If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out Phillippe Sand's presentation at the New America Foundation, a promising public discourse forum, set up by the guy who runs The Washington Note.
( WMV / MP3 )
Sands is the author of Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules--From FDR's Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush's Illegal War. The book details how the US has shifted from a positive and bipartisan consensus about the value and legitimacy of international rules, from the time of FDR and Churchill, right up to the present where American foreign policy has been hijacked by a small group of reactionary American exceptionalists. Sands, as a supporter of the pre-Reagan American tradition, international lawyer, and law professor, gives an articulate account of this transition, as well as a tightly reasoned analysis of the problems inherent to such unsustainable short-term thinking.
When listening to Sands one cannot help but be struck by the paucity of debate, and critical reflection, over these fundamental issues in Australia and America, especially in light of the growing mess in Iraq. Instead, the political discourse in both countries is mired by a clueless media, and all the highly manufactured dichotomies that prevail when talking points and sound bites rule the day.
Highly recommended.
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