Think of it as the Great Obama Shuffle. When U.N. ambassador Susan Rice went down in flames as the president’s nominee for secretary of state, he turned to ally, former presidential candidate, and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry (who had essentially been traveling the world as a second secretary of state …
Continue reading “Chuck Hagel and Murder in Vietnam”
One of the (few) articles of faith of those calling themselves “progressives” is that the changes they seek to impose are inevitable and irreversible, and that opposition to them is but a futile attempt to “turn back the clock.” Yet more often than not, this is precisely what their own actions amount to, and the …
Continue reading “Two Simple Rules”
We have to be thankful to Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of our more theatrical solons, for dramatizing the way in which the Israel lobby intimidates members of Congress: by asking Chuck Hagel if he could name a single Senator who was so intimidated he merely underscored how thoroughly each and every one of them is …
Continue reading “Hagel Hearing: The War Party’s Waterloo”
Ten years ago, Katharine Gun, then a 28-year-old British intelligence officer, saw an e-mailed memo from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that confirmed for her in black and white the already widespread suspicion that the U.S. and U.K. were about to launch war against Iraq on false pretenses. Doing what she could to head …
Continue reading “When Truth Tried to Stop War”
It’s 2013 and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is still conflicted about torture. Why? The proximate cause is that he went to the movies, and saw "Zero Dark Thirty," which impressed upon some viewers the efficacy of torture in unearthing the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Cohen considers the movie "fantastic," Oscar worthy "in the …
Continue reading “Crackpot Pragmatism: Richard Cohen and Torture”
Sports items do not often appear on Antiwar.com but I think that this year we Americans have an opportunity to show the world just how patriotic we are by combining the world’s greatest sporting event with some serious fun at the expense of our enemies. Since 9/11, there has been a melding of professional athletics …
Continue reading “Have a Patriotic Super Bowl!”
Eighteen bodies were recovered from a six-year-old mass grave west of Baghdad. Another six Iraqis were killed and six more were wounded in other, recent violence.
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Republican governor, bluntly called his party the "stupid party." He also said that, "The Republican Party does not need to change our principles…but we might need to change just about everything else we do." This stupidity was recently on display when House Republicans and especially grandstanding Senate Republicans melodramatically grilled the now …
Continue reading “‘Stupid’ Republicans”
When will historians of the future date the beginning of the decline and fall of the American empire? The question may seem presumptuous. The idea that the American Century is a relic of the past, and we are entering a "new world order" of divided rather than hegemonic power, is relatively new, and still controversial. …
Continue reading “The American Empire, RIP”
President Obama last week began his second term by promising that “a decade of war is now ending.” As he spoke, the US military was rapidly working its way into another war, this time in the impoverished African country of Mali. As far as we know, the US is only providing transport and intelligence assistance …
Continue reading “US Action in Mali is Another Undeclared War” 
