Why does the U.S. government’s foreign policy often hinge on the naïve and moralistic expectation that other countries should act against their own interests? Wouldn’t a more realistic U.S. foreign policy be better for everyone concerned? Let’s take an example. North Korea is a mostly isolated, totalitarian, unpredictable, and downright weird regime. Its only “friend” …
Continue reading “US Policy Toward the Koreas Is Unrealistic”
It’s finally coming into focus, and it’s not even a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your “safety” will mean your humiliation, your degradation. And by the way, it will mean the degradation of your country, too. …
Continue reading “The National Security State Cops a Feel”
Rep. Peter King characterizes WikiLeaks as a “terrorist” organization, but who’s the real terrorist-supporter? Wasn’t it Rep. King who signed a statement of support for the “National Council of Resistance,” a front for the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which appears on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations? The MEK has killed American diplomatic personnel, and …
Continue reading “WikiLeaks vs. the Political Class”
Is there a Shia crescent threatening the stability of western Asia and northern Africa? Is there a historically coded Arab-Persian enmity driving the international politics of the region? Does it date back centuries, and is it now viewed as a battle for regional supremacy? If we are to believe the media comments on the latest …
Continue reading “The Myth of a Shia-Sunni/Persian-Arab Confrontation”
A diplomatic cable from last February released by WikiLeaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability. In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile …
Continue reading “Russians Refuted US Claim of Iranian Missile Threat to Europe”
The stuck pigs are squealing. To shift the onus from the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton paints WikiLeaks’ release of the “diplomatic cables” as an “attack on the international community.” To reveal truth is equivalent, in the eyes of the U.S. government, to an attack on the world. It is WikiLeaks’ fault that all those …
Continue reading “Who, Precisely, Is Attacking the World?”
Updated at 10:12 p.m. EST, Nov. 30, 2010
Even though U.S. troops are set to leave Iraq next year, the U.S. State Department and Pentagon believe it will stay expensive to keep remaining Americans safe in the country. Iraqi civilians also must worry about such attacks and other hardships they continue to suffer now. At least seven Iraqis were killed and 12 more were wounded in today’s light attacks.
Compared to the kind of secret cables that WikiLeaks has just shared with the world, everyday public statements from government officials are exercises in make-believe. In a democracy, people have a right to know what their government is actually doing. In a pseudo-democracy, a bunch of fairy tales from high places will do the trick. …
Continue reading “WikiLeaks: Demystifying ‘Diplomacy’”
While the massive dump of some 250,000 internal U.S. diplomatic communications by WikiLeaks includes none marked “top secret,” their dissemination is already causing considerable embarrassment and may well inflict longer-term damage on Washington’s foreign relations. Most analysts said the initial exposure of nearly 250 of the documents – or only about one-thousandth of the total …
Continue reading “Washington Insiders Fret Over WikiLeaks Dump”
John Tyner triggered a wave of protest against the Transportation Security Administration when he recorded himself saying, “If you touch my junk, I’m gonna have you arrested,” pithily paraphrased as “Don’t touch my junk!” But this protest was anathema to the thought police at The Nation, because after all it is now Obama’s TSA, and …
Continue reading “Mutiny Is in Order at The Nation“ 
