Melissa Roddy: Clinging to the simplistic Vietnam era mind-set, where ere goes the U.S. military, misery follows — anti-drone activists fail to comprehend the ground reality of their impassioned “Troops Out — Stop the Drones” mission.
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.
Rejecting Apology, U.S. May Hasten End of Pakistan as Client
By
Gareth Porter: President Barack Obama has sided with U.S. military and Defence Department officials in rejecting a proposal by the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan for a U.S. apology for last weekend’s attack,
U.S. Knows Pressure on Pakistan Won’t Change Policy
By
Gareth Porter: Even those who had held out hope in the past that pressure on Pakistan could lead to change in its relationship with the Haqqani group have now given up on that possibility.
CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs
By
Gareth Porter: When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday, he will be taking over an organisation whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analysing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.
Why Pakistani Military Demands a Veto on Drone Strikes
By
Gareth Porter: The new Pakistani demand for equal say over drone strikes marks the culmination of a long evolution in the Pakistani military’s attitude toward the drone war. Initially supportive of strikes that were targeting Al-Qaeda leaders, senior Pakistani military leaders soon came to realize that the drone war carried serious risks for Pakistan’s war against the Pakistani Taliban.
U.S. Uses Peace Talks to Divide Taliban from Pakistan
By
Gareth Porter: Senior Obama administration officials hope to use the talks to sow suspicion between the Taliban and their main ally, thus weakening the Taliban resolve to negotiate on a peace settlement only if the United States offers a timetable for troop withdrawal.
A Radical Solution for the War in Afghanistan
By
Ivan Eland: The problem is that the U.S. goal in Afghanistan—although President Obama has reduced it from George W. Bush’s instituting democracy to merely stabilizing the country—is still too ambitious.
Disaster Capitalism in Haiti, New Orleans, Congo and Pakistan
By
Ezili Dantò: Since the 2004 Bush regime change in Haiti, US large footprint in “poor?” Haiti keeps increasing. US Embassy in Haiti is the fifth largest US Embassy compound in the world, after Iraq, Afghanistan, China
and Germany.
Obama Sides with India Against Pakistan Over Afghanistan
By
Tom Hayden: President Obama’s visit to India last week further cemented the US alliance with Hindu-dominated India in its long proxy war over Afghanistan against Muslim Pakistan.
Recession Is Over! (If You Want It)
By
Joseph Palermo: The National Bureau of Economic Research tells us the Great Recession is “over.” The only thing this announcement reveals is just how out of touch and compassionless those who view human society through the lens of quantitative measurements can be.
What to Do About the Wars
By
Ivan Eland: Most analysts believe that the U.S. government will renegotiate the status of forces agreement with any new Iraqi government—making the heroic assumption that there is a new Iraqi government by next year—to leave some forces permanently in that country.
Lessons of the UNITE HERE-SEIU Deal
By
Randy Shaw: The SEIU-UNITE HERE conflict also shows the peril of veteran labor leaders quietly deferring to destructive decisions by top union officials, a lesson that was supposed to have been learned from activists’ experience with Cesar Chavez and the UFW in the 1970’s.
Main Effect of the WikiLeaks Documents Is Political
By
Ivan Eland: So the only thing the WikiLeaks documents reveal is how persistent the post-9/11 war and nation-building fever continues to be among the foreign policy elite—even in the face of the dismal results on the ground for almost a decade and a majority opinion in America that the war is not worth fighting.
Bhutto:The Film — Heartbreaking, Thought-Provoking History Lesson
By
Georgianne Nienaber: Bhutto: The Film presents the story of a woman whose strength of personality and conviction totally dominates the constraints of a fundamentalist religious society where women had no intrinsic value. The voice over of Bhutto describing her birth is the ghost in the room. Her extended family was in mourning that Benazir entered the world in a society where the only desire is that the firstborn be a boy. “Dogs and cats were giving birth to boys,” she narrates from the grave.
What Obama Must Do, and Cannot
By
Tom Hayden: Obama may succeed in withdrawing 100,000 American troops from Iraq this year, and the rest by 2012. But even this goal faces opposition from the Green Zone to the Beltway, and any peace dividend will be swallowed by Afghanistan and the Long War.
Reader Feedback: Behaving Like a Human Being, Complete with Foibles
By
Weekly the LA Progressive features a comment that was particularly noteworthy. This week we are featuring a comment submitted by Stephanie, commenting on His First 100 Days. Stephanie writers: “I think Obama has been behaving like a human being, complete with foibles. For the time being, it is just such a relief to be able [...]
Mission Accomplished: Bush Gets the Last Laugh
By
For years, George W. Bush has been roundly criticized, even lampooned, for declaring “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq while wearing a flight suit and landing on an aircraft carrier. But like so many other catastrophes associated with the Bush administration, in the end, Bush always seems to get the last laugh. Maybe declaring “Mission Accomplished” was [...]
Why Doesn’t Obama Make Iraq the 51st State?
By
If President Obama plans to keep 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely after 2010, why doesn’t he just annex Iraq as the 51st State now? Iraqis would have our solemn promise we will never again lay their country to waste and we would work out a deal so that their motorists could have any oil [...]
Can Obama Bring the Audacity of Hope to the Middle East?
By
n August 1, 2007, at the start of his campaign for President, Barack Obama made a speech to the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC where he laid out his plans for transforming American foreign policy to the Muslim world. “We are not at war with Islam… [and] we will stand with those who are [...]
Military Action May Sometimes Be Moral and Constitutional, But Not Smart
By
by Ivan Eland – President-elect Barack Obama—showing the obligatory toughness toward foreign “evildoers” needed (especially by Democrats) in American political campaigns—pledged to use the American military to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan. Of all people, his hawkish rival, Senator John McCain, who supported the unprovoked U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, criticized Obama’s approach [...]
Did the Surge Work?
By
The media, egged on by John McCain and his campaign, are going to twist the arm of Barack Obama until he cries “uncle” and admits the U.S. troop “surge” has worked in Iraq. So far, Obama has not cracked under the pressure and, for reasons of political expediency, admitted this dubious proposition. The smart political [...]
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Recent Comments