As the first Democratic presidential debate drew to a close, moderator Anderson Cooper posed a question to Hillary Clinton: How might her presidency differ from Barack Obama’s? Clinton smiled. “Well, I think it’s pretty obvious,” she replied to rapturous applause. “Being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had.” …
Continue reading “Hillary Clinton Hasn’t Learned a Thing from Iraq”
On June 14, UN-brokered talks will be held in Geneva, but many Yemenis know that with the increasingly hostile armed factions, a destroyed economy and the Saudi/Iran rivalry playing itself out in their country, peace will be hard to come by. With the Houthi rebels in the north and Al Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula …
Continue reading “Can the UN Talks Bring Peace to Shattered Yemen?”
President Barack Obama proudly signed the law that repealed the Pentagon’s
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is still one of the most powerful lobby organizations in the country, but fortunately, it is starting to lose its iron-clad grip on our policymakers. AIPAC lost the fight to stop Chuck Hagel from being confirmed as Secretary of Defense; it lost the push for the US military …
Continue reading “Israel Lobby AIPAC Down, But Not Out – Yet”
Senior Obama administration officials say our government is sharply scaling back its drone strikes in Pakistan. That’s a step in the right direction. It would be even better if the entire U.S. program of targeted killings in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia were scrapped. By embracing drones as a primary foreign policy tool, President Barack Obama …
Continue reading “The Dangerous Seduction of Drones”
“We will put pressure on America, and our protest will continue if drone attacks are not stopped,” said an angry Imran Khan, leader of Pakistan’s third largest political party, the PTI (the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf). He was speaking on Saturday, November 23, to a crowd of over 10,000 protesters who blocked the highway used by NATO …
Continue reading “Drone Strikes in Pakistan: Reapers of Their Own Destruction”
It was September 19, 2002, and US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was scheduled to address the Senate Armed Services Committee about why it was necessary to invade a country that never attacked us: Iraq. I was so concerned about the pending war that I flew to Washington DC from my home in San Francisco. …
Continue reading “John Kerry Sells a War That Americans Aren’t Buying”
Having worked for years on the issues of drones and Guantanamo, I was delighted to get a pass (the source will remain anonymous) to attend President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University. I had read many press reports anticipating what the President might say. There was much talk about major policy shifts that would …
Continue reading “Why I Spoke Out at Obama’s Foreign Policy Speech”
Rand Paul’s marathon 13-hour filibuster was not the end of the conversation on drones. Suddenly, drones are everywhere, and so is the backlash. Efforts to counter drones at home and abroad are growing in the courts, at places of worship, outside air force bases, inside the UN, at state legislatures, inside Congress–and having an effect …
Continue reading “Finally, the Backlash Against Drones Takes Flight”
The most positive outcome of Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster – which ended when Paul was forced to take a bathroom break – was giving the American public a sense of the treacherous path that President Obama’s drone program could take, i.e. the targeted killing of Americans here at home. It was a marathon civics lesson …
Continue reading “Rand Paul’s Message to Obama: Don’t Drone Me Bro” 
