In Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, the major places of military interest to the United States today (disregarding the hundreds of other places where American soldiers and agents or mercenaries have been dispatched to suppress one or another outbreak of ethnic, tribal, religious, or territorial conflict, the United States having appointed itself the enemy of Disorder) …
Continue reading “Runaway Defense Spending Not Winning Any Wars”
In contrast to World War II and Desert Storm – which had clear goals, even though those of the latter were limited – the war in Afghanistan resembles the Spanish-American War and the Vietnam War. In the former, the goal changed from defeating the Spanish in a conventional war to subduing Philippine guerrillas in order …
Continue reading “Taliban’s Time Horizon Longer Than America’s”
All Washington is atwitter over a Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in which the thuggish commander of US forces in Afghanistan and his snarky juvenile-sounding aides (who call themselves “Team America”) deride Vice President Joe Biden – “Joe Bite Me” – special envoy Richard Holbrooke (“‘Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,’ he groans. …
Continue reading “McChrystal’s Challenge”
A year and a half into the presidency of Barack Obama, any hopes that he would usher in a dramatic rethinking of U.S. foreign policy have been more or less definitively dashed. Notwithstanding the wild-eyed warnings of right-wing hawks who see Obama as “the first post-American president,” with a covert agenda that is part Saul …
Continue reading “Buy This Book: The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s“
The Canadian government has quietly been conducting an international criminal probe of the actions of Syrian and U.S. authorities in the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was arrested in 2002 by U.S. officials and then rendered to a Syrian jail where he was held incommunicado and tortured for 10 months before being released …
Continue reading “Canadian Rendition Probe Expands to US, Syria”
Updated at 11:43 p.m. EDT, June 22, 2010
At least 14 Iraqis were killed and 42 more were wounded in the latest attacks. A U.S. soldier also died in a non-combat incident. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is considering accepting the resignation of his electricity minister, but he also praised his designee Karim Waleed and said Iraqis should expect more years of disrupted power service even if Waleed resigns.
“Honor those Who lives did give; But now who pays For those that live?” The best part of America’s wars is that, except for limited attacks during WWII, all our conflicts have been fought on somebody else’s soil since the battle of Appomattox. This represents good and careful planning. You certainly don’t want your own …
Continue reading “Downplaying the Mess of War”
As the ecology in the Gulf circles the sticky tar drain of evolution, and countless livelihoods spanning at least four states going down with it, Americans are wondering where their Superman is. The disappointment that President Barack Obama seems stuck in the phone booth, still deciding whether to get his suit on, is nothing new. …
Continue reading “Obama Is No Superman”
In the wake of Monday’s Supreme Court decision upholding a law making it a crime to provide any “material support” to an organization designated as a “terrorist” by the U.S. government, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter charged that the law “actually threatens our work and the work of many other peacemaking organizations that must interact …
Continue reading “Peace Groups Slam High Court Ruling on ‘Terror Support’”
The pratfall Dave Petraeus took face-first into his microphone during his farcical testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday channeled the Twix candy bar commercial that asks: “Need a moment?” As the New York Times put it, the Teflon General was facing some intense questioning on the president’s order to begin reducing American …
Continue reading “Heard Any Good War Jokes Lately?” 
