JERUSALEM — Amazingly, just when all four parties — the U.S., its allies in the Arab world, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel — seemed to have hit rock bottom in terms of the prospects of moving the region away from conflict and towards peace, all of a sudden everything seems to be pointing in the …
Continue reading “Mideast ‘Peace Partners’ Finally Taking Off Their Gloves”
I have opposed the Iraq war since before it began, but it only became personal for me about a year and a half ago, on April 29, 2008. I remember the moment well. I had flipped open the Washington Post and there, on the front page, was a color photo of a 2-year-old Iraqi boy …
Continue reading “Epitaph on Empire”
Interview recorded October 7, 2009. Listen to the interview. When I heard that there would be antiwar protests across the country on October 7, 2009, mourning the 8th anniversary of the start of the invasion of Afghanistan, I immediately picked up the phone to get one of the great anti-warrior women of Code Pink to …
Continue reading “Is Medea Benjamin Naive or Just Confused?”
Tension over control of the Haram al Sharif compound of mosques in Jerusalem’s Old City has reached a pitch unseen since clashes at the site sparked the second intifada nine years ago. Ten days of intermittently bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem culminated yesterday in warnings by Palestinian officials that Israel …
Continue reading “Tensions Mount Again at al-Aqsa “
Updated at 4:55 p.m. EDT, Oct. 7, 2009
At least 13 Iraqis were killed an 32 more were wounded in the latest attacks. Meanwhile, 36 Iranian-opposition detainees were freed. Also, a U.S. soldier was killed in a non-combat incident.
Although the politicians, media, and public believe few things are more important than preventing another al-Qaeda attack on America, defending the founding principles of the republic would seem to be one of them. The conventional wisdom is that the war in Afghanistan is a "war of necessity" that cannot be lost if the war against …
Continue reading “Fire McChrystal and Get Out of Afghanistan”
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Barack Obama’s choice for commander in what he has renamed the AfPak theater, in what no longer is called the Global War on Terror, has been trying, with the help of Democratic as well as Republican hawks, to bounce President Obama into a really long war. Unless he gets a lot …
Continue reading “Gen. McChrystal’s Celebrity Weekend”
You remember the USA PATRIOT Act, don’t you? It was that 342-page bill that sped through a supplicant Congress within weeks of 9/11, dismantling our privacy rights like a castoff Hollywood set. A reauthorization in 2006 made some things better and some worse, but mostly the law stayed the same – really bad for American …
Continue reading “A Golden Opportunity to Declaw PATRIOT Act”
Despite strong support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, most U.S. citizens believe such efforts will ultimately fail and that Washington should be prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to a new poll [.pdf] released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Sixty-one …
Continue reading “US Public Skeptical and Hawkish on Iran”
Israel celebrated over the weekend its success at the United Nations in forcing the Palestinians to defer demands that the International Criminal Court investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Israel during its winter assault on the Gaza Strip. The about-turn, following vigorous lobbying from Israel and the United States, appears to have buried the …
Continue reading “How Israel Killed UN’s War Crimes Probe” 
