As the presidential candidates flex prospective muscle on foreign affairs, military escalation in Afghanistan has become a recurring campaign theme. The narrative that politicians are weaving suggests that in contrast to America's ugly entanglement in Iraq, Afghanistan is somehow the “right” war, because it would strike terrorist forces at their root.

Sen. Joe Biden's convention speech aimed to quell voter anxieties about national security by stressing Obama's wish to step up America's military presence in Afghanistan.

And a build-up is already on the horizon, as the military prepares to pump more than 12,000 new soldiers into its Afghanistan operations.

Yet the swelling of the U.S. military role is shadowed by continued violence, peaking with an especially lethal spasm last week: 90 civilians killed by a U.S.-led airstrike, as declared by the United Nations.

Meanwhile, in a parallel to diplomatic tensions in Iraq, Afghanistan is pressuring the United States to revise the skeletal regulations governing its military operations, in a push to avoid more destruction by foreign forces tasked with securing the region.

But Marine commandant Gen. James T. Conway still trumpeted the need for more troops in Afghanistan yesterday, hinting that the move would dovetail neatly with the recent move toward an Iraq military drawdown:

"Everyone seems to agree that additional forces are the ideal course of action for preventing a Taliban comeback, but just where they're going to come from is still up for discussion.”

Others want to see the discussion move beyond the premise of "more is better." Critics warn of another misguided, Iraq-like quagmire, and they say the problem is not where the war is being fought, but how and why.

On the world stage, the brilliant performance of the Chinese women's gymnastics team has inspired awe--and a touch of doubt. As today's editorial page noted, their teeny frames have prompted suspicions of age doctoring.

The media is swirling with reports that some girls may be under age 16 — too young to compete in the Olympics--while state press reports seem to have been suspiciously scrubbed, possibly in an Orwellian effort to erase any trace of scandal.

Some commentators seem refreshed that the issue has finally given some bite to what they see as a sanitized Olympics love-fest — the "Kumbaya games."

Harvey Araton of the New York Times questioned why there was not more talk of Pixie-gate in the media circus:

"...why do I get the feeling that if these Olympics were happening in Chicago or Los Angeles, the story would by now be a serious cable television cause célèbre?

"Larry King would be hosting the stricken parents of victimized Americans. Hannity would be chiding Colmes about Communist child abusers. Lou Dobbs would be demanding the borders be closed to all Chinese gymnasts under 80 pounds....

"When in North America, do as the North Americans do — overreact. When in China, overlook.

"For better or worse, these are the shrug-and-don’t-tell Olympics, undoubtedly because it would be considered impolitic to embarrass the Chinese after they went to such great expense to throw the world this lavish party."

Is the American media giving its Olympic hosts a free pass?

From the perspective of many Chinese, Western outlets are in fact running a smear campaign to blemish China's Olympic moment. But China can't deny that it's tossed plenty of riddles at quizzical spectators.

The story of Aafia Siddiqui reads like a good mystery novel: a young Pakistani woman gets swept up in a national-security probe, moves to her homeland, abruptly disappears, suddenly resurfaces five years later in Afghanistan, and then lands in a New York courtroom, wounded and frail, accused of trying to kill U.S. soldiers.

The really disturbing part is that it’s not fiction, and even more strangely, after so many years, these facts are virtually all the public knows of the neuroscientist and mother of three, despite the FBI's supposedly relentless pursuit.

U.S. authorities say they started tracking Siddiqui and her husband several years ago, intrigued by some odd military-type equipment purchases. In 2003, terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed implicated her as an al-Qaida operative, and she vanished shortly afterward.

Advocates say the evidence (including suspicious materials found in her handbag) is rigged, and that Siddiqui is a victim of a global anti-terror dragnet. Her defenders also question the government’s allegations that the tiny woman grabbed an officer’s rifle and “fired it at officers and employees of the FBI and the United States armed services.”

If you're scratching your head, trying to understand the conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, perhaps a little three-letter word will help: oil.

Of course, nationalism and demonstrations of strength by the leaders of the two countries have something to do with this scary conflict. But Michael Klare, an expert on the resource wars of the future, told the Institute for Public Accuracy that oil is a major factor too.

"The United States seeks to use Georgia as an 'energy corridor' to transport Caspian energy to the West without going through Iran or Russia; to this end, it helped build the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) Pipeline across Georgia and helped beef up the Georgian military to protect it. Russia seeks to frustrate America's use of Georgia for this purpose, and uses Abkhazia and South Ossetia as daggers pointed at the jugular of the BTC pipeline. When Saakashvili sought to drive the Russians out of these enclaves, the Russians struck back."

As the demand for oil grows and the supply flattens out and begins to decline, the potential for more and more oil wars is very real. The current situation may well be a harbinger of worse yet to come.

In the 1980s, AIDS exploded as a national issue, as people recognized that the crisis loomed larger, and closer to home, than we originally thought--not just relegated to "fringe" segments of society. Today, it seems, medical science and greater awareness have helped overcome the worst of the epidemic in the United States, while the government turns its attention to fighting the disease in other countries.

The Bush administration recently signed into law an unprecedented investment in the global effort to address HIV/AIDS: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provides $48 billion toward worldwide treatment and prevention programs for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

But while the President's initiative was lauded as a major step against AIDS on a global scale, other news raises questions about how far we are from stemming the epidemic at home.

Despite a diplomatic freeze between the United States and Cuba, a merger in the brewing industry is spilling a frothy trail from Belgium to Missouri to Havana, and possibly the White House.

Budweiser loyalists have protested the pending sale of Anheuser-Busch to Belgium’s InBev, maker of Stella Artois. Though InBev has promised fans of the quintessential American brewery that their product will stay pure, Bud-lovers are understandably a bit stung by the foreign takeover.

The global beer marriage (net weight: 65 billion pints per year) is even raising eyebrows on the campaign trail, due to InBev's links to one of America’s least-favored nations in the Western Hemisphere. The company does business with Cuba, which has for decades been isolated from most U.S. commerce under an economic embargo. Some legal hubbub has emerged over whether InBev’s Cuba ties would interfere with Bud’s heartland-based management operations.

And now, some speculate the power shift in the Bud empire could spill messily into the presidential race.

As the Washington press corps swarms around Obama's diplomatic whirlwind tour, the Man in the Street is becoming a very popular guy.

Street interviews occupy a special place in the establishment press. The charmingly gritty quote from the cab driver cursing the occupiers, the wistful ruminations of the medical student who dreams of going abroad--such snapshots add color and dash to an otherwise drab media landscape of dismal economic indicators, dry death tolls and wonky policy debates.

But it might be best not to read too much out of these exported soundbites.

Example: The New York Times recently reported that the Iraqis have fallen for Obama. A handful of interviewees from different areas "expressed broad approval for him personally."

"Saad Sultan, an official in an Iraqi government ministry, contended that Mr. Obama could give a fresh start to relations between the Arab world and the United States....

" 'Every time I see Obama I say: "He’s close to us. Maybe he’ll see us in a different way," ' Mr. Sultan said. “I find Obama very close to my heart.'

"Race is also a consideration. Muhammad Ahmed Kareem, 49, an engineer from Mosul, said he had high expectations of Mr. Obama because his experience as a black man in America might give him more empathy for others who feel oppressed by a powerful West. 'Blacks suffered a lot of discrimination, much like Arabs,' Mr. Kareem said. 'That’s why we expect that his tenure will be much better.' "

(The Obamania stops short, however, on the issue of withdrawal, where the interviewees seem to fear that his proposed pullout plan would be too hasty.)

Today, after years of political warfare and convoluted legal reasoning, the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan finally got underway.

At issue is whether Hamdan, a Yemeni national accused of serving as Osama bin Laden's driver and supporting terrorism, played a substantial role in carrying out terrorist activity, or was merely an insignificant cog in bin Laden's organization.

But the muted question in the background is whether the Bush administration's war on terror provides a legal premise for stripping away constitutional cornerstones: over the years, a growing chorus of legal observers have blasted Gitmo's military commissions as an insult to the American and international justice systems.

It's tough these days to hear anything calm and rational about Iran.

There are still rumors about a desire deep within the Bush administration to launch a military attack on Iran before a new American president takes office.

A recent Seymour Hersh piece in The New Yorker reports on a presidential decision to allow more covert military operations within Iran.

Congress is moving toward a concurrent resolution, spearheaded in the House by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates), urging President George W. Bush to put increasing pressure on Iran. Critics of that resolution say that, although it doesn't mention the word blockade, the actions it asks Bush to initiate would amount to a blockade.

The leaders of the world’s richest democracies didn’t appear to feel the pain of the world’s hungry when they got together in Japan this week to talk about the global food crisis. With the price of food soaring, millions of people are being pushed precariously to the brink of starvation, and food riots are roiling scores of hardscrabble places around the globe. There was plenty for the affluent leaders to discuss.

G8 members didn’t let any of that get in the way of a good meal. In the first day of the summit the VIPs chowed down at the “blessings of the earth and sea social dinner.” Eighteen dishes were reportedly served in eight courses, including caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef, truffles, sea urchin and tuna. The repast was washed down with champagne, sake and a variety of other wines. African leaders who had taken part in the talks — and whose countrymen figure prominently among the hungry — were not invited to the dinner.

Gosh, where are those war powers when you need them?

A commission led by two former secretaries of state, James A. Baker, III and Warren Christopher, just released a report urging a revision of the War Powers act.

That legislation, enacted amid the public fury over the Vietnam War, has enabled (or limited) the executive branch to wage war abroad for up to 90 days without a green light from Congress. In theory, the intention was to strengthen the balance between the constitutional powers of Congress (purse strings) and the president (military command).

In practice, Congress has historically wielded its "war powers" rather meekly, and presidents have used their commander-in-chief authority to launch into combat without seeking a formal go-ahead from Congress. Meanwhile, the question of what war powers the constitution actually grants lawmakers has never really been settled in the courts. (Not that people haven't tried: just this May, a group of peace activists filed a lawsuit in New Jersey challenging the constitutionality of the Iraq War.)

Could a rewrite of the War Powers Resolution reconfigure the political landscape for deciding matters of war?

President George W. Bush has rolled out his talking points for the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, where some of the world's most powerful nations will huddle on issues impacting the fate of practically every other country. The summit's agenda spans from the food crisis to alternative energy.

In his speech yesterday, Bush touched on a critical debate that the United States is frequently accused of hampering: forging international cooperation on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

While Bush vowed to further engage other countries on climate-change issues, at this point, there's virtually nowhere to go but up: The United States has distanced itself from much of the international community with its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, a first step toward globally addressing climate change. International pressure for some kind of consensus has mounted in recent years, as energy consumption leaps forward in India and China, and as environmental and political volatility surrounding climate change swells.

A biofuels boom, an exploding global food crisis. Those two simultaneous, not-so-coincidental phenomena are bursting the euphoric bubble of a major "green" energy sector.

Andy Kimbrell’s commentary on Friday about the food-versus-fuel dilemma raises troubling questions about the consequences of government-backed biofuel development. In recent months, ethanol’s green gloss has dulled in light of new research suggesting that farming our fuel does more harm than good.

To critics of the industry, the issue is fundamentally about displacement: fuel crops replace food crops and pristine land, while political and economic capital gravitate toward market hype at the expense of human needs.

Les commented yesterday on China's response to parents who lost children in the Sichuan earthquake. The other, perhaps more devastating side to the quake’s human toll is the thousands of children left orphaned—the official count is now about 4,000 but is sure to rise. For children suddenly hit with the loss of their caregivers, there might be even less that the government can do to salve the damage. Even in richer countries, any state-led effort to place disconnected children in stable homes brings ethical challenges and safety issues. When you add cataclysmic natural disaster to the mix—further complicated by China’s massive bureaucracy, political opacity, and tumultuous economic landscape—a total reconfiguration of the social welfare infrastructure may be in order.

A worldwide outpouring of sympathy for the orphans is a hopeful sign, yet it raises some interesting questions about who will be called upon to care for them.

In Dublin this week, advocates for a ban on cluster bombs achieved a much stronger treaty than they had anticipated. It basically stigmatizes these nasty weapons, which leave hundreds of unexploded cluster bomblets spread across an area as big as a football field, where children too often pick them up and get killed or maimed. Once the treaty gets signed and ratified by 30 nations, it will go into effect, banning the manufacture, use, trade or stockpiling of these weapons.

Sadly, our own government not only stayed away from the negotiations, but worked behind the scenes to block any efforts to curb our own use of the weapons. The cluster bombs create far more enemies than they kill. There's no excuse for using them in civilian areas. And our government's stubborn resistance to the treaty can only reinforce the go-it-alone image that the current administration has created for the nation.

If your only child was killed or mangled in China’s earthquake, the government will now grant you a certificate to have another. They’re "clarifying" the one-offspring-only law.

Morally speaking, that’s the least they could do, since most of the children were crushed inside substandard school
buildings that the government had permitted to go up.