Entries Tagged 'foreign policy' ↓

Writes Peter Klein: This video is making the rounds. “It is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank.” As my friend Scott Rouse suggests, “apparently they took it to one of the banks he runs now.”

Preparing undeployables for the Afghan front
by Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare

As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in. Continue reading →

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spent three days in Pakistan defending U.S. Policy before a variety of groups. Some of the audiences were blunt and combative, reflecting the dramatic decline in popularity of U. S. policy. The Pakistani criticisms include U.S. interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs, U.S. failure to allow Pakistani textiles into American markets in desired quotas, and the growing U.S. relationship with India particularly on nuclear matters.

But the issue that drew the most attention and anger is the U.S. use of unmanned drone airplanes to kill people in Pakistan, a program guided offshore by civilians from as far away as western United States. Some Pakistanis told Clinton that the program amounted to “execution without trial”. Others asked Clinton if she viewed these drone attacks as terrorism. “No, I do not”, she replied, but refused to comment further. Continue reading →

by Eric Margolis

The Great French Philosopher Voltaire once observed “ It is dangerous to be right when your Government is wrong”. I am afraid that observation comes very close to the political climate of the United States in this day and time.

Voltaire made that observation after he had been exiled to a penal colony Island by the King of France who didn’t take more harsh action because Voltaire was loved by the public who agreed with his writings that the King was a despot. Continue reading →

How do you describe a leader who vowed to condemn the 1915 Armenian genocide once in office and makes a U-turn soon after? What if that leader spurns a meeting with a Buddhist monk to avoid provoking a dictatorship that actively undermines his nation?

This is appeasement not peace. Yet, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US President Barrack Obama for reasons which are baffling. Recipients of the same prize, namely the Dalai Lama and Barrack Hussein Obama, ironically cannot meet as it might discombobulate a delicate international order. Continue reading →

No one lives in a vacuum. What we do as a society always affects others. It is inevitable. And following that thought, aren’t we the product of those who preceded us? So are we victims of the past or heroes of the future?

The answer to that question is up to us. Continue reading →

OCTOBER 7, 2001: the U.S. attacked Afghanistan. Many lies have been used to justify the continuation and escalation of this war. President Obama sent 34,000 more troops to occupy Afghanistan, and is considering sending as many as 45,000 more, not including tens of thousands of private U.S. contractors.

LIES USED TO JUSTIFY THIS INCLUDE:

Afghanistan is a “good war” against the “real terrorists” who attacked Americans Continue reading →

by Eric Margolis

Truth is war’s first casualty. The Afghan war’s biggest untruth is, “we’ve got to fight terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home.”

Many North Americans still buy this lie because they believe the 9/11 attacks came directly from the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida and Taliban movements.

False. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany and Spain, and conducted mainly by U.S.-based Saudis to punish America for supporting Israel. Continue reading →

The Nobel Committee’s tradition is long and inglorious, but for the well-informed no surprise. Consider its past honorees:

– Henry Kissinger;

– Shimon Peres;

– Yitzhak Rabin;

– Menachem Begin;

– FW de Klerk;

– Al Gore;

– The Dalai Lama, a covert CIA asset;

– Kofi Annan, a reliable imperial war supporter;

– UN Peacekeeping (Paramilitary) Forces that foster more conflicts than they resolve;

– Elie Wiesel, a hawkish Islamophobe;

– Norman Borlaug, whose “green revolution” wheat strains killed millions;

– Medecins Sans Frontieres, co-founded by rabid war hawk Bernard Kouchner, now France’s Minister of Foreign and European Affairs;

– Woodrow Wilson who broke his pledge to keep “us out of war,”

– Jimmy Carter who backed an array of tyrants and drew the Soviets into its Afghan quagmire that took a million or more lives;

– George C. Marshall, instrumental in creating NATO and waging war against North Korea;

– Theodore Roosevelt who once said “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one;” and

– other undeserving winners….”War is peace,” what Orwell understood and why the award legitimizes wars and the leaders who wage them.
Continue reading →