policy realities of a 21st-century world — despite President Bush’s claim regarding the effect of polls on his policies — are that public perceptions do have an impact on policies.”
Boston magazine: Human “professional” guinea pigs need to consider risks
The ranks of Boston’s “professional patients” — those who volunteer for a variety of clinical studies for pay and are willing to test new medicines, endure diet studies, stay awake for days, and even take street drugs, sometimes earning between $10,000 and $12,000 a year — are growing, reports the April issue of Boston magazine. While human-subject research can save millions of lives, there is a worry that volunteers take their involvement too casually. “The people who make a career of these [experiments] are normal, healthy volunteers,” says Susan Fish, a MED associate professor and director of the Institutional Review Board at Boston Medical Center, which oversees human research at BMC. “And normal, healthy volunteer subjects have died. There is probably almost no research that is absent of risk. One of the things the volunteers must consider is not only how much money they’re going to make and how much good they’ll do for society, but also the risk.”
USA Today: Attack on Iraq’s Republican Guard days away
Despite a seeming lull in the ground war in Iraq, destroying Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, the country’s most capable force, is one of the Pentagon’s highest priorities. The intent may be to strike soon, but the timing of the ground attack will depend upon the effectiveness of ongoing air strikes and resupplying U.S. troops. Some question why major ground attacks haven’t commenced yet, reports the March 30 USA Today. “The continued insistence of the president and Central Command that everything is on schedule and we haven’t been surprised by the Iraqis is no longer credible,” says Andrew Bacevich, a CAS professor, director of the Center for International Relations, and a retired Army colonel. “On the other hand, just because the Third Infantry Division isn’t moving, it doesn’t mean things are in disarray.” Part of the delay, he says, is the difficulty in determining the number of Iraqi troops that have been killed or wounded in airstrikes and how much of their equipment is still battle-ready.
4
April 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations