I spent Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in Washington, D.C., as part of the Witness Against Torture fast, which campaigns to end all forms of torture and has worked steadily for an end to the indefinite detention of people imprisoned in Guantanamo, Bagram, and other, secret sites where the U.S. has held and tortured prisoners. …
Continue reading “Tough Minds and Tender Hearts”
Here’s a bit of cheery news: Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with the nation’s top defense company executives, including the CEOs of those mega-military-industrial combines Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and called for a “closer partnership.” He also made them a promise. He pledged, according to his spokesman, “to work with the White …
Continue reading “Going Rogue in Combat Boots”
A just-released U.S. State Department inspector general’s report [.pdf] on Blackwater’s work in Afghanistan reveals that Blackwater is proposing increasing its private armed forces in Afghanistan, particularly in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat where the U.S. is opening consulates. Blackwater is currently in the running for a $1 billion contract to train Afghanistan’s national police force. In …
Continue reading “Blackwater Wants to Surge Its Armed Force in Afghanistan”
Parts I and II discussed how our counterinsurgency doctrine’s requirements for a reliable host-nation government, a reliable host-nation security force, and reliable intelligence are impossible to achieve in our present wars. The third and final part of the series focuses on the futility of counterinsurgency itself as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. Our counterinsurgency …
Continue reading “The COIN Myth, Part III”
Kelley Vlahos on Ros-Lehtinen’s latest terror scare
RAMALLAH – Israel has long argued that Palestinians should pursue their political objectives in a nonviolent way. However, several prominent Palestinian peace activists have recently been arrested and jailed for doing just that. Abdallah Abu Rahme, 39, the coordinator of the Bi’lin Popular Committee, which has challenged Israel’s illegal expropriation of Palestinian land both in …
Continue reading “Israel Jails Palestinian Peace Activists”
Although casualties were light today—at least 13 Iraqis were killed and 15 were wounded—a number of important stories made the headlines. Among them is the announcement of Tony Blair’s appearance at the Iraq Inquiry. Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was found guilty of cruelty, while the Iraqi government moved ahead with plans to sue a U.S. …
Continue reading “Monday: 13 Iraqis Killed, 15 Wounded”
I tried to resist the temptation to tell the same classical Jewish joke a second time, but circumstances delivered a plausible excuse. Almost every Jew knows the sentence "Kill a Turk and rest." The whole story goes like this: In Czarist Russia, a Jewish boy is called up for the war against the Turks. His …
Continue reading “‘Kill Another Turk…’”
A country programmatically gripped by fear – yes, that’s us for more than eight years now. Fear of terrorism to be exact, even as truly terrible things happened in this land and elsewhere, from hurricane Katrina in 2005 to last week’s devastating Haitian earthquake, which should have put our fears into perspective. But no such …
Continue reading “The Wages of Fear in Israel and the US”
At least seven Iraqis were killed and 11 more were wounded in light violence. In other news, an Iraqi court handed "Chemical Ali" his fourth death sentence, and former F.M. Tariq Aziz has suffered a massive stroke. Also, the Iraq (Chilcot) Inquiry fill feature a very revealing letter during testimony this week. Chemical Ali has …
Continue reading “Sunday: 7 Iraqis Killed, 11 Wounded” 
