Norman Solomon

Israelis and Arabs "feel that only force can assure justice," I. F. Stone noted soon after the Six-Day War in 1967. And he wrote: "A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements. The Others are always either less than human, and thus their interests may be ignored, or more than human and therefore so dangerous … Continue reading “A Hundred Eyes for an Eye”

Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in the New York Times that "the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan" within the next 18 months – "raising American force levels to about 58,000" in that country. Then I scraped ice off a windshield and drove to the C-SPAN studios, where a … Continue reading “The Silent Winter of Escalation”

Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn’t interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly – one routine morning, while she was scrolling through … Continue reading “Finally, the Story of the Whistleblower Who Tried to Prevent the Iraq War”

With 223 days left in his presidency, George W. Bush laid more flagstones along a path to war on Iran. There was the usual declaration that "all options are on the table" – and, just as ominously, much talk of diplomacy. Three times on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports, Bush "called a diplomatic solution ‘my … Continue reading “Deadly ‘Diplomacy’”

While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter’s voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen." Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment. In the War … Continue reading “NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?”

Maybe it sounded good when politicians, pundits, and online fundraisers talked about American deaths as though they were the deaths that mattered most. Maybe it sounded good to taunt the Bush administration as a bunch of screw-ups who didn’t know how to run a proper occupation. And maybe it sounded good to condemn Donald Rumsfeld … Continue reading “The War Election”

The last time my mother was in a hospital, an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh moved in front of my eyes. "Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life," he wrote. "Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can … Continue reading “In Honor of My Mother and the Power of Love”

This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State. We keep hearing that Iraq is not Vietnam. And surely any competent geographer would agree. But the United States is the United States – still a country run by leaders who brandish, celebrate and use the … Continue reading “The United States of Violence”

The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater’s actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media context that routinely turns criticisms of the war into demands for a better … Continue reading “The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal”

This is an excerpt from Norman Solomon’s new book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State. A story could start almost anywhere. This one begins at a moment startled by a rocket. In the autumn of 1957, America was not at war … or at peace. The threat of nuclear annihilation shadowed … Continue reading “Sputnik, 50 Years Later: The Launch of Techno-Power”