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...
Two Simple Rules
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...
Hagel Hearing: The War Party’s Waterloo
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...
When Truth Tried to Stop War
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...
Crackpot Pragmatism: Richard Cohen and Torture
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...
Have a Patriotic Super Bowl!
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,...
Eighteen Found in Mass Grave near Baghdad
‘Stupid’ Republicans
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...
The American Empire, RIP
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...
US Action in Mali is Another Undeclared War
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...