war

Lesley Docksey’s article “‘Fit for Purpose’ Cannon Fodder” in Dissident Voice is chilling and moving.

Its British context is easily relatable for Americans of conscience concerned about the recruitment and exploitation of our young people, particularly our most vulnerable, economically disadvantaged young people, to risk their lives for highly questionable and dangerous military operations -- as front line “cannon fodder.” Read below the fold...

Have we as a citizenry ever gotten a good answer on why the U.S. went after Iraq when a whopping 15 of the 19 Al Qaeda hijackers in the 9/11 attacks (according to wikipedia) were citizens of Saudi Arabia? (The four others were from Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE.)

Have we ever gotten a good answer as to why negative focus has never been directed by U.S. administrations or corporate media against the despotic monarchy of Saudi Arabia (our main weapons customer) while it oppresses its own people and enables other despotisms to oppress theirs? Read below the fold...

Bill Van Auken of wsws writes:

The escalating war in Africa is neither about terror nor Al Qaeda. Time magazine succinctly outlined the real motives in Mali: “The dangers expand elsewhere, with huge oil reserves attracting Western companies to set up production across the vast Sahel. South of Algeria and Mali sits Niger, a dirt-poor desert country with the world’s fourth largest output of uranium, which supplies France’s crucial network of nuclear-power stations. East of Algeria is Libya, where a number of Western companies exploit some of Africa’s biggest oil reserves.”

This from Seamus Milne:

You'd think the war on terror had been a huge success, the way the western powers keep at it, Groundhog Day-style. In reality, it has been a disastrous failure, even in its own terms – which is why the Obama administration felt it had to change its name to "overseas contingency operations", until US defence secretary Leon Panetta revived the old title this week.

Instead of fighting terror, it has fuelled it everywhere it's been unleashed: from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Iraq to Yemen, spreading it from Osama bin Laden's Afghan lairs eastwards to central Asia and westwards to North Africa – as US, British and other western forces have invaded, bombed, tortured and kidnapped their way across the Arab and Muslim world for over a decade.

So a violent jihadist movement that grew out of western intervention, occupation and support for dictatorship was countered with more of the same. And the law of unintended consequences has meanwhile been played out in spectacular fashion: from the original incubation of al-Qaida in the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, to the spread of terror from western-occupied Afghanistan to Pakistan, to the strategic boost to Iran delivered by the US-British invasion of Iraq.

Once again there will be thousands and thousands of innocent human beings killed or their lives permanently shattered by the ruthless U.S. and its craven fellow bullying country cronies diabolically using the “War on Terror” as the “fig leaf” excuse to ramp up further violent corporate-driven profiteering imperialist invasions. Thousands and thousands of people in other countries will die along with our own betrayed troops being used as cannon fodder for corporate profits. Read below the fold...

RE-POST from October 2009, FDL:

“6 Powerful Arguments Against War from Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, Ron Paul, Tom Engelhardt, The Brussels Tribunal, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”
libbyliberal Saturday October 31, 2009 1:53 am

I have a sense of doom that our President will escalate the war in the Middle East. It won’t be as much as General MacChrystal is asking. This strategy goes along with Obama’s modus operandi of cautious and thoughtful faux-deliberating that ultimately aligns in substance if not degree with the corporate and military status quo. From the very beginning of his term, Obama has seemed lost to the matrix of this status quo, while periodically extending some eloquent and promising rhetoric of change. Read below the fold...

(cross-posted from PaxLupo.com)

First, let’s dispense with the comforting bedtime story of energy independence. Regardless of all the campaign rhetoric, neither Romney’s “Drill Everywhere” nor Obama’s “All of the Above” energy strategies do anything for energy independence. Regardless of how much oil, gas and even alternative energy is produced by commercial operations in this country (or Canada), unless the government is prepared to either nationalize the industry or commandeer the product, companies are free to sell their goods wherever and to whomever they like. It can safely be said that neither candidate favors energy industry nationalization. The question will still remain; independent from whom? Read below the fold...

A vote for either Obama or Romney will be an endorsement for a war with Iran.

Both evil Romney and supposedly lesser evil Obama are committed to more war in general and committed to obliging Israel’s strident insistence for a war with Iran.

All American citizens should think of this as they cast their ballots. Think of their own participation -- their enabling -- the greatest crime against humanity -- WAR. Read below the fold...

Protests at US embassies are occurring throughout the Middle East and beyond. Four days thus far and counting.

Over a dozen deaths and hundreds of injuries.

The triggering catalyst was an ugly anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube but Bill Van Auken of wsws explains something even the most obtuse American should know by now, “underlying them [the upheavals] is deep-seated anger over the wars and oppression inflicted by American imperialism over the decades.” Read below the fold...

"Not long after the start of the 21st Century, we like to tell ourselves an uplifting story in which freedom expands whenever tyranny is overthrown.

We believe that freedom and democracy are inseparable, so that when a dictator is toppled the result is not only a more accountable type of government but also greater liberty throughout society. "

Obviously, such a point of view is fallacious as can be easily evidenced just by looking at the results of such a perspective in the actions of nations. And what's sad is that the meme is NOT one that those in positions of power actually believe. Read below the fold...

Lots of stories cropping up (see here, here, and here, for example) about the likelihood of Israel attacking Iran -- very soon. Read below the fold...

I am presently working on a continuation of a blog about how the Iraq War WMD engineering of consent playbook is now being used in Syria thanks to a cravenly cronied and betraying “stenographic” Western media. A bobble-headed media that drinks any kool-aid their hegemonic administrations serve up and myopically and manipulatively uses its corporate-paid echo chambers to stir up a mass nationalistic righteous jingoistic conviction among citizens that is often profoundly unwarranted, wrong-headed and deadly. That enables massive perpetration of evil on our global fellow human beings.

I came across an Exhibit A example from the Libyan War of how the "humanitarian intervention" justification used so readily and righteously by the US and NATO is pretty much a crock of shit. Read below the fold...

Bill Van Auken of wsws has a NON-shallow take on Bill Keller’s recent disappointingly shallow column on the New York Time’s role in the launch of the Iraq War:

On the ninth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, New York Times columnist and former editor Bill Keller has penned a self-serving piece that obscures his own role in justifying that war, while setting ground rules for launching the next one.

Keller’s headline—“Falling in and out of war”—is an accurate reflection of the smug and cynical character of the well-heeled layer of establishment liberals of which he is a part, and which today constitutes a principal constituency for imperialism.

Read below the fold...

Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein is disturbed by the ever-escalating efforts of Obama and members of Congress to launch a war with Iran.

She asserted today:

“A hallmark of a Stein administration will be respect for international law and a rejection of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war that Obama and his party have come to embrace. The interests of the American people are not served by illegal attacks on other nations based on hypothetical future transgressions.  Yet President Obama is threatening Iran with attack by saying that 'all options are on the table'. It’s a terrible replay of Bush's run-up to the invasion of Iraq over the mythical weapons of mass destruction.”

Read below the fold...

A pending war with Iran has a lot to do with US unholy imperialism as well as the US’s unhealthy (INSANE) codependency with the leadership of Israel. Read below the fold...

Believe it or not, November 11th was not made a holiday in order to celebrate war, support troops, or cheer the 11th year of occupying Afghanistan. This day was made a holiday in order to celebrate an armistice that ended what was up until that point, in 1918, one of the worst things our species had thus far done to itself, namely World War I.

World War I, then known simply as the world war or the great war, had been marketed as a war to end war. Celebrating its end was also understood as celebrating the end of all wars. A ten-year campaign was launched in 1918 that in 1928 created the Kellogg-Briand Pact, legally banning all wars. That treaty is still on the books, which is why war making is a criminal act and how Nazis came to be prosecuted for it. Read below the fold...