Month: July 2009

Total 11 Posts

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire

And Ten Steps to Take to Do So By Chalmers Johnson from TomDispatch.com However ambitious President Barack Obama’s domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our

Iraq as “Actor and Stakeholder”

“If the Iraqi forces require further training and further support, we shall examine this then at that time, based on the needs of Iraq,” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently informed President Barak Obama in Washington. While Iraqi and US government officials continue to insist the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq is currently on

“Be Bold”

US Army Specialist Victor Agosto, who publicly refused to deploy with his unit to Afghanistan, was to receive the harshest court-martial possible for his decision – one that would land him in jail for up to one year, followed by a dishonorable discharge. However, within hours of the publication of a Truthout report about his

Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Twenty-First-Century Colonialism in Iraq

One of the earliest metaphors President George W. Bush and some of his top officials wielded in their post-invasion salad days in Iraq involved bicycles. The question was: Should we take the “training wheels” off the Iraqi bike (of democracy)? Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for example, commented smugly on the way getting Iraq “straightened

The Dirty War

On Friday, June 12, Harith al-Obaidi, leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in the Iraqi Parliament, was shot dead outside a mosque just minutes after giving a sermon condemning the Maliki government for human rights abuses. Obaidi, who was a leader in the opposition movement against the government and had strong

Scott Horton Interviews Dahr Jamail on Military Resisters

Dahr Jamail, author of the article “Refusing to Comply: The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military,” discusses the increasing disillusionment among soldiers for Iraq and Afghanistan war justifications, the tactics of evading dangerous and pointless “IED lottery” patrols, Pentagon estimates of 25-40 thousand AWOL soldiers since 2003 and how the U.S. economic downturn is

Kill the Indian. Save the Man.

Manifest Destiny In 1845, an American columnist, John O’Sullivan, writing about the proposed annexation of Texas, claimed that it was America’s “manifest destiny to overspread the continent.” Later in the same year, referring to the ongoing dispute with Great Britain over Oregon, he wrote that the United States had the right to claim “the whole