Political Science

In war, soldiers are supposed and expected to carry themselves and behave in a particular and agreed way.  With this knowledge available to soldiers on both sides of a conflict, then war in so much as it is destructive is fought with clear rules of engagement. The challenge however arises when one of the parties in the war decides to change the rules of engagement without informing the other party.  It becomes challenging to both parties to agree on what the rules are anymore since each is seeing the war from their own perspective.

Discussion
In war it is accepted that soldiers should not target civilians intentionally and when they find them in the course of war, they are to remove them from harms way.  Additionally, captured soldiers are to be treated with respect as their only crime is fighting for the opposing side. In the same breadth, soldiers are not to fight from or shield in residential areas as this undermines the civilian population.  This are generally rules that govern both sides of a conflict.

This unfortunately is not the case when dealing with the war on terror.  To begin with, the combatants who perpetuate this war do not prescribe to the generally agreed rules of engagement.  To them children and women-non combatants, are fair target.  They also do not fight from a clearly defined theater of war.  They hide among civilians and use them as human shield.  They use non acceptable practices  coercion, to get civilians to do their biding.

This said it defeats logic that the rules that apply to combatants in war should apply to them.  When a person has sent a child or woman with explosives to blow up a school or train station, there can be no time to reason with them.  Instead all effort need be used to aid in the discovery of the status of the explosive before it explodes.  Similarly, how can the rules of war apply on a person who claims that they do not recognize the said rules in the first place

Civility can only be practiced on people who appreciate it.  The rights accorded armed combatants are much more than they accord to their casualties.  One does not wake up in the morning prepared to suffer injuries from explosives detonated on a bus to work or at shopping mall as they buy their groceries.

Any one caught while trying to perpetuate the war on terror should be dealt with as forceful as possible in order to aid in avoiding further casualties.  Some of the tactics used like water-boarding have been labeled as torture or enhanced interrogations techniques (Edwards  Webster, 2008).  Whatever anyone calls them, the truth is that they have been successful. For a person who believes that killing Americans is honorable and that they will gain sainthood in the process it becomes very hard to reason with them.

Any person claiming to fight for the rights of the terror suspects must explain to the American people what rights they have to expect to be blown up to pieces or have a plane flown into their place of work.  They also need to make it clear, what rights the American people have when they are killed just because they are Americans.  In truth, the war on terror suspects enjoys more rights than they care to give Americans captured by them.

Pictures of an American soldier being dragged from the back of a pick-up truck in Mogadishu, Somalia are still fresh in peoples minds (Lindner, 2001)).  It is worth to remember, Americans went to Mogadishu under the invitation of the UN and in an effort to save civilians caught up in fighting.

Conclusion
In truth, there is no case for those advocating for prosecution of Cheney and by extension Americans on charges of war crimes or crimes against humanity for engaging in torture and enhanced interrogation.  It should be clear to them, the information gained from these acts have ensured their continued safety.  It has made it possible for American forces to foil and deter terrorist plans aimed at American and the people of the free world.  Enhanced interrogation or torture as one may chose to look at it should be used but only on cases of people who have chosen to be irrational in their reasoning.

Module 3
Both Kuttner and Weidenbaum have put forth compelling arguments to support their points of view.  However, this writer agrees with Weidenbaum assertion that U.S companies who open overseas factories provide low cost components and materials to U.S. based producers who are thus able to improve their international competitiveness (2001).  In truth most of the investments by American companies are rarely in third world countries.  They happen to be in first world countries which have similar or even more stringent policies on environmental regulations.
 
It is nave to claim in this day and age that any investment done by an American company in the third world would be in order to gain from cheap labor.  The savings gained from the relatively lower labor costs are incidentally taken up by other costs like transportation of the finished product and the general cost of doing business.  It is worth to remember, the third world countries do not have the same infrastructure as is available in America.

 For instance, where electricity is constant and guaranteed in America, in the third world countries it is not only much more expensive than America, it is also more unreliable.  It is common to find companies running diesel generators to power their machines simply because there is a power outage.  On the same breadth, it is worth to remember to that most of production at present is mechanized.
 Operators need to be highly specialized in order to run this expensive machinery efficiently. The training costs can not allow the companies to have a high turnover of staff.  They thus have to pay them a competitive wage in order to retain them over long periods of time.

Importation of goods helps more than it hurts the American people.  What imports do to the local economy and the local consumers is offer a variety that would not be possible in a closed economy.  In truth the American economy can not produce all the requisite minerals and metals necessary for the continued growth of the American industries.  Similarly, by the nature of expertise needed to produce certain manufacturing components, it would not make sense to produce them locally at a high price while they can be outsourced cheaply.

What this portends is that the American consumer gets to enjoy cheap finished products.  Especially at this time when there economy is in recession, these cheap products have become a life line to the American families and elderly.  In reality exceedingly even people who previously did not care for discount store are increasingly being seen here in search of bargains.

The biggest number of American for a long time bought American cars and as such ensured the survival of the American car industry.  This was despite the availability of cheaper, more reliable and much more fuel efficient cars from Asia.  However when the oil crisis hit, the American car industry was exposed for its lack of foresight and greed in not investing for the future.  Currently American families are seeking Asian cars since they can no longer afford to maintain the high costing American brands.

If this option was not available, the American economy would have collapsed in entirely when finally the financial crisis brought the automobile industry to its knees.  It is wise to remember, any jobs lost in production are ably gained back in sales and service of the imported products.  In truth, the service and sales jobs pay much more than production ones.

In the present economic recession, imports have become life savings lifelines to all population segments.  There is not a single segment that has not found solace in imported goods.  The American people chose to become a consuming economy and as such rely on imports for all their needs.  In addition, with the rising population, it is no longer possible to have all the requirements met by local production.

By the nature of the American people, the land of the free is made up of people from all over the world.  With their influx they introduce new products that find a following in America.  In the end, to satisfy the new consumers won over to the new product, it has to be imported from the producing country to be enjoyed.  Producing it in America is not an option since most definitely the raw materials are to be found in the countries of origin.

In a democracy every voice counts and there is an equal opportunity by all to be at the helm  if only they convince a majority of those with the voting right in the population.  When one is aggrieved and takes the dispute to a court of law, they expect that should they get a favorable judgment, it will be enforced. The above two scenarios unfortunately do not apply to the IMF, World Bank and the WTO.
In their design the IMF and the World Bank make policies that are pro investors at the expense of the workers and producers.  By advocating for structural adjustment programs, they made third world economies take on policies that were not for the good of the citizens (Shah, 2010).  A critical look at the policies which it is now generally accepted were faulty, all they did was to open up these economies for the first world economies to dump their excess production and kill the local industries.
In addition, they made the third world produced goods so expensive as not to compete in the first world economies.  Even as the World Bank and the IMF were pressuring the third world governments to abolish subsidies to producers in their economies, the first world  Americans and the Europeans, were busy increasing the same and making their farm produce uncompetitive and cheap (Associated Press, 2008).

By forcing the privatization of the core sectors critical to human survival  education and health, the IMF and World Bank Cleary showed they did not care for the consumers.  With the majority of the population already living below the poverty, how were they expected to finance their childrens education and pay for quality healthcare (Jindal, 1998)  The paradox is that in England the biggest healthcare provider is government funded and in America where this does not exist, all the poor and middle class families can not afford health care.  Even with the IMF and the World Bank living and housed in this two particular countries, they still insisted that what was working there was not good for the third world countries.  When the third world countries tried to raise their voices, they were in no uncertain terms told to comply or they would receive no funds which by the way were loans to be repaid with interest.

The WTO on its part is at most a toothless bull dog.  In its short time of existence it has passed some judgments which have been largely adhered to but for the crucial ones affecting on the giant economies this has not been the case (Davey, 2009).  All rulings passed down by it can only be enforced with the assistance of the local companys law enforcement agencies.

Should they choose not to or that to them the case is not a high enough priority then the judgment becomes less worth less than the paper it is written on.   This being the case, and especially with regards to the economic superpowers, the WTO is just a talk shop.  They come here to fulfill formalities and to them the WTO is only useful when they have a dispute amongst themselves  government to government, like to do with taxation regimes perceived as unfair to their products.
Additionally, since these bodies are optional by nature, only member countries signatory to their charters can be bound by their rulings.  A nation signatory to any of the charters can not seek intervention against another country which is not a signatory.  Their rules are thus not universally accepted.

Between increased economic interdependence endangering national security and workers and countries being exploited as a result of globalization (Kuttner, 1998), this writer believes they carry equal weight between them.  They expose a country especially those in the third world to equal risks.  However, for this paper, this writer contends that the latter is more a cause of concern.

Increasingly, the requisite raw materials that are being used to drive the world economy are being found in the third world countries.  In addition, these countries happen to have the biggest unexploited resources.  Thus they hold the potential to make or break the world as we know it in the 21st century. Due to the nature of competition in the world, companies have consolidated in order to enjoy economies of scale.

The result is multinational some of which have operational budgets that totally dwarf countries GDPs.  When they come into a country to harvest and use a paarticular resource, they can afford to arm twist governments.  They have been know to buy of officials to look the other side as they exploit workers and the environment  in Ghana and Nigeria there is evidence of toxic waste dumping from Britain (Milmo, 2009).  In other cases where governments have refused to accede to their wishes, the multinationals have been accused of orchestrating coups in order to have leaders sympathetic to their cause and willing to do their bidding in power.