The question of the legitimacy of drone strikes has occasionally bubbled up in media over the years. As with most international news, the media and the public have a short attention span for the issue. On September 30, the BBC published a survey on whether drone strikes “work.” Answering were a professor “who advised the …
Continue reading “Whether Drones ‘Work,’ US Policy Is Still Rotten”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s address at the UN General Assembly and a talk the previous night to about 150 Americans touted the recent nuclear breakthrough as a precedent for further diplomatic accommodation with the United States. But both speeches also called on Washington to change its policy toward the conflicts in the Middle East. Despite …
Continue reading “Rouhani’s Dual Messages and Iran’s Security Strategy”
At least 3,842 Killed in Iraq during September, and another were 1,133 wounded.
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Three Exceptional Facts About America It’s Safe to Be Paranoid in the US Given the cluttered landscape of the last 14 years, can you even faintly remember the moment when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended in a stunned silence of shock and triumph in Washington, Eastern Europe …
Continue reading “The Superpower as Victim”
If there was any doubt that Washington has learned absolutely nothing since George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, then President Obama’s address to the United Nations has confirmed the world’s worst fears. It was an oration that combined the most egregious lies with the wooly-minded “idealism” that has been such a destructive force in world …
Continue reading “Showdown at the UN Corral”
The death toll from the Saudi strike on a wedding in Yemen has now risen to 130. The wedding took place near Mocha, a port city on the Red Sea. The groom was tied to the Houthi rebels somehow, which apparently assuaged whatever moral qualms remained within the Saudis, who then decided to massacre the …
Continue reading “The US Is Neck-Deep in Yemeni Blood”
At least 107 people were killed in the latest violence in Iraq. Civilians were reportedly killed in two separate airstrikes.
Much of the media buzz surrounding Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s regal visit to the United States centered around a limited agreement to prevent cyber hacking. Although that pact is needed, perhaps more attention in U.S.-China relations should be given to dangerous flashpoints in the South and East China Seas. In these places, the two nuclear-armed …
Continue reading “Let’s Not Get Into It With China”
At least 93 people were killed in Iraq. Anbar was the hardest hit.
Why do I always seem to be writing about Henry Kissinger? I once listened to the man who helped prolong the Vietnam War for half a decade declare that its “tragedy” lay in the fact “that the faith of Americans in each other became destroyed in the process.” I later took to the (web)pages of …
Continue reading “Henry of Arabia” 
