We will have a foreign policy conference March 8 with several of the all-stars of international diplomacy in attendance. We have the opportunity to hear from Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, and foreign national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The conference, “A New Kind of Leadership: America and the Rise of the Rest,” will discuss the evolving challenges to national security.
This is the benefit of having a statesman like David Boren as the president of our school; we get high profile conferences like this one. It’s an opportunity we shouldn’t miss.
Not only will we get the opportunity to listen to their words, which will certainly ring of politics and insider knowledge of the international community, but we also get to ask them potentially challenging questions.
We are writing about this a week in advance for one specific reason. This is your opportunity to challenge these wise men with questions we need to know. Think of those difficult questions now, study their history so you can ask the right person the right question. Try to get the whole truth out of some of these guys.
Here are a few questions we could ask these men:
-Why are we in Iraq? We have an obligation to keep asking this until we get a real answer.
-What will be done about Burma now that it’s courting India and China?
-Why didn’t we listen when the father (a prominent Nigerian Banker) of the underwear bomber said his son was a terrorist?
-What are we actually doing to stop extremism in Yemen and Somalia (and everywhere else for that matter)?
-What is the end goal for Afghanistan: democracy, stability or merely the pariah status of international terrorists?
-How much of Afghanistan was blowback or repercussions from our previous involvement in the region?
-What’s the point of a terrorist color wheel since it doesn’t seem to move anymore?
We have this chance to call them out, to ask the tough questions most of our media outlets don’t ask anymore. It would be a shame if we missed this opportunity.
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William 2 years, 2 months ago
I think the most important questions to ask would pertain to what prices American citizens are expected to pay for security. Have they thought about these things? Have they balanced the values of freedom that lay the foundation of our country with the "war on terror" and the desire to live peacefully? Privacy, civil rights, and political malpractice should be the center of discussion during the question/answer session.
TheAntiTrevorClark 2 years, 2 months ago
Yes. I'm sure they will be straightforward this time and answer the questions honestly for the first time in eight years. Here. At OU. Yeah.