Regime

WASHINGTON - There is a tension between President Bush's properly ambitious war aims, which he has stated with minimal ambiguity, and the process he has set in motion to achieve those aims. This tension, which can quickly breed incoherence, then paralysis, arises from the importance placed simultaneously on national self-defense and building a multinational coalition to assist that. Coalitions can become ends in themselves, particularly if the goal is constant and publicly expressed consensus from a "broad-based" coalition.

The drumbeat for war only helps Iran by driving up oil prices, undermining the effect of sanctions on its economy and stifling domestic opponents of the regime. President Barack Obama conveyed that message clearly and emphatically to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee over the weekend. He repeated it to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met at the White House on Monday. And he aimed it at his prospective Republican rivals Tuesday when he reminded them of what happened the last time we let the politics of warmongering get ahead of diplomacy.

PARIS -- All of France is intrigued by why President Francois Mitterrand cooperated in the writing of a new book that describes how he faithfully served the wartime Vichy government and remained friendly afterward with some of that pro-Nazi regime's most unsavory characters.The book, "A French Youth," lifts the veil on Mr. Mitterrand's World War II years. It details his role as a Vichy official so devoted to its chief, Marshal Philippe Petain, that he was awarded a high decoration attesting to his loyalty.

The flood of video images emerging from the besieged city of Homs and other rebellious towns in Syria have shocked the world with their depictions of President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown on innocent civilians. The images, nearly all of them taken with hand-held cellphone cameras, were not made by professional journalists (most of whom have been barred from entering the country) but by ordinary Syrians caught up in the terrifying chaos of war. We rarely witness a conflict at such close range, or so intimately from the viewpoint of the participants, and perhaps for that very reason the fuzzy, slightly off-kilter immediacy of these images makes the suffering and death they record all the more gripping.

Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose military regime killed thousands of political opponents in one of Latin America's bloodiest "dirty wars," died yesterday, weakened by ill health, pursued by government prosecutors and abandoned by all but his most loyal defenders. He was 91. Shorn of his swagger and absent the menacing look he would flash from behind dark glasses, Pinochet at his death was a mere ghost of the emblematic military strongman who played a critical role in the Americas of the 1970s and 1980s.

TEHRAN, Iran -- On March 29, a little more than a month after he disappeared, Ibrahim Zalzadeh's body turned up at the morgue in the city coroner's office.In another country, his family might have assumed that the 49-year-old magazine publisher had been the victim of a car accident or some other relatively innocent tragedy. But in Iran, thoughts tend toward the more sinister.Indeed, a few days later, when friends of the family finally saw the body and reported that Zalzadeh had been stabbed three or four times in the chest, the family's suspicions deepened.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Not too long ago, members of the black-uniformed Fedayeen Saddam militias were patrolling the streets of this city, searching for draft dodgers and shooting at U.S. Marines. Dana Jaf was among them. He is 21, a short, sturdy Kurd with slicked-down black hair and a bearing of youthful pride. But these days he shifts his glance anxiously, peers over his shoulder and quietly insists that the regime forced him into the militia. "I was not relieved to join them, not my family or myself," he said as he walked the streets of his neighborhood Tuesday, fearful that someone might overhear his conversation.

Three days before the first missiles were loosed on Baghdad, Vice President Dick Cheney repeated an article of faith behind the Bush administration's plan for war against Iraq. "Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators," Cheney said. But the first week of fighting has cast a shadow over such sanguine forecasts. Even in southern Iraq, where the Shiite majority is especially hostile to the regime of Saddam Hussein, American and British troops have faced fierce resistance.

MIAMI -- After Fidel Castro's MiGs shot down two unarmed Cuban-American planes last Saturday, Maria Cristina Herrera felt a double blow."Cuban lives have been lost," she says. But also lost was the chance "of some kind of resolution in a peaceful way" of America's three-and-a-half-decade Cold War with Cuba.The incident has hardened attitudes among Miami's Cuban-Americans and in Congress, stalling or setting back a process of easing tension between the United States and Cuba and muting those voices calling for an end to the embargo of the island.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, marked the first full day of the country's return to sovereignty yesterday by announcing that Iraq would take legal custody of Saddam Hussein today. Hussein, 67, is to face charges in an Iraqi court tomorrow, but his trial is not expected to begin for months. Eleven other members of his regime also will face warrants before Iraq's special war crimes tribunal. "I know I speak for my fellow countrymen when I say I look forward to the day former regime leaders face justice," Allawi said.

DALLAS - Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson looked like his old self when he showed up for the announcement on Monday that fellow third baseman Ron Santo had been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. That should come as a big relief to Orioles fans, who have been fretting about his ill health over the past couple of years. But Brooks wasn't at the Hilton Anatole Hotel to talk about himself. He came to honor a man who had been passed over by the Hall of Fame voters of the Baseball Writers Association of America and the former incarnation of the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee.

Syria's bloody crackdown on anti-government demonstrators reached new levels of brutality this week with the killing of hundreds of civilians in the city of Hama, a hotbed of resistance to the regime of President Bashar Assad. For months, Mr. Assad ignored the international community's mounting condemnation of his repressive tactics, choosing instead to hunker and unleash his security forces against unarmed civilians. He continued to lash out even after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait — nominal allies that have been reluctant to criticize a fellow Sunni Arab leader — took the rare step last week of recalling their ambassadors from Damascus in protest.

As the wave of revolution continues to sweep through the Arab world, the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad could be its next victim. While many in the United States and Israel appear hesitant to support Syria's anti-regime forces - basing their thinking on the old maxim that the devil you know is better than the one you don't - this viewpoint overlooks the major benefits both for the United States and for Israel if the Assad regime is ousted....

When a brutal dictatorship massacres its own people with bombs and machine guns while the eyes of the world are upon it, the U.S. and the international community cannot stand idly by as the atrocities unfold. This week's upheaval in Libya brought thousands of ordinary citizens into the streets of the capital and other cities demanding an end to Col. Moammar Gadhafi's bloody, 40-year career of misrule; the government's response was to mow them down by the hundreds. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday denounced the indiscriminate killing of demonstrators and called on Libya's military to show restraint.

Although the outcome of the revolutionary uprising that is spreading across North Africa and the Middle East is still unclear, the simple fact that it is happening will likely alter the course of history. In coming to terms with the changed political landscape, U.S. policymakers first need to rethink the false dichotomy of stability/instability, upon which many U.S. foreign-policy decisions are based. Governments — in particular authoritarian regimes such as Hosni Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship — are often described as representing "stability.

The article titled "Treading carefully in Egypt response" which appeared in your paper on Jan. 31 completely misses the point of the Lotus Revolution. The people of Egypt spoke in a very clear and loud condemnation of President Hosni Mubarak and his regime. Many have given their lives and thousands more have been beaten and put in jail for wanting freedom and other basic human rights. The American administration, by failing to recognize that Mr. Mubarak has had 30 years during which he and his administration failed to fulfill any reforms toward a Democratic system, is playing a very dangerous game for American security in the region.

Although the outcome of the revolutionary uprising that is spreading across North Africa and the Middle East is still unclear, the simple fact that it is happening will likely alter the course of history. In coming to terms with the changed political landscape, U.S. policymakers first need to rethink the false dichotomy of stability/instability, upon which many U.S. foreign-policy decisions are based. Governments — in particular authoritarian regimes such as Hosni Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship — are often described as representing "stability.

HOSNI Mubarak's authoritarian regime in Egypt is a necessary but embarrassing U.S. aid client and partner in the quest for Middle East peace. The latest curtailment of domestic freedom was the kangaroo trial and seven-year sentence of a civic activist and scholar, Saadeddin Ibrahim, for monitoring elections, championing free speech and exposing discrimination against Coptic Christians. Sentences against 20 other employees of his Ibn Khaldoun Center for Social Development Studies show how adamant the regime was to silence the sociology professor at American University in Cairo, who has U.S. citizenship.

In streets across Iran, on rooftops late at night and city walls, the cry now is "Death to Khamenei!" and "Death to the dictator!" There is no question that the nationwide uprisings target nothing less than the foundation of Iran's ruling theocracy. After seven months of murder, rape and torture, the arrests of hundreds of dissidents, and a brutal crackdown in the streets, the theocratic regime has failed to turn back the movement. Both the opposition and the regime are on an irreversible path that can only lead to the latter's downfall.