Social Justice Magazine
"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?" – Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011 A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.In his TV address, … [Read more...]
There are starving children Africa. Famine has overwhelmed aid agencies. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) says that more than 11 million people desperately need life-saving food aid particularly in East Africa.Will Americans respond? History suggests that they will.America has a long and deep humanitarian tradition of responding to the cries of the hungry, wherever they may … [Read more...]
President Obama has taken severe criticism from all sides for his response to the crisis in Libya. Neoconservatives and Cold War liberals both demand a more forceful intervention to defend American interests and protect Libyan civilians. Paleoconservatives and left liberals are both critical of any involvement in that country, on grounds that we are already fighting two wars on questionable … [Read more...]
High Costs May Not Be the Worst Aspects of the Attack on Libya As if getting enmeshed in a third simultaneous war—with costs soaring in a time of economic peril, yawning budget deficits, and national debt—when no vital national interest was at stake wasn’t bad enough, that is not the worst of it.As in George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, analysis of the stated reasons for President … [Read more...]
U.S.'s Shifting Stance on Arming Rebels: Once ‘Illegal,’ But What Now? As the Obama administration grapples with whether to arm the Libyan rebels, it has several things to consider—not least of which is the question of whether doing so would be legal.The State Department had been pretty clear about the matter earlier this month, with then-spokesman PJ Crowley telling reporters that … [Read more...]
I strongly support the decision by President Obama to approve the U.S. joining multilateral military action in Libya and believe it might be Obama’s first moment of historical greatness, comparable in some ways to Kennedy blockading Cuba in 1962.Had the president not acted at the exact moment he did, the murderous dictator of Libya would almost certainly have executed a mass slaughter that … [Read more...]
A few minutes ago on MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough posed the musical question (and I am slightly paraphrasing here): "Where is the anti-war Left now that this Democratic president has gotten this country involved in yet another military conflict?" Come to think about it, it was a pretty good question.THE MUSICAL ANSWER (sung to the tune of Hello Dolly): Hello, JOEY! We're right … [Read more...]
On Sunday, the British Observer newspaper remarked editorially, “Without calls to action by the Arab League, it is doubtful President Obama would have shifted his initial stance of wary caution. But that consensus might not hold in the event of prolonged confrontation.” Prolonged? Hey, it didn’t last three days.By midday, while U.S. Tomahawk missiles were raining down around Tripoli, the … [Read more...]
One of the biggest problems of allowing a chief executive like George W. Bush to run roughshod over the Constitution is that it sets precedents. Now, President Barack Obama believes that as commander-in-chief he has the power to order the U.S. military into battle. By attacking Libya he has greatly expanded the unchecked executive powers that Bush's excesses and overreach … [Read more...]
The decision to elevate the assault on Libya and its leader, Moammar Gadhafi, has some very chilling forecasts for normalizing relations with Muslims in America. Libya is involved in a civil war for which no vital American interests are at stake. Libya only controls two percent of the world's oil, of which the United States is not highly invested. The destabilization of Libya now threatens the … [Read more...]
Onward ride the old familiar horses of colonialism. France and Britain have enthusiastically endorsed the U.N. resolution calling for a “no-fly zone” over Libya. Within hours of the vote both countries announced that their planes were at the ready. British Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament that Britain had deployed warplanes, along with aerial refueling and surveillance … [Read more...]
Libya and the United States: What Happens When Sound Bites Don’t Work? One of the fascinating back stories of the U.S. response to the Libyan crisis is how it’s exposed fundamental splits on both Right and Left in this country.Stereotypically, we expect conservatives to favor war and liberals to oppose it, but we’ve known at least since Vietnam how simplistic that is. In the post-Cold … [Read more...]
Protests in Sudan “Davos delegates do not seem to know how to react to events in Egypt,” Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs columnist, wrote last week. “The young people demonstrating on the streets of Cairo do not speak with the kind of voices that are represented at the forum.” You can say that again.The contrast between these two events on the world … [Read more...]
Earlier this month, President Obama announced the annual refugee allocations—80,000 total for Fiscal Year 2011, the same total as in 2010. However, while the total yearly allocation is the same, African refugees are being underrepresented. The 2011 ceiling for African refugees is 15,000, which is slightly lower than in 2010 and nearly 25 percent lower than the average for the previous decade … [Read more...]
On Saturday, I joined 50 Harvard and Dartmouth undergraduate and medical students to interrupt President Obama’s speech during a Democratic rally. We did so because we believed we had to help the President remember that his promise two years ago to dedicate $50 billion over five years to fight global AIDS was a heroic and life-saving plan—and his failure to actually do so threatens to derail … [Read more...]
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