Jon Rainwater: The next few years offer the potential to transform American foreign policy — if a war weary and economically hurting American public gets active
Ending the Afghanistan-Pakistan War, Preventing One with Iran
By
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.
War Nation: Military Keynesianism’s Iron Grip on Washington
By
John R. Moffett: Our world-spanning military, paid for by American taxpayers, serves the interests of defense contractors and the government officials that funnel the money to them but it does not serve the American taxpayer.
Army Officer’s Leaked Report Rips Afghan War Success Story
By
Gareth Porter: “If the public had access to the classified reports,” Davis writes, “they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is true behind the scenes.”
Democratic Caucuses Support Move to End Afghanistan War
By
The chairs of the Veterans Caucus and Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party today praised the Obama Administration’s announcement that the U.S. would end combat operations in the war in Afghanistan in 2013.
I’m a Liberal, but I Won’t Condemn the Wars
By
Julie Driscoll: I promised my son that I would never protest or condemn or belittle this war, that I would never dishonor his service by reducing it to foolishness.
Has the Obama of 2008 Really Returned?
By
Randy Shaw: If Obama were really committed to showing that he backs real change he could start by withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. That would certainly send the type of people-first message that Americans long to hear.
How Not to Commemorate 9/11
By
Stanley Kutler: To perpetuate the deceits of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney is only to delude ourselves. The attack on America did not legitimate the foreign policy debacles that have hobbled us for much of the past decade.
Vet Leader: Afghan War Deaths an “Atrocity,” War Should End
By
Thirty U.S. American troops reported killed Saturday in an Afghanistan helicopter crash emphasizes the need for the U.S. to end operations sooner rather than later in that theatre of war, according to a Iraq/Afghanistan U.S. Marine veteran, who now is chair of the Veterans Caucus of the California Democratic Party.
Elected on Hope, Obama Governs Through Fear
By
Randy Shaw: Obama ran for president preaching hope and rejecting appeals to fear, but now has become exactly what he railed against.
The Trials of Julian Assange: A View From Sweden
By
Tom Hayden: Why is the United States pursuing Assange as the conspiratorial mastermind of WikiLeaks, when his reputation, credibility and organization have been so damaged?
Take Credit, But Do Not Accept or Endorse
By
Tom Hayden: Unless further clarified, the Obama proposal means we’ll be pushing to decrease the near 80,000 Americans remaining in combat until the end of 2014, three-and-a-half years from now.
Obama Takes Out Osama
By
John Peeler: Obama may not much like war, but he has shown that if he believes he must wage it, he intends to win it. Liberals who were hostile to the Iraq war, skeptical of the Afghanistan war, and dubious about the Libyan intervention will find little comfort here.
Deficit Debate Ignores War, Labor Leaders Speak Out
By
Tom Hayden: It’s ridiculous to claim to be a deficit hawk and a war hawk at the same time.
Obama and War
By
John Peeler: Obama has done, in the Libyan case, just what he said he would: with UN Security Council and Arab League authorization, he has put together a coalition to take limited military measures to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
Woodward’s Exposé Documents What We All Suspected About the White House
By
Ivan Eland: If it weren’t for the latest salacious bureau-gossip, the book would be rather boring—and tragic. Boring, not because the issues are uninteresting or because Woodward is a bad writer, but because the author records a dysfunctional White House internal decision-making process in which meeting after meeting features the same reasonable questions about the U.S. war in Afghanistan but in which nobody ever has very good answers to them.
A Big Fool Says to Push On
By
Ann Wright: On the eve of the beginning of the tenth year (October 7) of the U.S war in Afghanistan, Bob Woodward’s new book “Obama’s War” about presidential decision making on the war in Afghanistan is pretty scary reading. It sounds to me like folk singer Peter Seeger’s song about the Vietnam war “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” describes the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
From Great Man to Great Screwup: Behind the McChrystal Uproar
By
Norman Solomon: For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time Magazine’s conventional-wisdom weathervane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal’s results: “Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied.”
Friday Feedback: Backtrack on Afghanistan
By
Friday Feedback: Let us backtrack a bit. The original purpose of the Afghanastan invasion was to “catch Bin Laden”–obviously an absurdity to think that this very wealthy Saudi would sit in a cave for 8 years or more. Then came the excuse of doing away with Al-Quaeda—all 100 of them !
Information Terrorists Hijack Our Airwaves
By
Nomiki Konst: While Obama has done an admirable job ignoring the Tea Party outbursts and outlandish claims and focusing on moving his agenda forward, Maddow, Matthews, Olbermann, Colbert, Stewart, Cooper, Crowley, Sanchez and Shultz have missed an incredible opportunity to vocalize the progressive agenda while they have the floor. For eight years, progressives were unable to bring their agenda to the table and had to constantly act on the defensive.
Exit Strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq
By
Tom Hayden: Rep. Dennis Kucinich will step into the crosswinds this week and force the House of Representatives to wake up, pay attention, and vote up or down on the Afghanistan war.
Afghanistan – Why More U.S. Troops?
By
It’s time we demand investing our taxpayer dollars in our own communities at home and in American jobs, America’s crumbling infrastructure, and new technology. Its time to ask our representatives and federal government critical questions about who benefits from the development in Afghanistan.
Activists Giving Obama a Pass
By
Obama still has time to deliver for his base. But this will require activists and constituency groups to ramp up public demands for such a course, rather than thinking they are helping the progressive cause by making excuses for a president whose inspirational words about social transformation have not been matched by actions.
The Hollow Politics of Escalation
By
The next days and weeks will bring an avalanche of hype about insisting on measurable progress and shifting burdens onto the Afghan army — while the U.S. military expands the war.
Afghanistan: War Theatre of the Absurd
By
Now, paying off the opposition does seem to have calmed things down in parts of Iraq (recent Baghdad bombings notwithstanding), and thereby provided us with an opening to carry through with the agreement we made with the Iraqi government to get our troops out of there. Maybe it can work in Afghanistan too.
An American Diplomat and A British Soldier Tell their Leaders They Have No Clothes: No to the Afghanistan War Strategy
By
When senior policy makers will not be honest with decision makers, sometimes it’s the more junior government employees who have the strength of character and courage to tell their Presidents and Prime Ministers when they and their policies have no clothes.
Hiding Behind the Skirts of Women
By
For eight years, many Americans have justified the war in Afghanistan as a moral battle to “protect” Afghan women. But Afghan women tell another story: more U.S. war will bear them more suffering. Three decades of foreign occupation — with little sign of ending — have led to the complete collapse of more than a [...]
Military Recruiters? Afghanistan?
By
Is the military, with so many career paths open to graduating seniors, an option families really want their sons or daughters to grab on to? Families need to know the real story and not just what the all too friendly recruiters tell our kids. Military recruiters, like college recruiters, have access to students on the [...]
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Recent Comments