Author: Joe Mantecon

The idea of East Asia as the economic center is nothing new. Indeed, from a historical perspective, the idea of a financial world ruled by the West is both unprecedented and astounding. Chinese rule would appear far more appropriate under such context.

The death of Osama bin Laden Sunday night at the hands of United States forces sent a tremor throughout the world.

A bulky, metal transport craft called a Higgins Boat gets as close to the beach as its coxswain dares to take it. Plunging its bow into the shoreline, it disgorges its cargo, a thirty-man platoon of the 29th Infantry Division.

College has, in spite of itself, taught me a number of things.

How to negotiate your way out of a late fee; the astonishing speed at which mold can invade a sink full of unwashed dishes; how quickly a $300 bank account becomes emaciated when you’re doing your own grocery shopping and Safeway has you by the balls or you live a roughly 15 minute walk from Powell’s Books.

I’ve always found the issue of American intervention abroad to be sadly amusing. Whether delivering aid to a Japanese scene of natural disaster, messing the shit out of some Iraqi dictator, building schools and bridges in Afghanistan or clearing the skies over Libya, there’s nary a spot on God’s good, green Earth un-meddled with by—what I call—the American Swiss Army Knife of Global Justice.

 We’ve gotten to know President Obama fairly well over the last three years. Even among his critics, whether you criticize him for doing nothing, or criticize him for changing everything, we can all agree that, as with his predecessor, Obama has had a healthy amount of headaches on his plate recently. No sympathy here—it’s called leadership.

One of the things about being a superpower in a globalized world is that you rarely find yourself justified to shrug off some international issue as “someone else’s problem.”

And things were just starting to look up.

By now, you’ve probably heard a thing or two about what’s going on in the Middle East.

We’ve been in Afghanistan now for almost 10 years. Think about that for a second. Is anyone else sobered by the reality that American troops have been on the ground in that country long enough for a generation of kids to make it to the fifth grade?