At about four in the morning on March 1, the Iraqi Governing Council reached unanimous agreement on the country’s interim constitution — a very significant step forward. It sets out basic freedoms — of the press, of speech, of assembly, and of worship. It creates an independent judiciary and provides civilian control over the military. And it pushes democracy farther along than any other Arab state.

In a hard-fought compromise, it also reportedly makes Islam only one source of legislation, rather than the principal source. And in a move that puts it significantly ahead of the United States (which has been pushing for its creation prior to handing over sovereignty to the Iraqis), the document targets a quarter of the seats in the National Assembly for women.

The interim constitution still could come unglued. But even as it was being formulated, the reasons why it matters were being spelled out by one of the most respected U.S. authorities on Iraq, Judith Yaphe. Now at the National Defense University in Washington, Dr. Yaphe spent much of her career analyzing Middle Eastern politics for the Central Intelligence Agency, winning the Intelligence Medal of Commendation for her work on the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf war. She was speaking over the weekend to the Camden Conference, a small deliberative forum of interested citizens gathered on the coast of Maine to discuss U.S. foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Her remarks set forth a career’s worth of counsel for policy-makers trying to come together around Iraq’s reconstruction and future development.

First, she observed, you can’t divide up Iraq. True, it has all sorts of fractious groups, most notably the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities. But it also has a long history of being itself and long traditions of intermarriage among its various religions and tribes.

Second, she said, “don’t create democratic institutions without democracy.” The British, she says, made that mistake in Iraq in the 1920s.

Third, “don’t promise power and then deny it.” The danger of the current state of affairs is that with the passage of time, the liberator turns into the occupier unless power really can be devolved.

Fourth, don’t insert artificial timetables. The Middle East runs on its own schedules, which have no relationship to the needs of the U.S. electoral process. Our problem as Americans, she noted, is that “we don’t have patience.”

Fortunately, each of these caveats is addressed by the interim constitution. It demands that Iraq, however diverse, must remain whole, and even contemplates a Kurdish militia operating within the defense structure to ensure that Kurds stay within the new Iraq. It creates democratic institutions, but also enshrines such democratic principles as equal treatment of all people under the law. And it moves toward the hand-off of real power.

But does it reflect patience? Dr. Yaphe’s comment stopped me in my tracks. In the nuances and detours of foreign policy, patience is hugely important. Yet Americans, entrepreneurial to the core and eager to get on with the job at hand, are not a particularly patient people. Our overseas cousins know that about us — know that the typical U.S. response to an intractable foreign-policy problem with centuries of complexity behind it is to convene a high-level conference charged with sorting it out by next week.

To be sure, that penchant for immediacy can sometimes produce admirable bursts of energy that break stalemates and spawn success. It can also lead to unseemly displays, as when Bill Clinton demanded, in the waning weeks of his presidency, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly get resolved so that the solution could become part of his legacy — or when George Bush now insists that Iraq get stabilized in time for the November presidential election.

The problem with the virtue of patience is that it can be used as a moral weapon by both the quick and the deliberative. How many grand initiatives have failed for want of the moral courage to seize the moment and force it to conclusiveness? Yet how many delicate, fragile beginnings have been stomped into oblivion by the heavy boots of a heedless impatience?

The challenge in Iraq, as in so much of our foreign policy, is to get the balance right on this particular virtue. Doing so may require us to reflect on who we are as Americans — and whether what we are is what we ought to be. That’s a grandly ethical task. As we move into an election year in which foreign policy debates will take an unusually high profile, such a discussion deserves our attention.

(c)2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“Looking at a mountain on a computer screen cannot replicate standing at the bottom of the Alps thinking ‘Wow’. As well as the appreciation of scale, there are team building skills and the emotional aspect of connecting with your environment that are very important parts of fieldwork. Virtual trips may be a great complement, particularly when it’s impossible to take a school trip to the Antarctic or where the environment is fragile and you don’t want children tramping over it, but it cannot be a substitute.”

– Rita Gardner, director of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society, discussing the growing number of U.K. schools apparently scared by possible lawsuits into abandoning field trips for computer-based “fieldwork.” Last year, a geography teacher was hit with a two-year jail sentence for manslaughter after a 10-year-old student drowned in a stream during a field trip, reported the Telegraph. (“Computer Program that Will Make the Geography Field Trip a Thing of the Past,” Telegraph, Feb. 22)

LONDON
The British government last week dropped espionage charges against a U.K. linguist who said she leaked a memo from the Bush administration asking for help in eavesdropping on the United Nations in the build-up to the Iraq war.

Explaining its reversal, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair said only that it was unsure it could win a conviction in the case, even though the accused was prepared to admit she had willfully violated Britain’s Officials Secrets Act, reported the New York Times.

Katharine Gun, a translator for the British government, was arrested last March after she admitted leaking a top-secret email from the U.S. National Security Agency.

The January 2003 email asked for help in monitoring the UN offices of six nations — Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan — that were still debating whether to back the U.S. push for a UN Security Council resolution authorizing war on Iraq.

Gun, who found the memo on a Friday in January 2003, said she spent a weekend trying to decide upon the right thing to do. In the end, she said she acted out of conscience. “I felt that the British intelligence services were being asked to do something which would undermine the whole United Nations democratic process,” she said, according to the BBC.

Gun, whose actions were publicized widely in Britain, was formally charged in November. Last week, the government, already smarting from its decision to back the U.S.-led war on Iraq, said it was abandoning the case.

The decision failed to dampen the dispute, leading to a BBC interview with former Cabinet member Claire Short, who said the British government long has spied on the offices of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“These things are done. And in the case of Kofi’s office, it’s been done for some time,” Short said of bugging efforts in general. Asked if British spies had been told to cooperate, Short said, “Yes, absolutely.”

Short’s comments were condemned quickly by Blair, who called them “deeply irresponsible,” insisting that U.K. intelligence agents “always act in accordance with domestic and international law.”

“Whether intentionally or not, those who do attack the work our security services are [undermining] the essential security of this country,” Blair claimed in a report from CNN.

The UN last week demanded that Britain and other nations immediately halt their espionage at the UN, denouncing the efforts as blatantly illegal.

The case has received scant attention in the United States, where officials have refused to comment, reported the Washington Post.

ATLANTA
Atlanta underreported crimes for at least five years in an attempt to boost the city’s appeal to tourists and win the site selection process for the 1996 Olympics, according to an audit released last week.

The audit, commissioned by Police Chief Richard Pennington, examined records and surveyed police officers and citizens, concluding that crime rates were distorted from at least 1996 until 2002, when Pennington took over.

“Crime incidents were downgraded, underreported, and discarded,” New York-based auditing firm Linder & Associates said in its report, which found that police routinely altered or suppressed thousands of crime reports in order “to improve Atlanta’s chances for selection” as an Olympics site, according to the Associated Press.

The report indicated that in addition to deliberate falsification, many crime reports were lost because the department was overworked, understaffed, and sloppy. Atlanta police lost 22,000 official reports on 911 calls in just one year examined by Lindner & Associates, reported the New York Times.

“We’ve not seen this sense of a condition of being overwhelmed in any other major city,” said firm president John Linder.

Police Chief Pennington said the report should raise a red flag for city leaders, who long have billed the city as a safe place to do business. That is still true, but there are definite problems — including police funding and morale — that need to be addressed now, Pennington warned.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
The heads continue to roll in the mounting scandal surrounding sponsorship contracts that slipped up to $75 million into the pockets of advertising firms friendly to the governing Liberal Party of Canada.

Prime Minister Paul Martin and his cabinet suspended two heads of Crown Corporations without pay and asked them to justify their actions within a week before further action is taken.

Crown Corporations are firms owned by the Canadian government that operate similarly to private corporations. They operate with a degree of autonomy.

The two Crown Corporation heads are Michel Vennat, president of the Business Development Bank of Canada, and Marc Lefrancois, president of Via Rail.

Mr. Vennat’s suspension also was due to the severe criticism from a Quebec judge for Vennat’s involvement in another scandal linked to former prime minister Jean Chrétien.

A third head, the president of Canada Post, Andre Ouellet, has been suspended with pay while an audit of actions that took place under his leadership is completed.

Meanwhile, released cabinet documents have disclosed that Chrétien personally signed off on the highly unusual sponsorship monies that launched the scandal-ridden program in 1997, together with his now-disgraced former Minister of Public Works, Alfonso Gagliano, who was dismissed from his post as ambassador of Denmark by incoming Prime Minister Paul Martin.

WASHINGTON
In a case testing the funding of religious scholarships, the Supreme Court last week ruled that while Washington State is allowed to use government subsidies to fund religious education, it is not obligated to do so.

The court’s distinction throws out a 1999 lawsuit by Joshua Davey, a former Washington student who sued after being told he could not use a state scholarship to fund a college degree preparing him to be a minister.

Davey argued that such a rule amounts to religious discrimination, reported the New York Times.

Last week, the court, which had taken the case on appeal, rejected Davey’s claim with a 7-to-2 vote.

While Washington State’s constitution bars the use of public funds to bankroll “any religious worship, exercise, or instruction,” it does so to maintain the separation of church and state, not to treat religion with hostility, the court ruled.

Davey, who was attending a religiously affiliated college, could have kept his scholarship had he either taken general religion classes or pursued a secular major.

The problem, according to the court, stemmed from the fact that Davey instead wanted to use state funds to pay for what was essentially professional training for the ministry, noted the Times.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, accusing their colleagues of sanctioning discrimination.

The court’s decision comes two years after it narrowly upheld the contentious use of state vouchers to fund basic education at either secular or religious schools.

While last week’s ruling was a blow to President Bush’s efforts to more easily distribute federal funds to religious groups, analysts say the decision was narrowly crafted to apply to Davey’s situation, meaning that the need for further clarifying rulings likely will arise.

Thirty-six other states have constitutional church-and-state funding restrictions similar to those in Washington, noted the Reuters news agency.

WASHINGTON
In a big win for employers, the U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that a key federal law bars age discrimination in the workplace only when it hurts older employees, not when it helps them get a leg up on their younger colleagues.

The ruling, which strikes down a lawsuit against General Dynamics Corp., effectively okays so-called reverse age discrimination in the workplace, saying such bias is not covered by the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

That law, the court’s 6-to-3 majority ruled, was designed to protect older employees from having their jobs, benefits, and self-esteem poached by younger workers, not the other way around, reported the Associated Press.

“In a world where younger is better, talk about discrimination because of age is naturally understood to refer to discrimination against the older,” Justice David Souter wrote for the majority. “The enemy of 40 is 30, not 50.”

While the federal law protects bias against all workers over the age of 40, it “does not mean to stop an employer from favoring an older employee over a younger one,” even when both workers fall into the protected group, Souter added.

Last week’s ruling tosses out a lawsuit filed by about 200 General Dynamics workers between the ages of 40 and 50 who sued after losing a generous healthcare retirement benefit during a contract renegotiation in 1997.

The 40-something workers complained that the new contract established illegal preferential treatment for their 50-plus colleagues, who were allowed to keep the healthcare benefit thanks to a grandfather clause.

The ruling was welcomed widely by the nation’s employers, who have been downsizing and cutting benefits during the recent recession. Many firms worried that a ruling in favor of the younger workers could create a stampede of lawsuits by workers who lost benefits, noted the Reuters news agency.

“I don’t know if this perpetuates age warfare,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce lawyer Robin Conrad told the AP, but it “makes it very clear [that] discrimination on the basis of age means old age.”

But plaintiff Dennis Cline said last week’s ruling is bleak news for his peer group in the struggling economy.

“The fallout from this decision is corporations can rob benefits from all but their oldest employees,” Cline told the AP. “This is going to have all companies breathing a sigh of relief and sharpening their knives and saying, ‘Who and what do we cut next?’”

WASHINGTON
Hoping to force a showdown with the government, an elderly Illinois couple last week sued two federal agencies over the current U.S. ban on buying prescription drugs from Canada, where prices often are much cheaper.

Ray and Gaylee Andrews, both 74 and both still working, say they no longer can afford their home of 34 years due in part to nearly $1,000 in monthly payments for prescriptions.

The office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, which says the couple could save more than 40 percent by buying Canadian, encouraged them to sue and helped them find a lawyer, reported the Associated Press.

Blagojevich is one of a growing number of prominent politicians who have decided that they have waited long enough for policy change and are brazenly challenging the ban on cross-border sales.

The Andrews’ suit, filed in Washington, accuses the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of violating their constitutional rights by limiting their access to reasonable healthcare choices.

“They are asking for one thing and one thing only: to make their own rational medical decisions and the right to buy the safe, affordable prescription drugs they need without the interference of the government,” Blagojevich said at a news conference with the couple, according to the AP.

Last December, Blagojevich asked the federal government for permission to set up a supervised pilot program that would allow controlled purchases of Canadian drugs, saving his cash-strapped state an estimated $91 million a year.

Last week, after still receiving no response, Blagojevich said he was backing the couples’ lawsuit.

Blagojevich was joined in calling for a new policy by the governors of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wisconsin has launched a Web page instructing state residents on how to shop safely for cheaper drugs in Canada.

Under increasing pressure on the issue, the Bush administration last week said it would launch a yearlong study into cross-border drug purchases as required under 2003 Medicare legislation, reported the New York Times.

The announcement was greeted with dismay by some lawmakers after FDA commissioner Mark McClellan, an outspoken opponent of importing Canadian drugs, was named as the panel’s head.

“It gives new meaning to putting the fox in charge of the chicken house,” charged Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), according to a report from the Washington Post.

The FDA says it stands by its policy against importing Canadian drugs, insisting that it cannot ensure the quality and safety of such products.

WASHINGTON
The American Psychological Association (APA) last week urged the government to regulate TV advertising, which targets children with an average of 40,000 commercials a year.

The APA’s recommendation follows an 18-month study by a six-member panel, which concluded that young children lack the mental skills to differentiate between straightforward content and biased ads.

“While older children and adults understand the inherent bias of advertising, younger children do not,” the report’s lead author, psychologist Dale Kunkel of the University of California at Santa Barbara, told the Reuters news agency.

Barraging young and unsophisticated viewers with $12 million in ads for products, companies have found an easy mark, Kunkel said: “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

The APA is urging the government to get involved by regulating TV ad content, recommending that TV characters no longer be used to sell products and that wording be plainly parsed for children — “you have to put it together” instead of “assembly required,” for example.

The APA report suggests that the ease of marketing to children younger than 9 is of national concern, saying it breeds instant demand for bad-for-you items like sugary soda and junk food that contribute to an expensive epidemic of national obesity, reported Reuters.

American Association of Advertising Agencies told USA Today that a review panel of the Better Business Bureaus ensures that ads for children are responsibly designed and distributed.

Roughly one-third of children between the ages of two and seven have TVs in their bedrooms, according to statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation cited by USA Today.

ACCRA, Ghana
Ghana last week warned the more than 3,000 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) doing business in the country to prove they are bona fide or face blacklisting by the end of the month.

NGOs are nonprofit international organizations made up of private citizens with the goal of managing resources or implementing projects that bring about social change.

Ghana, which is fighting massive poverty and other social ills, has seen a surge in the number of both charity groups and charlatans who say they have come to help, reported the BBC.

Now, the nation says it is time for NGOs to make a choice: either get out or get clear by filing annual reports and financial statements with the government so donors can see how their money is being spent.

“Most NGOs spend around 80 percent of the money available to them from government agencies or foreign sponsors as administrative costs, for which they do not rend proper accounts,” Ghanaian official Kojo Amoakwe told the BBC.

“NGOs are meant to be philanthropic, but many are fake and take a share of the money for their personal use,” he added.

NGOs have until March 31 to meet the filing deadline. Those that fail to do so will be placed on a blacklist to be circulated locally and internationally, according to the BBC.

From the Gallup News Service:

“Most Americans continue to believe that the United States should play at least a major role in trying to solve international problems, and a small majority believes the United States is viewed favorably by the rest of the world. But majorities also believe that President George W. Bush is not respected by foreign leaders and disapprove of the way Bush has handled foreign affairs. Overall, Americans are about evenly divided as to whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the position of the United States in the world today, in contrast to their much more positive views last year, during the Iraq war.

“These results come from Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 9-12, which shows that 74 percent of Americans believe the United States should take either the leading role (21 percent) or a major role (53 percent) in world affairs.

“These views have varied only a little over the past three years, although the percentage saying ‘leading’ role increased after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Americans supported efforts to combat the terrorists. The decline this year could be due to the problems the country faces in Iraq. Still, in all four polls, more than 70 percent of Americans said the United States should play either a major or the leading role in world affairs.

“While most Americans continue to express an ‘internationalist’ view, they have become decidedly less positive about the position of the United States in the world today. Just 47 percent say they are satisfied, while 51 percent are dissatisfied….

“The current poll shows that compared with last spring, during the Iraq war, Americans now have a more negative assessment of how the world perceives the United States and its president. A solid majority, 57 percent, believes Bush is not respected by foreign leaders, while only 39 percent believe he is….

“A similar pattern is found on the question of how the United States is viewed in the eyes of the world. Currently, 54 percent of Americans believe their country is viewed positively, 45 percent negatively…. The poll shows 46 percent of Americans approving of the way Bush is handling foreign affairs, with 52 percent disapproving…. All of the measures about foreign affairs are highly related to people’s party affiliation….

“On the role of the United States, majorities of all three partisan groups say the country should play a ‘major’ role….”

“I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility.”

– John Ruskin (English writer, critic, and reformer, 1819-1900)