Antiwar.com

Another year has gone by, bringing no relief to the embattled people of the former Yugoslavia. Same as before, it has been a year of direct and political violence, plunder and extortion, with the ever-present Empire occasionally flexing its muscles to remind the restive vassals it was still the boss. Shards of the former South … Continue reading “Quo Vadis?”

Back in my tadpole days, sometime in the Pleistocene, my fellows at Roehm Junior High (Frederick, not Ernst) enjoyed hanging the name of "Scrooge" around my neck. Whether or not they did so in response to my "Bah! Humbug" attitude toward Christmas ("Angels we have heard on high, telling us go out and buy"), I … Continue reading “Marley’s List For Santa”

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Orange is not exactly a Christmas color: more like Halloween, but then there is definitely a Halloween-ish quality to our chieftain of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, who raised the color-coded terror alert from an “elevated yellow" to “high” orange, and furthermore warned: “The information we have indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that … Continue reading “A Fearful Christmas”

While most of the world is still trying to come to terms with the neo-imperial ambitions of the post-Sept. 11 Bush administration, U.S. political analysts, particularly those on the libertarian right and the left, have been trying to map out the various forces behind the administration’s hawks in order to better understand and counteract them. … Continue reading “What a Tangled Web the Neocons Weave”

I. IDEOLOGICAL POWER REVISITED I have alluded at times in this space to John A. Hall’s division of power into three types – ideological, political-military, and economic.(1) I have also suggested, over the past several years, that in our time, the first of the trinity, ideological power, has risen in importance. It is not that … Continue reading “Kantians With Cruise Missiles: The Highest Stage of ‘Liberal’ Imperialism”

Last evening, in Amman, we met with Fadi Elayyan and Jihad Tahboub, two Palestinian young men who were imprisoned for two months, without charge, by US Occupying forces who seized them, in Baghdad, on April 10, 2003. They are trying to help four of their companions who are still held by the US military, presumably … Continue reading “The Two Troublemakers”

I don’t believe the capture of Saddam Hussein will have any effect on the guerrilla war being conducted against Americans and their Iraqi allies. Saddam’s power was always his ability to command and control. The day he went on the run, he lost that power. He couldn’t command or control anyone. On the contrary, he … Continue reading “Saddam Capture Won’t Mean Much”

The decision by Libya’s Moammar Qadaffi to come clean, so to speak, and give up his weapons of mass destruction is being touted, by the War Party, as proof that their program of “regime change” in Iraq has put the fear of God – or, at least, of Washington and London – in the region’s … Continue reading “Libya: Will the US Take Yes for an Answer?”

The Fox News crew was breathless the morning Saddam’s capture broke. Of course, when I had last been watching, some Fox babe was breathless about Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, or whoever was threatening our way of life at the time, so it took me a moment to figure out what was happening. Then … Continue reading “Have a Very Martial Christmas”