Medea Benjamin: For people in Pakistan, where American drones have been dropping their Hellfire missiles, Obama’s joke lost something in translation.
Elegy for Our Empire
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Tom Hall: The American Exceptionalism that matters to the rest of the world is the example that we used to set for loving freedom and working for a better world.
Vietnam Is Back in Town
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Jerry Lembcke: Just as perennial announcements that “Freud is dead” or “God is dead” signal that they’re anything but, the recurring claims that America is over and done with the war in Vietnam are just as certainly premature.
Do Nuclear Weapons Really Deter Aggression?
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Lawrence Wittner: There is no safety from war to be found in nuclear weaponry, any more than there was safety in the past produced by fighter planes, battleships, bombers, poison gas, and other devastating weapons.
What Should Government Do?
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Steve Hochstadt: Unless Iran actually puts our nation in mortal danger, declaring war on Iran would violate the trust that Americans put in our government. It’s what our government shouldn’t do.
Sixtyish Saber-Rattlers
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Berry Craig: You might think anybody as gung-ho for the draft as Romney evidently was would have welcomed a draft notice or maybe even have volunteered. Romney did neither.
Kill List
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he New York Times recently published an extensive story about the Obama administration’s secret “Kill List” that is used for selecting targets for strikes by unmanned drones. It has been clear for some time now that President Obama is making far more use of such drones that President Bush did, even as Obama systematically winds down [...]
Memorial Day 2012: A Lesson Not Yet Learned
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Walter Brasch: Going into the Memorial Day weekend, the war in Afghanistan cost 3,011 American and allied lives. The American wounded, some of whom will have permanent disabilities or may die lingering deaths from those wounds, is now at 15,322.
The Hunting Knife Dad Sent Me
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Dick Price: If I did it right, the patients — some still wearing old jungle boots or ragged fatigue jackets 20 years down the road — could see that I knew at least some of what they knew about Vietnam. And about drinking, too.
Memorial Day Thoughts on National Defense
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Robert Reich: We spend billions on Cold War weapons systems like nuclear attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and manned combat fighters that pump up the bottom lines of defense contractors but have nothing to do with 21st-century combat.
Should NATO Be Handling World Security?
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Lawrence Wittner: If the leaders of NATO nations were really serious about providing children with a world in which they could play in peace among the birds and flowers, they would work to strengthen the United Nations and stop devoting vast resources to dubious wars.
Colin Powell Can’t Give Himself a Pass on Iraq War
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David Love: If some politicians say they want to follow the advice of the generals on the ground, Powell was a “good soldier” who followed orders, perhaps even to the detriment of his long-term reputation.
U.S.-Afghan Pact Won’t End War – Or Special Ops Night Raids
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Gareth Porter: The disparity between the reality of the agreement and the optics created by administration press briefings recalls Obama’s declarations in 2009 and 2010 on the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq.
Obama’s Afghanistan Speech: A Guide to the Perplexed
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Tom Hayden: Obama spoke directly to public opinion when he refused to leave “immediately,” on the grounds that Afghanistan will need “an opportunity to stabilize,” an observation which the vast majority of Americans will accept, for now.
On Ending the Wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq
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Tom Hayden: The disgrace is that 414 American troops died in 2011, largely to save America’s reputation, and 94 more have been lost during the first four months of this year.
The Shame of Nations: New War Spending Record Set
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Lawrence Wittner: World military spending reached a record $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.
Violence Rocks Mexico: The Language of Hope in a State of War
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Javier Rodriguez: Calderon’s war has devastated the country with close to 60,000 deaths, possibly ten thousand disappeared, 160,000 people displaced this year alone, and hundreds of thousands abandoned homes and businesses.
Bring on the Drones
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Clifford “Felonius Ax” Tasner: The predator drones represent a great opportunity for our Aerospace companies. We are making a killing killing, for goodness sake!
Warmongering vs. Pacifism
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Nick Capo: Without pacifism’s absolute repudiation of war, many people apparently cannot withstand the emotional and social pressure placed upon them by those who wish for war, and ever more wars. They succumb to war fever.
President Obama Declares Vietnam Veterans Day
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Half a century after those helicopters swept off the ground and into the annals of history, we pay tribute to the fallen, the missing, the wounded, the millions who served, and the millions more who awaited their return.
War Makes Us All Victims
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Jack Finley: Many of us have spent long hours these past years in opposition to the continuing wars that should have been predicted as future failures long before they were even started. Our government has not learned from its failures and continues to expect different outcomes and in the process our country is close to bankruptcy.
This Does Not End Well: Escaping Afghanistan
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John Peeler: An agonizing series of missteps by U.S. troops in Afghanistan show us how precarious is our hold there, reinforcing the idea that we just don’t belong there, that we don’t respect the Afghani people.
The Okinawa Conundrum
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Nick Capo: Estimates vary, but as much as a third of the population still on the island of Okinawa, somewhere around 142,000 people, including military conscripts, died during the fighting.
Ending the Afghanistan-Pakistan War, Preventing One with Iran
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Tom Hayden: The catastrophic spectacles of American troops urinating on Afghan bodies and burning Korans has provided Obama a new opportunity to cast the Afghanistan war as a hopeless cause.
License to Kill
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John Peeler: It is distressing that a president who came to office as a bitter critic of abuses of presidential authority by his predecessor now takes essentially the same position as George W. Bush. Power that is unchecked and operates in secret is always dangerous to democracy.
Time to Leave Afghanistan Now
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Joseph Palermo: At about $10 billion a month, and an increasing number of American casualties in an environment more volatile than ever, the American people need to take long, close look at whether staying in Afghanistan until December 2014 is worth it.
For Franklin Graham, The Crusades Never End
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Tom Hayden: Thousands of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are the legacy of a continuing Christian crusade promoted by Franklin Graham, who now is claiming in television interviews that President Obama is a born Muslim and a questionable convert to Christianity.
How Presidential War Power Is Made
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Mary Dudziak: “Liberals” and “conservatives” are often talking past each other on questions of national security, and there is a need to reshift the conversation, and get beyond partisan and left/right divides.
Obama’s Zig Zag Maneuvers with Israel and Iran
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Gareth Porter: Netanyahu, like every previous Israeli prime minister, understands that an Israeli strike against Iran depends not only on US tolerance, but direct involvement against Iran, at least after the initial attack.
As Afghan Fissures Worsen, Exit Plan Is Proposed
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Tom Hayden: The US military openly opposes the pace of the drawdown, which already is too slow for most Democrats and the peace movement, because the resulting panic in Kabul could cause an implosion if efforts at a diplomatic settlement bog down.
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