Gen. Stan McChrystal, United States Army, will leave active service with four stars instead of three because of a special waiver bestowed on him by President Barack Obama. One is supposed to hold four-star rank for three years before one can retire at that pay grade, something McChrystal obviously didn’t do, but Obama made nice …
Continue reading “Code of Military Justice”
As the Barack Obama administration continues to roll out justifications for its policy of targeting U.S. citizens and others thought to be attacking U.S. troops, legal and national security experts are pondering a central question: What if there’s a mistake and the wrong person gets killed? There are no do-overs. It is a death sentence. …
Continue reading “Death by Remote”
Much has been written in recent weeks about "Collateral Murder," the Wikileaks audio/video of a 2007 attack by U.S. soldiers on an unarmed reporter and other men (I’m not sure whether they were armed) in Iraq. However, I’m not writing this simply to repeat what others have said, but to give my own perspective because …
Continue reading “On ‘Collateral Murder’ and Stephen Colbert”
When one sees an obviously grotesque action by the agents of one’s government and speaks out about it, one can count on being immediately labeled with whatever epithet is convenient to prevent any scrutiny of the state’s activities. On Monday, April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks published a classified Apache helicopter gunsite video of a shooting incident …
Continue reading “We Ignore War Crimes at Our Own Risk”
The video released by Wikileaks showing US helicopters picking off civilians as our airmen chortle with glee is shocking everyone. Everyone but me, that is. Perhaps I’m suffering from some sort of moral exhaustion: I’ve just about gone numb after living through and constantly writing about the past decade of American war crimes. Abu Ghraib, …
Continue reading “Just Another Atrocity”
If the U.S. public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan over the past 10 months, we would see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed against innocent civilians who meant us no harm. Two reporters, Jerome Starkey of the …
Continue reading “Pacified Populations”
Nebojsa Malic on the Karadzic trial
“We can only hope that Somalia represents the nadir of the fortunes of the Canadian Forces. There seems to be little room to slide lower. One thing is certain, however: left uncorrected, the problems that surfaced in the desert in Somalia and in the boardrooms at National Defense Headquarters will continue to spawn military ignominy. …
Continue reading “Canada’s Unfinished Mandate”
JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself embattled on several fronts as he tries – so far unsuccessfully – to ward off the enormous international pressure on Israel unleashed by the Goldstone report for its conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza earlier this year. Israel’s failure to bury the report has …
Continue reading “Netanyahu Unsure How to Contain Gaza Fallout”
According to a Chinese saying, if someone in the street tells you that you are drunk, you can laugh. If a second person tells you that you are drunk, start to think about it. If a third one tells you the same, go home and sleep it off. Our political and military leadership has already …
Continue reading “Fool’s Goldstone” 
