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America's Credibility Deficit
Joel Brinkley
President
But the most worrisome part actually occurred a couple of weeks earlier, when
What did
Afghan President
Once again,
These are not isolated cases. What happened when
Does America have any credibility left? Very little. But this hasn't always been so.
For me, at least, it's hard to wax nostalgic about the George W. Bush administration. But remember just five years ago, when
Similarly, after Bush alternately coaxed and threatened
But now the U.S. sits by and absorbs rebukes from
Mubarak stole the last election, in 2005. Who can forget the televised images of voters climbing a ladder, trying to scramble through a voting station's second-story window because riot police were forcibly blocking the front door?
This fall, in the weeks before last Sunday's election, the government shut down the opposition's TV station, censored campaign slogans, jailed dozens of opposition candidates and forbade others from appearing on television. Authorities even placed restrictions on text-messaging services.
International human-rights groups pleaded with
Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times
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America's Credibility Deficit
(c) 2010 Joel Brinkley