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...
Taking Bush’s Preventive War Doctrine Underground (Sort Of)
Remember when Democrats and independents craved a less belligerent U.S. foreign policy that eschewed the aggressive preventive war doctrine of the George W. Bush administration? When Barack Obama took office, the atmospherics did seem to change as the new president...
Newest National Security Strategy an Elaboration of the Old
The Obama administration has at last issued its own National Security Strategy, a 52-page document that takes the place of the strategy statements published by the George W. Bush administration, beginning in 2002, notable for their belligerence in proclaiming...
King David Rules
While I was taking a week off to celebrate Memorial Day the story broke about “King David” Petraeus secretly giving himself authority in back in September 2009 to start a war anywhere from the Horn of Africa to the Bananastans*. His secret directive allows him to bury...
Obama’s Timidity and Deaths at Sea
A chief lesson to learn from President Barack Obama's recent unwillingness to stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Lobby is that such timidity can get people killed. Casualty figures are still arriving in the wake of Israel's Sunday...
US Drone Strikes Draw International Scrutiny
On the heels of reports that the Barack Obama administration altered a new manual on military commission rules to accommodate an illegal drone program, a senior United Nations official is expected to call on the U.S. this week to stop Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)...
Obama Ignores His Own Security Strategy
On May 27, President Obama released his first National Security Strategy (NSS), the congressionally mandated statement of America's overarching vision of national security and how to achieve it. You didn't know? Don't feel bad. Hardly anyone else was paying attention...
Will Obama Be Blackmailed?
Rahm Emanuel is, so it seems, the American most hated by the leaders of Israel. He is considered the most dangerous opponent of the Netanyahu government in the White House. Behind closed doors, they shower him – if one is to believe the media – with anti-Semitic...
A Lullaby of Lies
While most Americans were sitting out on their decks barbecuing over the Memorial Day weekend, our leaders were planning to barbecue a few Pakistanis, as the Washington Post reported: “The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the...
Obama’s New Security Strategy Looks Much Like the Old One
President Barack Obama's speech to the West Point graduating class last Saturday was meant to convey a "new" American national security strategy, less evident in his words than in the manner in which the White House pitched the speech to the press, the press following...


