Archive for the ‘Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace’ Category
Rand Paul vs. the ‘Forever War’
Rand Paul’s concerns echo an older, wiser tradition in American conservatism. In 1967, Russell Kirk praised the late Sen. Robert A. Taft for insisting that war had to be a last resort, threatening as it did to “make the American President a virtual dictator, diminish the constitutional powers of Congress, contract civil liberties, injure the habitual self-reliance and self-government of the American people, distort the economy, sink the federal government in debt, [and erode] public morality.” Does any of that sound familiar? Sen. Paul has done Republicans — and the Republic — a great service by reminding us that there’s nothing conservative about perpetual war. http://washingtonexaminer.com/gene-healy-rand-paul-vs.-the-forever-war/article/2523944
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Obama’s Failed State
Obama’s State of the Union address didn’t surprise. It reflected rogue leadership. It was beginning-to-end demagogic boilerplate. Defending the indefensible took center stage. Rhetoric substituted for progressive policies. Bombast assured business as usual. Priorities include waging war on humanity, force-fed austerity, ignoring public needs, institutionalizing a repressive police state apparatus, and cracking down hard on non-believers. Doing so assures growing despotism, lawlessness, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, and deprivation. http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-failed-state/5322840
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The U.S. War Machine
Throughout American history we see many precursors for U.S. warmaking. Ever since World War I, the United States has maintained an active role in global affairs, at the cost of many thousands of American lives and many domestic freedoms. Yet much more recently than any of those antecedents to the modern war machine, a major shift took place. And that was World War II, the “Good War,” the last clear-cut and most widely celebrated military victory enjoyed by the United States, the one to which liberals unfavorably compare Bush’s adventures, and conservatives invoke as precedents for their own preferred war policies. It was in World War II that the U.S. warfare state blossomed into its modern form. http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/book-review-the-u-s-war-machine/
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Endless War is a Feature of U.S. Policy
Overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty. James Madison said: In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. http://www.infowars.com/endless-war-is-a-feature-not-a-bug-of-u-s-policy/
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The True Costs of Empire
Mars? Venus? Earth-like bodies elsewhere in the galaxy? Who knows? But here, at least, no great power, no superpower, no hyperpower, not the Romans, nor imperial China, nor the British, nor the Soviet Union has ever garrisoned the globe quite the way we have: Asia to Latin America, Europe to the Greater Middle East, and increasingly Africa as well. Build we must. If someday Washington took to the couch for therapy, the shrink would undoubtedly categorize what we’ve done as a compulsion, the base-building equivalent of a hoarding disorder. And you know what else is unprecedented? Hundreds of thousands of Americans cycle annually through our various global garrisons, ranging from small American towns with all the attendant amenities, including fast-food joints, PXes, and Internet cafes to the most spartan of forward outposts, and yet our “Baseworld,” as the late Chalmers Johnson used to call it, is hardly noticed in this country and seldom considered worthy of attention. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2012/12/11/the-true-costs-of-empire/
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Expanding Covert Warfare Makes Us Less Safe
In 2010, I said in a speech that there had been a CIA coup in this country. The CIA runs the military, the drone program, and they are in drug trafficking. The CIA is a secretive government all on its own. With this new expanded Defense Intelligence Agency presence overseas it will be even worse. Because the DIA is operationally under control of the Pentagon, direct Congressional oversight of the program will be more difficult. Perhaps this is as intended. The CIA will be training the DIA in its facilities to conduct operations overseas. Much of this will include developing targeting data for the president’s expanding drone warfare program. http://lewrockwell.com/paul/paul836.html
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Obama’s Secret Wars
One of the most important changes in world politics over the past decade is that the US has failed to win two wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan, despite deploying large and vastly expensive land armies. Equally telling, these failures were against relatively puny forces of guerrillas. For American hardliners and neo-liberals these wars were designed to lay the ghosts of Vietnam and Somalia, enabling the open use of US military might, but they turned out to be Vietnam and Somalia revisited. American popular and establishment support for military intervention abroad using ground troops is at a low ebb. The use of unmanned drones seems to avoid these problems. First of all there are no direct and immediate American casualties. The attacks also sound as if they are carrying the fight to the enemy in the shape of al-Qa’ida, with its top 20 operatives in north-west Pakistan being regularly eliminated – only to be mysteriously replaced by another top 20 operatives. Drone strikes have been difficult for the Republicans to criticise during the presidential campaign without opening themselves up to charges that they are soft on terrorism. In one of the few sensible remarks on foreign policy in the presidential debates, Mitt Romney said “we can’t kill our way out of this”, but later added that this did not mean he was anti-drone. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/02/obamas-secret-wars/
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A Failed Formula for Worldwide War
In one way or another, the U.S. military is now involved with most of the nations on Earth. Its soldiers, commandos, trainers, base builders, drone jockeys, spies, and arms dealers, as well as associated hired guns and corporate contractors, can now be found just about everywhere on the planet. The sun never sets on American troops conducting operations, training allies, arming surrogates, schooling its own personnel, purchasing new weapons and equipment, developing fresh doctrine, implementing novel tactics, and refining their martial arts. The U.S. has submarines trolling the briny deep and aircraft carrier task forces traversing the oceans and seas, robotic drones flying constant missions and manned aircraft patrolling the skies, while above them, spy satellites circle, peering down on friend and foe alike. Since 2001, the U.S. military has thrown everything in its arsenal, short of nuclear weapons, including untold billions of dollars in weaponry, technology, bribes, you name it, at a remarkably weak set of enemies — relatively small groups of poorly-armed fighters in impoverished nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen — while decisively defeating none of them. With its deep pockets and long reach, its technology and training acumen, as well as the devastatingly destructive power at its command, the U.S. military should have the planet on lockdown. It should, by all rights, dominate the world just as the neoconservative dreamers of the early Bush years assumed it would. Yet after more than a decade of war, it has failed to eliminate a rag-tag Afghan insurgency with limited popular support. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2012/10/25/a-failed-formula-for-worldwide-war/
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Blaming the Muslims
It is perhaps human nature to seek to blame someone else for one’s own personal failings. But what is possibly only a misdemeanor in personal interactions becomes rather more serious when entire nations and races are systematically and comprehensively blamed for the failures of other nations to comprehend simple truths. I am, of course, referring to the disastrous foreign policy that we Americans have endured for the past 11 years, which is coming home to roost now in places such as Libya and Syria. Consider what we have been hearing repeated over and over again about the Middle East and other trouble spots. American bullying, preemption, and a policy of might makes right have not been the problem; some ignorant folks just dislike us because of our freedom. The United States is “exceptional,” which means that it should set the standards for the “free world” and even the not-so-free world, whether they all like it or not. Washington has the right to intervene militarily anywhere in the world if there is even the slightest chance that there is some kind of threat lurking. Neither President Barack Obama nor Gov. Mitt Romney has dared to say the truth, which is that the past 11 years have been disastrous for the United States because of a gross overreaction to a terrorism problem that we helped create. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2012/10/24/blaming-the-muslims/
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U.S. Develops New Kill Lists, Expands Drone War
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.” The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones. Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/plan-for-hunting-terrorists-signals-us-intends-to-keep-adding-names-to-kill-lists/2012/10/23/4789b2ae-18b3-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html
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Globalist Think Tank Suggests Using Engineered Event as Excuse For War With Iran
What is interesting about this discussion by the Washington Institute For Near East Policy, a neo-con (Globalist) think-tank, is that its primary purpose is not necessarily to debate the current political elements of the Iranian question. They aren’t contemplating the viability or morality of a war with Iran. Instead, they are attempting to devise strtegies by which the government could CONVINCE the American public and the world that a war with Iran is the “right thing to do”, even if it means fabricating their own justification. For them, the war is a forgone conclusion, and they will do anything to make it a reality. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-26/guest-post-globalist-think-tank-suggests-using-engineered-event-excuse-war-iran
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Rumors of Wars
Jobs and the economy are rightly the focus of the upcoming election because of their immediate impact on every American, but it is also essential to address the issue of how a dysfunctional and horrifically expensive foreign and defense policy has made every American poorer and even threatened the continued existence of our republican form of government. It is a discussion that must take place even if the two major parties do their best to avoid it. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2012/09/19/rumors-of-wars/
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Monopolizing War? What Washington Knows How to do Best
Think of it another way: in the post-2001 era, along with two disastrous wars on the Eurasian mainland, we’ve been regularly sending in the Marines or special operations forces, as well as naval, air, and robotic power. Such acts are, by now, so ordinary that they are seldom considered worthy of much discussion here, even though no other country acts (or even has the capacity to act) this way. This is simply what Washington’s National Security Complex does for a living. At the moment, it seems, a historical circle is being closed with the Marines once again heading back into Latin America as the “drug war” Washington proclaimed years ago becomes an actual drug war. It’s a demonstration that, these days, when Washington sees a problem anywhere on the planet, its version of a “foreign policy” is most likely to call on the U.S. military. Force is increasingly not our option of last resort, but our first choice. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32437.htm
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Cost of ‘War on Terror’: 2,486,392,875 Ounces of Gold
Remember not too long ago, back when the human mind hadn’t begun its forced evolution of understanding really big numbers like trillions and quadrillions? Back before TARP handed out 16 trillion to domestic and offshore banks? Or before the War of Terror cost the U.S. taxpayer $4 trillion? Seems like just yesterday. http://silvervigilante.com/cost-of-war-of-terror-2486392875-ounces-of-gold/
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Bulgaria, the Arab Swede ‘Terrorist’ and Israel’s Call to Bomb Iran
It has been my thesis for years that the USA is a war based economy, which is cracking economically for need of a super war. The U.S. is much like the British Empire was a century ago when its citizens got tired of fighting needless serial wars and forced a temporary peace upon their government, and, subsequently the war debts of past adventures destroyed its world reserve currency, the venerable Pound Sterling. This is how Americans succeeded the British as world financial power, our money was firm(er). Warmaking is how we are losing that position, today. The giant Lockheed company recently flashed a public threat of massive lay offs if it does not get more war business before the fall election. Lockheed says, give us more and better war or we will give you unemployment. http://charlesecarlson.com/bulgaria-the-arab-swede-terrorist-and-israels-call-to-bomb-iran/
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Permanent War — Official U.S. Policy
Nations don’t wage permanent wars and survive. Imagine one calling itself a democracy trying. Washington spends more on militarism and imperial wars than the rest of the world combined. At the same time, vital domestic needs go begging. America lives by the sword. One day it’ll perish by it. Perhaps so will humanity. The more wars it wages and longer they continue, the faster homeland and international support erodes. What can’t go on forever won’t. Since 9/11 alone, Paul Craig Roberts says “11 years of failure” hasn’t deterred America’s rage to fight. “(T)he same Washington con artists who have produced a decade of bloodshed and destruction to no worthwhile effect are now preparing more wars doomed to failure.” http://rense.com/general95/permwar.html
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Is ‘Al Qaeda’ the Modern Incarnation of ‘Emmanuel Goldstein’?
Does terror achieve their ends or obtain the results they want? Or isn’t it obvious that the acts of terror are actually achieving the objectives of those who claim to be the victims of the terror, to gain them sympathy and political alliances? History is full of rulers who used fake terror on their own populations to create consent for their policies. The US is known to have actually planned fake terror to create support for an invasion of Cuba. And, it is now well established that FDR not only allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor to happen, but goaded the Japanese into it to get a reluctant US into WWII. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/goldstein.html
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Washington’s Alliance With al-Qaeda
When I read Imperial Hubris, by Michael Scheuer – a former top CIA official and head of their bin Laden unit — I was floored by his opening paragraph: “As I complete this book, U.S., British, and other coalition forces are trying to govern apparently ungovernable postwar states in Afghanistan and Iraq, while simultaneously fighting growing Islamist insurgencies in each – a state of affairs our leaders call victory. In conducting these activities, and the conventional military campaigns preceding them, U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.” It seemed incredible – at least in the way he phrased it — but Scheuer made an entirely plausible case: through its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he argued, the U.S. was creating a deep pool of recruits for al-Qaeda, giving credibility to Osama bin Laden’s view that the U.S. was embarked on a campaign to eradicate Islam. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/07/12/washingtons-alliance-with-al-qaeda/
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War is a Racket
A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm
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War Pigs — The Fall of a Global Empire
As Americans mindlessly celebrate another Memorial Day with cookouts, beer and burgers, the U.S. war machine keeps churning. As we brutally enforce our will on foreign countries, we create more people that hate us. They don’t hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we have invaded and occupied their countries. They hate us because we kill innocent people with predator drones. They hate us for our hypocrisy regarding democracy and freedom. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-war-pigs-fall-global-empire
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The Already Forgotten Iraq War
Will there be autocracy in Iraq or renewed civil war? The country seems headed for either one or the other, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tightens the noose on Iraqi democracy and sectarian bombings resume. Mohammed Shayaa al-Sudani, Iraq’s human rights minister, recently declared that casualties in the roughly nine-year period since the American invasion in 2003 have now exceeded 70,000 killed and 250,000 wounded, according to Margaret Griffis of Antiwar.com. This official figure is probably a gross understatement. http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2012/05/15/the-already-forgotten-iraq-war/
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Predator Nation
Ever since the Puritan minister John Winthrop first used the phrase in a sermon on shipboard on the way to North America, “a city upon a hill” has caught something of at least one American-style dream — a sense that this country’s fate was to be a blessed paragon for the rest of the world, an exception to every norm. In the last century, it became “a shining city upon a hill” and was regularly cited in presidential addresses. Whatever that “city,” that dream, was once imagined to be, it has undergone a largely unnoticed metamorphosis in the 21st century. It has become — even in our dreams — an up-armored garrison encampment, just as Washington itself has become the heavily fortified bureaucratic heartland of a war state. So when Brennan spoke, what he offered was a new version of American exceptionalism: the first “shining drone upon a hill” speech, which also qualifies as an instant classic of self-congratulation. Never, according to him, has a country with such an advanced weapon system as the drone used it quite so judiciously, quite so — if not peacefully — at least with the sagacity and skill usually reserved for the gods. American drone strikes, he assured his listeners, are “ethical and just,” “wise,” and “surgically precise” — exactly what you’d expect from a country he refers to, quoting the president, as the preeminent “standard bearer in the conduct of war.” http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2012/05/13/predator-nation/
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Washington Ramps Up Drone War
“As the wars wind down,” is a phrase often heard in Washington these days, whether from Time’s Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson or ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller, or Veterans for Common Sense. The suggestion, not unfounded, is that as the United States withdraws from Iraq and plans to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, the U.S. soldiers will be leaving foreign battlefields. But don’t expect the worldwide drone war now being waged in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen to wind down. To the contrary, an Air Force announcement posted online this week indicates the Pentagon anticipates more than quadrupling the size of the global drone war over the next four years. If that happens the number of suspected terrorists killed, the “deep resentment” provoked in the targeted countries, and the terrible civilian casualties are likely to grow as well. http://www.salon.com/2012/04/05/air_force_ramps_up_drone_war/singleton/
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The World War on Democracy
Obama’s most “historic” achievement is to bring the war on democracy home to America. On New Year’s Eve, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a law that grants the Pentagon the legal right to kidnap both foreigners and US citizens and indefinitely detain, interrogate and torture, or even kill them. They need only “associate” with those “belligerent” to the United States. There will be no protection of law, no trial, no legal representation. This is the first explicit legislation to abolish habeus corpus (the right to due process of law) and effectively repeal the Bill of Rights of 1789. http://uruknet.com/?p=m84981&hd=&size=1&l=e
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Learn To Make Terror Your Friend
Although everyone, from the largest nation-state down to the smallest informal group, employs terror (because it’s cheap and effective), it really only concerns Americans when terror is used against them. Instead of minding its own business and being a friendly beacon for the rest of the world (which would obviate 99% of the potential problem), the US has invaded several countries, is attacking several more and has troops in a hundred more. Americans, however, seem incapable of understanding that the natives don’t appreciate invaders any more than Americans would like an army of Muslim teenagers running around Texas, breaking down doors at midnight and generally shooting up the place while trying to uplift it with their own culture. Americans, foolishly, are living in the past and think the world still sees them as liberators, as they were in France almost 70 years ago. Is it possible, instead, that the US has turned into an aggressor abroad and a police state at home? So far, with the exception of the events of 9/11, the US has had very little blowback for attacking foreign countries without even the courtesy of a declaration of war. However, as Washington antagonizes more groups around the world, the targets eventually will decide to take the war back to the US simply because it’s the intelligent way to fight. So in the years to come, the US is likely to see lots of terrorism in the “homeland” (a disturbing new term) itself. It will, perversely, have created exactly what it was trying to avoid. http://lewrockwell.com/casey/casey102.html
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Ex-CIA Agents Says Washington’s Enemy ‘Doesn’t Exist’
Historian Michael Scheuer, an author of “Through our enemies’ eyes”, who worked for the agency for over 20 years till 2004 and at one time was the chief of the CIA’s ‘Bin Laden unit’, says America’s greatest enemy – radical Islam – never existed: neither when Bin Laden was alive, nor now. Actually, “it is America’s relationship with Israel that is causing this war [on Islam]”, and until Americans accept this, “we are not going to defeat this enemy,” the author says. http://rt.com/news/us-muslim-policy-sheuer-895/
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This is What Defeat Looks Like
How about a moment of silence for the passing of the American Dream? M.R.I.C. (May it rest in carnage.) No, I’m not talking about the old dream of opportunity that involved home ownership, a better job than your parents had, a decent pension, and all the rest of the package that’s so yesterday, so underwater, so OWS. I’m talking about a far more recent dream, a truly audacious one that’s similarly gone with the wind. I’m talking about George W. Bush’s American Dream. If people here remember the invasion of Iraq — and most Americans would undoubtedly prefer to forget it — what’s recalled is kited intelligence, Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent nuclear arsenal, dumb and even dumber decisions, a bloody civil war, dead Americans, crony corporations, a trillion or more taxpayer dollars flushed down the toilet … well, you know the story. What few care to remember was that original dream — call it The Dream — and boy, was it a beaut! http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/11/08/this-is-what-defeat-looks-like/
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Spoiling for Another Fight?
American foreign policy is defined by rage to ravage. Lunatics run the asylum. Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan. People have no say. Wealth and power alone matter. It’s always been that way, today more than ever. Post-WW II, America lurched from one war to another. Today they’re waged in multiples. A queue perhaps includes Syria and Iran topping the list. Ongoing for months, Western intervention incited Syrian violence. At issue is regime change, eliminating an Israeli rival, and advancing America’s imperium. Libya’s insurgency began the same way before NATO attacked last March. Will Syria follow the same pattern, then Iran? So far, heated rhetoric alone is heard. On and off before it echoed. Media scoundrels regurgitate it. Is something different this time? Time alone will tell. Israel often makes baseless accusations. President Shimon Peres warned there’s “not much time left” to act. Israel, of course, is the sole regional threat, nuclear armed and dangerous. A serial aggressor, it endangers Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran with potential attacks. http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2011/11/spoiling-for-another-fight.html
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Iraq War’s Lessons Lost on U.S.
It might take us years to truly understand the magnitude of what has since transpired in Iraq. Death and destruction have hovered over the country, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands, sending millions into exile and millions more have been classified by U.N. agencies as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). It was a horror show that cannot be captured with the language of reason, but every moment of it was experienced by millions of ordinary people, punished severely for a crime they never committed. http://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2011/10/28/iraq-wars-lessons-lost-on-us/
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America’s Endless Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
The 10th anniversary of Washington’s invasion, occupation and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan was observed Oct. 7, but despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to terminate the U.S. “combat mission” by the end of 2014, American military involvement will continue many years longer. The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out “extremists” and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters. Washington’s tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press Oct. 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Washington by declaring “God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan…. If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.” http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/2011/10/americas-endless-wars-in-afghanistan.html
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Why Governments Make War
Why is the U.S. involved in endless war around the world? Why, for that matter, do nations – or, rather, their governments – act the way they do? The number of answers is no doubt nearly equal to the number of questioners. It’s all about economics, say the Marxists (and the Hamiltonians): imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. No, say the “realists,” it’s all about the objective “interests” of various nations, and the interplay of those “interests” in the international arena. The neocons have a different explanation: it’s all a matter of “will” and “national purpose,” or a lack of same: imbued with a sense of our “national greatness,” America will spread democracy all over the world – or else go into a shameful decline in which spiritual loss precedes the loss of the war-making spirit. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/10/25/why-governments-make-war/
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Is the National Security Complex Too Big to Fail?
The dimensions of the National Security Complex now beggar the imagination. In fact, everything about it should make it the global yardstick for “too big to fail.” The Pentagon budget is, for instance, about 50% higher today than the Cold War average and accounts for nearly half of all military expenditures globally. And yet it has kept right on growing; and if bailed-out bankers continue to take home their bonuses as thanks for practically sinking the country, top Pentagon types continue to take home their golden pensions with future revolving-door opportunities in the military-industrial complex always available. If you really want to grasp the enormity of the National Security Complex, just consider this stat: today, 4.2 million federal workers and employees of private contractors have security clearances — about, that is, the population of New Zealand or Lebanon. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/10/20/is-the-national-security-complex-too-big-to-fail/
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Obama’s Imperial Arrogance
Candidate Obama promised peace. As president, he double downed Bush and then some, waging multiple direct and proxy wars. The business of America is war. Washington has a permanent war policy. Republicans and Democrats perpetuate it. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29464.htm
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War Breeds War, Peace Breeds Prosperity
War breeds war. That is all it can do. War does nothing but devour valuable resources and destroy precious lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. As Randolph Bourne wrote, “War is the health of the State.” War is a mechanism used by the ruling elites of the State to coerce and control the people, so it becomes essential that whenever one war is complete, another is instigated elsewhere so that the mechanism keeps running. On the other hand, peace breeds prosperity. If War is indeed the “health of the State,” then Peace can be nothing less than the “health of the People.” Being at peace means valuable natural resources can be preserved and used at home where we need them most. Being at peace means young fathers and mothers can live and enjoy free trade, not only among themselves but with the world, instead of dying capriciously and unnecessarily, for political gain or to line the pockets of those who profit from their sacrifice. http://original.antiwar.com/lee-wrights/2011/10/14/war-breeds-war-peace-breeds-prosperity/
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Imperial Troops Sent to Uganda to Fight Rebel Group
Obama’s claim that the LRA is a legitimate national security concern is presumably supposed to simply be accepted without any evidence or explanation; truth by presidential decree. But it is also notable how quickly and easily, in disregard for the Constitutional requirements, the President can send American troops to far off places without Congressional approval. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/14/obama-sends-us-troops-to-uganda-to-fight-rebel-group/
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Obama: ‘All Options on the Table’ Over Alleged Iran Plot
Obama said that, in terms of a response to the alleged plot, “we don’t take any options off the table,” which is a government euphemism for considerations of military attack. The Obama administration has vowed to “unite the world” against Iran in the wake of the implausible assassination plot, sending a secret cable to all American embassies and consulates around the world ordering them to alert their host governments of the Iranian plot. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/10/13/obama-all-options-on-the-table-over-alleged-iran-plot/
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Neo-Con Extremists Targeting Pakistan as Next Enemy
Warmongers in both monopoly parties continue to make war on the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjFn7pnU1gM
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Robo-Death: Made in the USA
As in the glory days of the Bush administration, the Obamas preach legality while violating every international norm. As the missiles rain down on Pakistan, the Times article dryly notes that the “legal authority to attack militants who are battling U.S. forces in adjoining Afghanistan is not disputed inside the administration” (my emphasis). The precise legal framework being discussed is apparently the work of Defense Department lawyers who are “trying to maintain maximum theoretical flexibility.” The article concedes that the maximum-flexibility doctrine could well lead to an unconstrained and unending global war, but it views that possibility as an unfortunate detail that has to be worked out by the Pentagon planners. Congress, for its part, appears to be prepared to provide its own imprimatur on the process by including in the impending defense bill a clause authorizing military action anywhere against al-Qaeda and “its associates” as a condition of what amounts to a permanent state of emergency. Even the bill’s supporters admit that “associates” can be interpreted to mean almost anyone who objects to Washington’s imperial agenda. http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/09/28/robo-death-made-in-the-usa/
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Failure in Libya
Libya represents the failure of the interventionist project envisioned by the Obama administration: as rebel gangs run wild, attacking rival tribesmen – and “traitors,” like their former commander-in-chief – the country threatens to become what the more ambitious interventionists love best: a Failed State, that is, a state that fails to maintain its monopoly on the use of force in a given geographical area. For the War Party, every such failure is an opportunity to fill the power vacuum. Faster than you can say “I told you so,” we’ll have boots on the ground. No other course is possible, given what is unfolding in Libya at the moment. The country has no real government – a condition the Powers That Be cannot allow any longer than a few weeks. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/09/27/failure-in-libya/
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Is Washington At War With Pakistan?
The Americans are playing a very dangerous game with Pakistan, doing everything in their power to undermine the elected government, while at the same time decrying the threat of “extremism” in that nation. But they can’t have it both ways: if they fear destabilization, then why are they doing their utmost to provoke it? You’d almost have to be a “conspiracy theorist” to make sense out of it. We are fighting an unwinnable war in the region, one that doesn’t serve our interests, either geopolitical or economic, and we’ve tasked our military with solving an insoluble problem: how to win over a people whose land we’ve occupied. Our military leaders, in response, are forced to invent plausible reasons explaining why they’ve been unable to accomplish the impossible. The blame Pakistan narrative serves that purpose admirably. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/09/25/are-we-at-war-with-pakistan/
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Perpetual War: New Secret American Drone Bases To Bomb Somalia And Yemen
The al Qaeda boogeyman and the sham that is the so-called war on terror continue to drain America of our nonexistent funds and it looks like this unfortunate fact has no end in sight. If imperial overstretch wasn’t a big enough threat to the future of the United States what with our illegal wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, we are now signed on to yet another plan that will slaughter innocent people while robbing Americans and getting defense contractors filthy rich. http://theintelhub.com/2011/09/21/perpetual-war-new-secret-american-drone-bases-to-bomb-somalia-and-yemen/
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Cowards And Presstitutes
Before I continue, think for a minute about the level of threat posed by these Muslim countries that lack internal unity, an air force, a navy, a modern army, and nuclear ICBMs. Compare this “threat” to the Soviet threat, which, at least, was potentially real. The Soviets had the Red Army, which had defeated Hitler and his high class war machine. The Soviet Union had an amazing array of extremely powerful ICBMs with single and multiple nuclear warheads, and nuclear submarines outfitted with nuclear-armed missiles. Somehow we survived 46 years of this threat without going to war. But Iraq, which all but the most stupid people on earth now know had no “weapons of mass destruction” was such a threat that the US government felt not only compelled to invade but also justified to lie to the United Nations in order to attack and destroy a country that had done nothing whatsoever to us and posed no threat whatsoever. The same for Afghanistan. The Taliban posed no threat whatsoever to the United States or its European allies. Pakistan is a U.S. ally; yet, Washington has murdered thousands of Pakistani civilians. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29137.htm
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Clueless Republicans Demand More Militarism
Is there any doubt that pervasive militarism has now become a core value of the Republican Party? If there is any confusion, check out the positions being taken by the presidential candidates, with the sole exception of Ron Paul. Front-runner Rick Perry has this to say: “We must renew our commitment to taking the fight to the enemy wherever they are before they strike at home,” an assertion that is not too different from what President Barack Obama is doing, which in turns derives from the Bush Doctrine that the U.S. can respond to any perceived security threat anywhere, at any time, and in any fashion. Perry is also being advised on foreign policy by neoconservatives including Doug Feith, and he identifies strongly with evangelicals. He is also a strong supporter of Israel. But Mitt Romney outdoes Perry. In spite of the fact that Washington spends as much as the rest of the world on what it refers to as defense, Mitt sees weakness. He wants to “restore defense capabilities to ensure security at home and peace abroad…. America must make long-overdue investments in our military. Modernize air and naval forces, weapons systems, and equipment. Grow the number of troops and ensure that funds go to their needs and care. Establish robust missile defense and repair and update our nuclear arsenal. Oppose efforts to cut our military budget.” We must also “bolster our support for Israel, which has always been and will continue to be our strongest ally in the Middle East” and, “building on NATO, establish a global military alliance of democracies dedicated to ensuring security and protecting freedom.” http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/09/14/clueless-republicans-demand-more-militarism/
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For Officials, 9/11 Means Gushing About Wars and Demanding Continued Funding
President Obama raised more than a few eyebrows with his declaration yesterday that 9/11 made the US “stronger,” but officials past and present seem to have all fallen in line with the general narrative of 9/11 as the start of a glorious new period of American history, defined exclusively by endless wars and runaway military spending. Admiral Michael Mullen, the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, cheered the past decade as “America’s military ventured forth as the long arm and clenched fist of an angry nation at war,” celebrating the “vengeance” visited upon assorted enemies over that period. The “all’s well and ends well” sentiment was shared by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who declared that the terrorist attacks had changed America “mostly in good ways.” For those hoping to look past the gushing, the various self-congratulatory interviews also afforded ample time to shill for more wars going forward, with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisting a terrorist attack was “imminent” if Congress dared to cut the record military budget, which dwarfs even the massive budgets Rumsfeld had to work with. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/11/for-officials-911-means-gushing-about-wars-and-demanding-continued-funding/
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How an Empire Defines Victory
Seeing the end of the Gadhafi regime has somehow vindicated the war on Libya in many Americans’ minds, including some previously on the fence. This is a usual pattern: The U.S. goes to war, always with some lofty goal advertised, and the euphoria kicks in as soon as the regime is defeated. It happened throughout the 1990s. The Gulf War, Somalia, and Kosovo all present examples of the American empire claiming mighty victory even as the problems in each region that were cited as reasons to go to war — a brutal tyranny, starvation and warlordism, and ethnic violence — persisted long after the U.S. “won” these wars. It happened with the fall of the Taliban in October 2001. The Bush administration declared victory, the evil state was destroyed (or so we were told), and videos of little girls flying kites, signifying the defeat of fundamentalist theocracy in Afghanistan, saturated the press. Yet here we are, 10 years later, and the U.S. is still fighting the Taliban. Somewhere along the way it was forgotten that the war wasn’t simply supposed to achieve the limited victory of October 2001 — it was supposed to destroy the safe havens for “terror,” liberalize the nation, and neutralize the threat to America by attacking the root cause. None of this happened, not in 2001, 2002, or any year since. Do Americans, most of whom now want to leave Afghanistan, remember how they felt about the great triumph 10 years ago? Apparently, the lessons haven’t completely set in. http://original.antiwar.com/anthony-gregory/2011/09/11/how-an-empire-defines-victory/
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After Libya, Syria is Next in Line for a NATO Sponsored ‘Regime Change’
No one can deny the strategic importance of Syria on the grand chessboard. It’s bordering neighbors include no less than Israel, Turkey, Lebanon and most importantly now, Iraq. It is also a natural political ally of Iran and aligned firmly with the region’s last remaining independent militia, Hezbollah. To bring Syria under the globalist umbrella would be a key jewel on the globalist crown in their effort to control the entire Middle East and Central Asian region. In addition, Syria is one the region’s most economically independent sovereign states and possesses an incredible basket of natural resources. For all these reasons, Syria is a very high priority for globalist economic privatisation and dismantling of the state that is currently in place. Israel’s stake in Syrian regime change is first and foremost- land. The Golan Heights, as well as its formerly occupied prize in the form of South Lebanon will be firmly within Israel’s grasp if the country should eventually come under U.S. and European globalist control. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26157
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They Died in Vain; Deal With It
Many of those preaching at American church services Sunday extolled as “heroes” the 30 American and 8 Afghan troops killed Saturday west of Kabul, when a helicopter on a night mission crashed, apparently after taking fire from Taliban forces. This week, the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) can be expected to beat a steady drumbeat of “they shall not have died in vain.” But they did. I know it is a hard truth, but they did die in vain. As in the past, churches across the country will keep praising the fallen troops for protecting “our way of life,” and few can demur, given the tragic circumstances. But, sadly, such accolades are, at best, misguided — at worst, dishonest. Most preachers do not have a clue as to what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan and why. Many prefer not to think about it. There are some who do know better, but virtually all in that category eventually opt to punt. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/08-1
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Lowering America’s War Ceiling? Imperial Psychosis On Display
On July 25th, for instance, while John Boehner raced around the Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America’s new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant Kabul. According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech “warning” that “Western powers needed to ‘proceed carefully’” and emphasized that when it came to the war, there would “be no rush for the exits.” If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that in Kabul almost a decade into America’s second Afghan War. There, the air strikes, night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths, we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond. In a war in which every gallon of gas used by a fuel-guzzling U.S. military costs $400 to $800 to import, time is no object and — despite the panic in Washington over debt payments — neither evidently is cost. In Iraq, meanwhile, in year eight of America’s armed involvement, U.S. officials are still wangling to keep significant numbers of American troops stationed there beyond an agreed end-of-2011 withdrawal date. And the State Department is preparing to hire a small army of 5,000-odd armed mercenaries (with their own mini-air force) to keep the American “mission” in that country humming along to the tune of billions of dollars. In Libya, the American/NATO war effort, once imagined as a brief spasm of shock-‘n’-awe firepower that would oust autocrat Muammar Gaddafi in a nanosecond, is now in its fifth month with neither an end nor a serious reassessment in sight. http://www.countercurrents.org/engelhardt020811.htm
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Former Intel Chief: Call Off The Drone War (And Maybe the Whole War on Terror)
Ground the U.S. drone war in Pakistan. Rethink the idea of spending billions of dollars to pursue al-Qaida. Forget chasing terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, unless the local governments are willing to join in the hunt. Those aren’t the words of some human rights activist, or some far-left Congressman. They’re from retired admiral and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair — the man who was, until recently, nominally in charge of the entire American effort to find, track, and take out terrorists. Now, he’s calling for that campaign to be reconsidered, and possibly even junked. Blair mentioned that 17 Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by terrorists since 9/11 — 14 of them in the Ft. Hood massacre. Meanwhile, auto accidents, murders and rapes combine have killed an estimated 1.5 million people in the past decade. “What is it that justifies this amount of money on this narrow problem?” he asked. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/call-off-the-drone-war/
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No Early End to Libya War Expected
Which is great news for the arms merchants and the madmen behind the U.S. policy of permanent war with the Arab world. http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/07/19/no-early-end-to-libya-war-expected/
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The Debt Ceiling and the Warfare State
Although the ticking time bomb scenario is most conducive to the realm of foreign affairs – where bombs, and other ticking devices, are largely to be found, along with a host of enemies ready to set them off – we hear variations of it on the home front as well. The current debate over the debt ceiling is a perfect example, with the Obama administration and its media shills claiming that if Congress doesn’t raise it, an economic apocalypse is imminent. This is a very clever way of shifting blame for the ongoing financial crisis, one which may very well come to a head as Congress votes. Never mind that the more immediate cause of another lurch into the vale of depression is likely to be economic chaos imported from the Eurozone – American narcissism, a national malady, deludes us into thinking it’s all about us. The fate of the world must always rest on our shoulders. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/07/12/the-debt-ceiling-and-the-warfare-state/
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The Great Generational Threat
In just the past two months alone (all subsequent to the killing of Osama bin Laden), the U.S. Government has taken the following steps in the name of battling the Terrorist menace: extended the Patriot Act by four years without a single reform; begun a new CIA drone attack campaign in Yemen; launched drone attacks in Somalia; slaughtered more civilians in Pakistan; attempted to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki far from any battlefield and without a whiff of due process; invoked secrecy doctrines to conceal legal memos setting forth its views of its own domestic warrantless surveillance powers; announced a “withdrawal”plan for Afghanistan that entails double the number of troops in that country as were there when Obama was inaugurated; and invoked a very expansive view of its detention powers under the 2001 AUMF by detaining an alleged member of al-Shabab on a floating prison, without charges, Miranda warnings, or access to a lawyer. That’s all independent of a whole slew of drastically expanded surveillance powers seized over the past two years in the name of the same threat. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/09/terrorism/index.html
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Multi-Billion-Dollar Terrorists and the Disappearing Middle Class
The U.S. government (White House and Congress) spends $10 billion dollars a month, or $120 billion a year, to fight an estimated “50 -75 ‘Al Qaeda types’ in Afghanistan ”, according to the CIA and quoted in the Financial Times of London. During the past 30 months of the Obama presidency, Washington has spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan , which adds up to $4 billion dollars for each alleged ‘Al Queda type’. If we multiply this by the two dozen or so sites and countries where the White House claims ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists have been spotted, we begin to understand why the U.S. budget deficit has grown astronomically to over $1.6 trillion for the current fiscal year. During Obama’s Presidency, Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment has been frozen, resulting in a net decrease of over 8 percent, which is exactly the amount spent chasing just 5 dozen ‘Al Qaeda terrorists’ in the mountains bordering Pakistan. It is absurd to believe that the Pentagon and White House would spend $10 billion a month just to hunt down a handful of terrorists ensconced in the mountains of Afghanistan . So what is the war in Afghanistan about? The answer one most frequently reads and hears is that the war is really against the Taliban, a mass-based Islamic nationalist guerrilla movement with tens of thousands of activists. The Taliban, however, have never engaged in any terrorist act against the territorial United States or its overseas presence. The Taliban have always maintained their fight was for the expulsion of foreign forces occupying Afghanistan . Hence the Taliban is not part of any “international terrorist network”. If the U.S. war in Afghanistan is not about defeating terrorism, then why the massive expenditure of funds and manpower for over a decade? http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25574
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Militarism is Not Patriotism
Americans glorify their military now, but this would have been frowned on by an anti-militaristic founding generation that was suspicious of standing armies and alliances with foreign nations. For example, George Washington warned the country to stay out of “permanent alliances,” and Thomas Jefferson talked of the dangers of “entangling alliances.” In fact, one of the reasons that the framers of the Constitution gave most of the war powers to Congress (they have since migrated extra-constitutionally to the executive branch) was a reaction to European monarchs leading their countries into wars of self-aggrandizement, with the costs in blood and treasure falling on the common citizen. Thus, the United States was founded on principles of anti-militarism. This seems strange nowadays, but if you examine the writings of early foreign observers of America — including the famous Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 1800s — they remarked on Americans’ lack militarism and their preoccupation instead with commerce. America acquired its globe girdling military empire only after World War II, complete with hundreds of military bases, scores of unequal foreign alliances, and scads of questionable military interventions. And all this just when the advent of nuclear weapons added to the nation’s remote location to further enhance its already formidable security — making all of these added measures unnecessary. http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2011/07/05/militarism-is-not-patriotism/
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U.S. Cost of War at Least $3.7 Trillion and Counting
When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America’s wars. In addition to the incalculable cost of human life, the financial cost to support ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq will likely exceed $4 trillion. Worse still, there’s no end in sight. (AP) Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/29-0
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Nine War Words That Define Our World: ‘Victory’ Is the Verbal Equivalent of a Yeti
Now that Washington has at least six wars cooking (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and more generally, the global war on terror), Americans find themselves in a new world of war. If, however, you haven’t joined the all-volunteer military, any of our 17 intelligence outfits, the Pentagon, the weapons companies and hire-a-gun corporations associated with it, or some other part of the National Security Complex, America’s distant wars go on largely without you (at least until the bills come due). War has a way of turning almost anything upside down, including language. But with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, crumbling infrastructure, and weird weather, who even notices? This undoubtedly means that you’re using a set of antediluvian war words or definitions from your father’s day. It’s time to catch up. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/23-4
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Waging Another Unconstitutional War
The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal – Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya. You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled Libya, the destruction of Gadhafi’s family compound and tent encampment in the desert–killing his son and three grandchildren–and the deployment of special forces inside Libya is not a “War.” It is in the Obama White House’s evasive nomenclature just a “time-limited, scope-limited military action” Can you find that phrase in the Constitution? So, in the invidious tradition of George W. Bush and his indentured confessor, Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, now comfortably ensconced on the law faculty of the University of California Berkeley, Mr. Obama is blithely claiming as authority for taking our country into another war “the inherent powers of the President under Article II of the Constitution.” This wouldn’t pass the laugh test by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin Mason or even Hamilton. James Madison believed placing the war-declaring power in the exclusive hands of Congress was the most significant achievement during the convention in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. No more King George substitutes for America’s future, they demanded. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28371.htm
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Strange Definitions of War and Peace
by Ron Paul. Last week I joined six Republican and three Democrat colleagues to file a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its illegal war against Libya. Now that more than 90 days have passed since the president began bombing Libya, no one can seriously claim that the administration has complied with the clear requirements of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. In a remarkable act of chutzpah, the administration sent to Congress its response to the growing concern over its abuse of war powers. Its argument, in a nutshell, is that the War Powers Resolution is not relevant because US armed forces are not actually engaged in hostilities because Libya is so militarily weak it cannot fight back! This explanation would be laughable if not so horrific. The administration wants us to believe that there is no real violence because the victim cannot fight back? Imagine if this standard was applied to criminal law in the United States! I am sure Libyans on the receiving end of US and NATO bombs feel hostilities are quite definitely taking place. http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1878:strange-definitions-of-war-and-peace&catid=62:texas-straight-talk&Itemid=69
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Neo-Con Lindsey Graham: ‘Very Close’ to Time to Attack Syria
Maybe Washington should start bombing every Arab country on behalf of the neo-con madmen. http://news.antiwar.com/2011/06/12/sen-graham-very-close-to-time-to-attack-syria/
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Holding the President Accountable on Libya
by Ron Paul. Last week, more than 70 days after President Obama sent our military to attack Libya without a congressional declaration of war, the House of Representatives finally voted on two resolutions attempting to rein in the president. This debate was long overdue, as polls show Americans increasingly are frustrated by congressional inaction. According to a CNN poll last week, 55 percent of the American people believe that Congress, not the president, should have the final authority to decide whether the U.S. should continue its military mission in Libya. Yet for more than 70 days Congress has ignored its constitutional obligations and allowed the president to usurp its authority. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28274.htm
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America’s Addiction — Waging Illegal Wars
With regard to war, international and constitutional laws are clear. Under the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, only Congress may declare war, not the president. That, in fact, last happened on December 8, 1941 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. As a result, all subsequent U.S. wars have been illegal, including Obama’s against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. http://rense.com/general94/ameradd.htm
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Congress Backs America’s ‘Eternal Worldwide War’
Let me provide a little more background on the Forever War law. Obama has publicly opposed it through an Office of Management and Budget statement, but the popular belief that he has threatened to veto the whole bill if Section 1034 remains is quite a stretch. If this madness cannot be stopped in the House or Senate we should demand a veto, but we should not expect one. The Republicans are trying to crown Obama king. This is the worst legislation ever. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24994
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Renewing the PATRIOT Act: Who Will Protect Us From Our Government?
Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. This is the true nature of a patriot—one who sounds the clarion call when the Constitution is under attack. If, on the other hand, the people become sheep-like, it will lead to a government of wolves. This is what we are faced with today as Congress marches in lockstep with the White House to renew the USA PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The PATRIOT Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many nonterrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations, and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state. http://original.antiwar.com/jwhitehead/2011/05/18/renewing-the-patriot-act/
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War of Terror is a Reichstag Fire False Flag Operation
By now, you are probably worn out from all the speculation about the actual events in Pakistan that claim the death of the public enemy No 1. No photos of a dead Osama bin Laden, burial at sea, instant DNA results and changing versions with every new news report gets old quickly. The claim that a treasure chest of intelligence was secured during the raid, conflicts with killing the main man who knows where all the buried are buried. Capturing him alive for interrogation would maximize the intelligence quest, if that were the real goal. If any significance should be assigned to this account, now is the time to re-evaluate the entire nature of the War on Terror that has destroyed America more in the last ten years than any attack on home soil. http://www.batr.org/wrack/050811.html
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The Propaganda Of War And Foreign Policy
Any conservative with an IQ above 80 should vigorously oppose Washington’s endless warmongering policies. http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=14854
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Bin Laden, Gaddafi and Modern Warfare: On the Highway of Death
Modern technology totally dehumanizes warfare and, in the process, totally dehumanizes us as human beings. While it allows us to wage battles from afar, modern technological warfare also reduces the act of killing human beings to nothing more than targeting blips on a screen – a macabre video game with faceless victims and no danger of someone shooting back. And when an American drone annihilates innocent civilians in some far-away land, this is simply written off as yet another technological blip. I was an infantry officer in the Army from 1969 to 1971. Men in my platoon who had served time in Vietnam told me many stories – but none more chilling than the one from two helicopter pilots. They told me how they would shoot the “friendlies” on their way back from reconnaissance missions just so they could empty their ammunition before returning to base. The “friendlies” were South Vietnamese women and children, helpless victims in a war they did not understand. But to the American pilots, they were simply dots on the ground. This is what warfare does to so-called civilized people. Unfortunately, these “joy killings” are not isolated instances. Take, for instance, a U.S.-led attack that occurred during the Gulf War on the night of February 26–27, 1991, after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with U.N. resolutions. On a 60-mile stretch of road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq, a convoy of more than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were fleeing. These were people who were putting up no resistance, many with no weapons, leaving in cars, trucks, carts and on foot. The American armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait City to Basra, sealing it off, then bombed the other end of the highway, sealing it off. They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hill overlooking the area and then, both from the air and the land, massacred every living thing on the road. Fighter bombers, helicopter gunships and armored battalions poured merciless firepower on those trapped in the traffic jams, backed up as much as 20 miles. One U.S. pilot reportedly said, “It was like shooting fish in a barrel.” That fateful stretch of road has since been dubbed the “Highway of Death.” http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead28.1.html
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Washington’s Endless War Shuffle
Someday, when historians look back, they will undoubtedly be struck by the utter inanity, not to say collective insanity, of the United States fighting what our president has called a “war of necessity,” now in its tenth year, in Afghanistan, as well as a “covert” war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. It will undoubtedly look like a classic case of a declining empire overextending itself, squandering its treasury, and then, in its moment of crisis, extending itself yet further. After all, the date to get U.S. “combat troops” out of Afghanistan has already been officially put off to the end of 2014, more than three years away, and that doesn’t even include U.S. trainers and other supposedly noncombat troops, possibly numbering in the tens of thousands, who may remain for years more. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/04-1
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The Agendas Behind the Bin Laden News Event
The U.S. government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. Indeed, the new story put out on Tuesday by White House press secretary Jay Carney bears little resemblance to the original Sunday evening story. The fierce firefight did not occur. Osama bin Laden did not hide behind a woman. Indeed, bin Laden, Carney said, “was not armed.” The firefight story was instantly suspicious as not a single SEAL got a scratch, despite being up against al Qaeda, described by former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld as “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Every original story detail has been changed. It wasn’t bin Laden’s wife who was murdered by the Navy SEALs, but the wife of an aide. It wasn’t bin Laden’s son, Khalid, who was murdered by the Navy SEALs, but son Hamza. http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts304.html
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From Waco to Libya: 18 Years of Humanitarian Mass Murder
“The Davidian cult in Waco was dealt with by armored vehicles,” remarked Muammar Gaddafi in February, defending his own crackdowns in light of the U.S. government’s. April 19 marks eighteen years since the end of the Waco siege and exactly one month since Obama began bombing Libya. Now that the federal government is again shedding blood in the name of humanitarianism, we might reflect on how it obtains legitimacy for its most brazen acts of violence. Long ago, when governments slaughtered the enemy merely for being different and thus subhuman or for occupying desired territory, such crude rationales satisfied the states’ agents and subjects. The modern democratic state, however, employs more sophisticated propaganda when it burns, gasses, shoots, and bombs people including civilians. There is always the excuse of security: the targeted people pose a threat. When this argument seems tenuous, it is well complemented by that most insidious of pretenses: The killing is done for the good of others. It is an act of kindness. The American empire, like the Roman and British before it, inflicts violence to civilize and rescue those in need. http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory210.html
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War
In 1948, George Orwell wrote the novel 1984. In his magnificently prophetic portrayal of a futuristic world, much like the world we live in today, he makes a number of profoundly factual statements. Orwell writes, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” A word’s definition cannot be changed; however, by deviously clever design, the implications certainly can. “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” George Orwell. Today, U.S. military troops are being sent to annihilate lands, property, homes, buildings, and entire cities filled with people, all under the pretext of what are called Peacekeeping Missions. The U.S. has troops permanently stationed in over 133 countries. Military spending is 5.8 times more than China, 10.2 times more than Russia, and 98.6 times more than Iran. The defense budget is $708 billion, which is more than all other discretionary parts of the federal budget. There is no country on earth that can challenge the U.S. militarily. http://www.newswithviews.com/Duncan/al109.htm
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A Policy Chasing Its Tail
All of which leads me to fear Nietzsche was right: that we do, indeed, live in a nightmare world of eternal recurrence, a universe where U.S. troops are always “withdrawing” from Iraq, only to change course at the last moment. Where the Egyptian military invades Tahrir in perpetuity, and repeatedly drags bloggers away in chains. Where the Libyan rebels are in jeopardy unending, always on the cusp of defeat – and the U.S. and its allies are permanently poised to plant boots on the ground to save them from certain annihilation. Which means the neocons will be eternally calling for a U.S. invasion of somewhere-or-other – and that there will always be neocons. This last is bad news indeed: it’s like a cancer diagnosis, except there’s no relief in the form of death. Just pain that goes on … forever. If I’ve painted a dreary picture, well then there’s no sense blaming the messenger: this is our lot, and we just have to learn to live with it. It is, in short, the human condition, which seems mostly to be a condition of forgetfulness, a kind of historical Alzheimer’s in which we have no recollection of our past errors – and, indeed, no memory of historical events beyond the last presidential election. Americans wake up every day tabula rasa, with no more knowledge of the lessons of history – especially their own – than a newborn babe. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/04/12/a-policy-chasing-its-tail/
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Unholy Alliance
According to historian Thomas E. Woods, during the debate at the Constitutional Convention over the War Powers clause, only a single delegate – Pierce Butler, of South Carolina — rose to argue in favor of giving the President the power to make war without congressional consent. He was answered by Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, who declared he “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.” The rest of the Founders, to a man, concurred. That this is now reversed, and Gerry’s views are considered “crackpot” in official Washington, is yet more evidence that we are no longer a republic, alas, but a monstrously bloated empire headed for a fall. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/04/07/unholy-alliance-2/
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Never Again: On Not ‘Going In’ in the First Place
Talking about secretaries of defense. Oh, we weren’t? Well, let’s. After all, they’re in the news. Take former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who, on leaving government service — and I hope you don’t mind if I mangle a quote from General Douglas MacArthur here — refused to die, or even fade away. Instead, he penned Known and Unknown, a memoir almost as big as his ego and almost as long — 832 pages — as the occupation of Iraq, which promptly hit the bestseller lists (making the American reader a Known Unknown). Now, Mr. Known Knowns, etc., is duking it out on Facebook, Sarah-Palin-style, with “the chief gossip-monger of the governing class,” the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward. Amusingly enough, Woodward has just savaged Rumsfeld for pulling a Woodward in his memoir by playing fast and loose with reality. He posted his review at the Best Defense (as in, you know, a good offense), the war fightin’ blog of former Washington Post reporter and bestselling author Tom Ricks. Small world down there in Washington! It’s enough to make you nostalgic for… well, I have no idea what. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/07
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The Immorality of Empire
As I watch the popular uprisings unfold against brutal dictatorships supported by my own government, I cannot help but reflect upon the moral implications of my participation in the American empire. My crimes began almost before I can remember, but I will address only the most immediately pertinent of them here. I am a citizen of the United States of America; I pay local, state, and federal taxes; and I vote. http://original.antiwar.com/nkramer/2011/02/27/the-immorality-of-empire/
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‘U.S. Wars to Continue Until Its Economy Busts’
Roughly 48,000 American troops are still based in Iraq seven years after the start of the war, according to the Washington Post. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, 4,435 U.S. troops have been killed and more than 31,827 wounded in Iraq, according to the media. The total cost of the Iraq war has been estimated to be over $3 trillion. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27313.htm
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Even Lost Wars Make Corporations Rich
Iraq, despite the brutality of Saddam Hussein, was a prosperous country with a highly educated middle class before the war. Its infrastructure was modern and efficient. Iraqis enjoyed a high standard of living. The country did not lack modern conveniences. Things worked. And being in Iraq, as I often was when I covered the Middle East for The New York Times, while unnerving because of state repression, was never a hardship. Since our occupation the country has tumbled into dysfunction. Factories, hospitals, power plants, phone service, sewage systems and electrical grids do not work. Iraqis, if they are lucky, get three hours of electricity a day. Try this in 110-degree heat. Poverty is endemic. More than a million Iraqi civilians have been killed. Nearly 5 million have been displaced from their homes or are refugees. The Mercer Quality of Living survey last year ranked Baghdad last among cities—the least livable on the planet. Iraq, which once controlled its own oil, has been forced to turn its oil concessions over to foreign corporations. That is what we have bequeathed to Iraq—violence, misery and theft. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27242.htm
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From War Profiteer to For-Profit War
If one giant outfit gives for-profit war-making (rather than war profiteering) its full modern meaning, it’s Lockheed Martin. If you don’t believe me, just check out William Hartung’s latest piece “Is Lockheed Martin Shadowing You?” The giant for-profit war-making corporations are to this century what the robber barons were to the nineteenth century. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/12
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11 Reasons Why The Threat From Al-Qaeda is Not Real
The United States government has repeatedly stated that the treat from Al-Qaeda against America is very real, and that all action is being taken to eliminate that threat. Nobody in their right mind would question such a serious assessment about a sensitive national security matter from the world’s leading democracy. But the truth is that over the past fifty years America’s democratic institutions like the press have been weakened, and an elitist National Security State has risen, and taken control over all aspects of government. Since World War II U.S. leaders have consistently lied to the American people about foreign threats in order to feed the military machine’s appetite for war. http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2010/12/11-reasons-why-threat-from-al-qaeda-is.html
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War Is A Drug — The Urge to Surge
In Central and South Asia, we could now be heading for the end of the age of American surges, which in practical terms have manifested themselves as the urge to destabilize. Geopolitically, little could be uglier or riskier on our planet at the moment than destabilizing Pakistan — or the United States. Three decades after the American urge to surge in Afghanistan helped destabilize one imperial superpower, the Soviet Union, the present plans, whatever they may turn out to be, could belatedly destabilize the other superpower of the Cold War era. And what our preeminent group of surgers welcomed as an “unprecedented strategic opportunity” as this century dawned may, in its later stages, be seen as an unprecedented act of strategic desperation. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27193.htm
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Osama bin Dead Awhile
Oh, by the way, in case you’ve just joined us? Osama bin Laden is dead. He died in the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan on December 13, 2001. He was buried in an unmarked grave within 24 hours of his death. Case closed. But don’t just take my word for it. Top terror experts, intelligence analysts, academics, government officials, and even major political figures around the globe tend to agree that, “All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.” I know this is old news to most of you, but I think it’s important to reiterate this fact. Why? Because Christmas season is upon us, and you know what that means: Terrorism! http://revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/osama-bin-deadawhile/
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The Real Terrorists are Upping Their Chatter
Remember the buzzword chatter? When our criminal government kept the sheeple on the razor’s edge of fear because they’d say that chatter levels coming from Al-Qaeda were increasing? Well, today, in this article, I’m going to openly fear monger to you, because the chatter by the real terrorists, the ruling elite, is getting louder and more urgent — prompting me to warn you that it seems like a terror attack is coming soon. http://theintelhub.com/2010/12/21/beware-the-real-terrorists-are-upping-their-chatter/
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Christmas Time Terror Rhetoric Right On Schedule
CBS News and The Associated Press are reporting that these terror threats are unfortunately keeping Americans on edge.What is clear is that the government and these media outlets WANT Americans to be on the edge so they can continue their illegal TSA measures and police state tactics used in the name of fighting terror. http://theintelhub.com/2010/12/16/christmas-time-terror-rhetoric-right-on-schedule/
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The American War Dead Disappear Into the Darkness
In understanding how this relative lack of attention is possible, it’s worth noting that the American dead tend to come disproportionately from easy-to-ignore tough-luck regions of the country, and disproportionately as well from small town and rural America, where service in the armed forces may be more valued, but times are also rougher, unemployment rates higher, and opportunities less. In this context, consider those November dead. If you look through the minimalist announcements released by the Pentagon, as I did recently, you discover that they were almost all men in their twenties, and that none of them seem to have come from our giant metropolises. Among the hometowns of the dead, there was no Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or Houston. There were a range of second-level cities including Flagstaff (Arizona), Rochester (New York), San Jose (California), Tallahassee (Florida), and Tucson (Arizona). For the rest, from Aroostook, Maine, to Mesquite, Texas, the hometown names the Pentagon lists, whether they represent rural areas, small towns, parts of suburbs, or modest-sized cities, read like a dirge for places you’d never have heard of if you hadn’t yourself lived in the vicinity. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/12/07/the-american-war-dead-disappear-into-the-darkness/
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Oceans of Blood and Profits for the Mongers of War
According to Israeli historian Illan Pappé, since 1949, the US has passed to Israel more than $100bn in grants and $10bn in special loans – more than Washington hands out to North Africa, South America and the Caribbean. Over the past 20 years, $5.5bn has been given to Israel for military purchases. But for sheer self-abuse, it’s necessary to read of the Midas-like losses in the entire Middle East since just 1991 – an estimated $12,000,000,000,000. Yup, that’s a cool $12trn and, if you don’t believe me, take a look at an unassuming little booklet that the “Strategic Fortnight Group” published not long ago. Its statistic caught a few headlines, but was then largely forgotten, perhaps because it was published in faraway Mumbai rather than by some preposterous American “tink-thank” (as I call them). http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26930.htm
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Afghanistan is About Perpetual War
The war in Afghanistan is about perpetual war, not Afghanistan. It’s about preventing democracy in the United States, not bringing it to Southwest Asia. And it is the tombstone of the Obama Presidency. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m72248&hd=&size=1&l=e
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Peddling War to Children
We couldn’t wage our current wars without the all-volunteer military whose recruitment goals get fed every year by idealistic young people, who continue, despite all counter-evidence bursting off the front pages, to buy into the romance and excitement of war and armed do-goodism that the recruiters, with the help of a vast “militainment” industry, peddle like so many Joe Camels. http://original.antiwar.com/robert-koehler/2010/11/18/peddling-war-to-children/
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Imperial War Without End: 30 to 40 Years of Occupation in Afghanistan Ahead
The foreign policy bait-and-switch continues. First, President Barack Obama declared the end of combat in Iraq, withdrawing some U.S. troops but leaving many others behind, possibly for decades, and redefining their role as “advise and assist” — whereupon they continued engaging in combat. Now, with Obama having publicly stated his intent to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next July, both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus are arguing for a long-term, if not permanent, U.S. presence in Afghanistan. On top of that, British Defense Chief Gen. Sir David Richards, echoing their sentiments, has stated that “Nato now needs to plan for a 30 or 40 year role to help the Afghan armed forces hold their country against the militants,” according to the Daily Mail, though he “stuck to the government’s plans to withdraw combat troops by 2014 but made clear that thousands of troops will be needed long after that date.” http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/5229-british-defense-chief-30-to-40-years-of-afghanistan-occupation-ahead
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How Veterans Day Became a Farce
Afghan war veteran Todd Nelson
If the rest of America could finally resist the pressure to spend Veterans Day in an intellectual stupor, they might see Kristol & Co. for what they really are. They might recognize them as collaborating with the military and other self-interested parties in Washington to quietly extend this unpopular war for another four years with absolutely no input from the citizenry – what writer Stephen Walt aptly recognizes as the old “Bait and Switch.” Simply put, Veterans Day and its springtime counterpart, Memorial Day, have become nothing but an institutionalized distraction from the truth. A temporary salve on our conscience, and a decoy for the war-makers. http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/11/15/how-veterans-day-became-a-farce/
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Are ‘Terrorists’ More Dangerous Than How We React to Them?
The ‘terrorists’ have just made every shopping facility in America a no go area. The greatest hit to a consumer economy ever! Why, if the terrorist threat is so real, are soft targets like shopping malls not blowing up every week? A true terrorist would simply bypass flying and blow up soft civilian targets. If Al Qaida are so prevalent, and the war on terror is real, then why are Al Qaida wasting their time smuggling bombs onto airplanes? There are so many soft targets that could do far more economic damage. Why are they not happening? http://wartard.blogspot.com/2010/11/terrorist-fail.html
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Thank a Vet?
The most undeserved and oftentimes disgusting outpouring of thankfulness I have ever seen is over those who have fought or are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The praise and adoration of those fighting in “the front lines in the war on terror” reaches its apex on Veterans Day, which has become a day to defend U.S. wars and recognize all things military. These soldiers certainly have done nothing worthy of thanks. Sure, they have rebuilt infrastructure – after bombing it to smithereens. They no doubt removed a brutal dictator – and unleashed American brutality in the process. And yes, they have rescued orphan children – after blowing their parents and brothers and sisters to kingdom come. What is there to thank our soldiers for? They are not defending our freedoms. They are not keeping us safe from our enemies. They are not protecting us from terrorists. They are not guaranteeing our First Amendment rights. They are not defending U.S. borders. They are not guarding U.S. shores. They are not patrolling U.S. coasts. They are not enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies. They are not fighting “over there” so we don’t have to fight “over here.” They are not avenging 9/11. They are not safeguarding the American way of life. Oh, and they are not ensuring that I have the liberty to write what I do about the military. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26795.htm
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Morning Again in America – For Islamophobes
Right now, all the news chatter is about domestic policy (health care, tax cuts, etc.), but count on the Republicans — Rand Paul aside — to light out after the president sooner or later at least as hawkishly on foreign policy as they have domestically. Already, Senator John McCain and others are preparing the ground to launch what’s likely to become a jihad against Obama’s civilization-busting “mistake” in announcing a vaguely “conditions-based” drawdown of vague numbers of U.S. troops in Afghanistan for July 2011. And that’s just a start. On a whole host of issues from the Iraq and Afghan wars to Israel, Iran, and North Korea, buckle your seatbelts and hold onto your hats. The critical weather in Congress, especially in the House, is going to get fiercer, and a president with a most un-Harry-Truman-ish tendency to placate is unlikely to stake his fighting future on foreign policy. So expect war drums and alarums to the horizon (i.e. 2012) from congressional Republicans. And when it comes to the famous Republican urge to cut every budget in sight, be assured of one thing: our wars, the Pentagon budget, and the industrial part of the military-industrial complex — in other words, our next generation weaponry, however ill-conceived — will surely be removed from the “table” where “all options” are always placed. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/09
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Lindsey Graham’s Desperation
Just in terms of style, has there ever been a more obsequious opportunist than Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina? Here is somebody who voted for the bank bailouts, the confirmation of two liberal Supreme Court nominees, national ID cards, amnesty for “illegals”, and is known and loved by the liberal media for his penchant for “reaching across the aisle” – in short, a RINO – now trying to save his own neck in the midst of a conservative upsurge. How is he doing it? By warmongering, of course. http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/11/07/lindsey-grahams-desperation/
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Slaughter as ‘Stimulus’
With the current depression growing deeper and nastier, the Obama administration and the banking cartel controlling it have run just about every option in the Keynesian playbook, save one: The “Hail, Ares!” play Broder suggests. All that’s necessary to make this happen is the arrival of a Congress under the influence of the most militaristic element of the GOP. It’s quite likely that those nostalgic for the reign of FDR’s nation-breaking war commissars will soon have reason to erupt in a chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w177.html
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Anwar Al Awlaki Terrorist? Or Pentagon/CIA Asset?
The latest made for the masses all-purpose villain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm5jd-PafcA&feature=player_embedded#!
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Military Strategists Have Known for 2,500 Years That Prolonged Wars Are Disastrous
2,500 hundred years ago, one of the greatest military strategists ever – Sun Tzu – said: “What is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations.” “No nation has ever benefited from a prolonged war.” http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/11/military-strategists-have-known-for.html
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The New American Isolationism: The Cost of Turning Away from War’s Horrific Realities
Today, Americans are again an isolationist people, but with a twist. Even as we expand our military bases overseas and spend trillions on national security and wars, we’ve isolated ourselves from war’s passions, its savagery, its heartrending sacrifices. Such isolation comforts some and seemingly allows others free rein to act as they wish, but it’s a false comfort, a false freedom, purchased at the price of prolonging our wars, increasing their casualties, abridging our freedoms, and eroding our country’s standing in the world. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/01-2
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They Hate Us For Our Occupations
Imagine that. Isn’t Muslim culture just so bizarre, primitive, and inscrutable? As strange as it is, they actually seem to dislike it when foreign militaries bomb, invade and occupy their countries, and Western powers interfere in their internal affairs by overthrowing and covertly manipulating their governments, imposing sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, and arming their enemies. Therefore (of course), the solution to Terrorism is to interfere more in their countries by continuing to occupy, bomb, invade, assassinate, lawlessly imprison and control them, because that’s the only way we can Stay Safe. There are people over there who are angry at us for what we’re doing in their world, so we need to do much more of it to eradicate the anger. That’s the core logic of the War on Terror. How is that working out? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26578.htm
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FDR and the Origins of the 1939 War
In this scholarly article, excerpted from his book, The Forced War: The Origins and Originators of World War II, Dr. Hoggan examines the secret war aspirations of President Franklin Roosevelt. Hoggan also shows how Poland’s leaders, bolstered by assurances from London of military backing, sought to provoke war with Germany. During the months prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939, he explains, Poland’s provocation of Germany was frequent and extreme. Hitler had more than sufficient justification to go to war with Poland. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p205_Hoggan.html
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The Afghanistan War: `A Long-Drawn-Out Disaster’
The threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban has been “exaggerated” by the western powers. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has “ballooned” out of all proportion from its original aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda. The US-led war in Afghanistan, says IISS, using uncharacteristically blunt language, is “a long-drawn-out disaster” Europeans are fed up with the Afghan war. Polls report 60% of Americans think the war not worth fighting. The truth about Iraq and Afghanistan is finally emerging. Afghanistan may again prove to be “the graveyard of empires”. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26362.htm
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The American Way of War Quiz
Yes, it would be funny if it weren’t so grim. After all, when it comes to squandering money and resources in strange and distant places (or even here at home), you can count on the practitioners of American-style war to be wildly over the top. Oh, those madcap Pentagon bureaucrats and the zany horde of generals and admirals who go with them! Give them credit: no one on Earth knows how to throw a war like they do – and they never go home. In fact, when it comes to linking “profligate” to “war,” with all the lies, manipulations, and cost overruns that give it that proverbial pizazz, Americans should stand tall. We are absolutely #1! http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/09/14/the-american-way-of-war-quiz/
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