State of Alabama secondary Archives: on Foreign Policy

Al Gore: Bush’s division into good vs. evil is Christian heresy

The day after 9/11, Bush announced, “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail.” Two days later, Bush proclaimed that his “responsibility to history was to rid the world of evil.” I remember being astonished at the grandiosity & hubris of his claim that he could & would “rid the world of evil.” Really?

The following week, Bush addressed Congress, saying God had foreordained the outcome of the conflict. Bush’s view of his policies in the context of a fateful spiritual conflict between good & evil does not really represent Christian doctrine. It actually more closely resembles an ancient Christian heresy called Manichaeism, that sought to divide all of reality into two simple categories, absolute god and absolute evil.

Al Gore: New security agenda based on addressing global problems

We have an opportunity to forge and follow a new agenda for national and world security.
• First and foremost, our security is threatened by the global environmental crisis, which could render all our other progress meaningless, unless we deal with it successfully.
• Second, there is a looming water crisis that reflects both the sharp growth in demand for freshwater, global warming’s [freshwater supply disruption], and a decline in water quality owing to the effects of pollution.

  Third, we must conquer the global challenge presented by terrorism, magnified by a growing access to new WMDs.

• Fourth, the global challenge of defeating drugs and corruption, which now spill across our borders, has never been more serious given the growing strength and sophistication of international crime organizations.
• Fifth, new pandemics like HIV/AIDS are laying waste to whole societies, a problem compounded by the emergence of new strains of old diseases that are horrifyingly resistant to antibiotics.

Al Franken: US intervention in Iran has made it worse

AL FRANKEN: We have changed the regime in Iran. We’ve made it worse.

CLARK: (laughs) Well, the President intervened before their elections and called for them to have a different government. Well, no group of people want another country to tell them who they should elect.

Al Gore: Drought from global warming set stage for Darfur genocide

Just 40 years ago Lake Chad was as large as Lake Erie--formerly the 6th largest lake in the world. But now due to declining rainfall and ever-intensifying human use, it has shrunk to 1/20th of its original size. The lake’s dissipation has led to collapsing fisheries and crops.

While Lake Chad withered, intense drought set the stage for the violence that erupted in neighboring Darfur, a war-torn region of Sudan.

The more we understand about climate change, the more it looks as if we may be the real culprit--the US emits 1/4 of the world’s greenhouse gases. We helped manufacture the suffering in Africa, and we have a moral obligation to try to fix it.

Al Sharpton: We deal with China, so let’s deal with Cuba