“If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.” Sun Tzu   “But it turns out there isn’t really any military threat by the United states. Not only [has the U.S] and NATO run out of normal military arms, but America really can’t mount a land war anymore. There will never be another Vietnam.[Read More…]

To get to where they are, imperial powers will deceive, dissimulate and distort. The US imperium, that most awesome of devilish powers, has tentacled itself across the globe, often unbeknownst to its own citizens. In a report released by the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center of Justice titled Secret War: How the US Uses Partnerships and Proxy[Read More…]

As China unleashed live-fire military exercises off the coast of Taiwan, simulating a real “reunification by force” operation in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ceremonial visit to the island last week, the bipartisan fervor for a new Cold War with China and Russia took greater hold in Washington. “Leaders in both parties,” Post columnist Josh Rogin reports, “understand that the United[Read More…]

An interview with Kwesi Pratt Jr., a journalist and leader of the Socialist Movement of Ghana. In April 2018, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, said that Ghana has “not offered a military base, and will not offer a military base to the United States of America.” His comments came after Ghana’s parliament had ratified a new defense cooperation agreement with the[Read More…]

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the US has been able to exert tremendous influence on other nations through its military and economic power. The world no longer was bipolar with the US and the Soviet Union competing for leadership. Instead, it has been a unipolar world under US hegemonic leadership. In 1997, US[Read More…]

Anyone who grew up in my generation of 1980s kids remembers G.I. Joe action figures — those green-uniformed plastic soldiers you could use to stage battles in the sandbox in your backyard or, for that matter, your bedroom. In those days, when imagery of bombed-out homes, bloodied civilians, and police violence wasn’t accessible on TV screens or in video games like Call of[Read More…]

Why has the United States already become so heavily invested in the Russia-Ukraine war? And why has it so regularly gotten involved, in some fashion, in so many other wars on this planet since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001?  Those with long memories might echo the conclusion reached more than a century ago by radical social critic Randolph Bourne that “war is the[Read More…]

Casualties of America’s Never-Ending Global War on Terror Madogaz Musa Abdullah still remembers the phone call. But what came next was a blur. He drove for hours, deep into the Libyan desert, speeding toward the border with Algeria. His mind buckled, his thoughts reeled, and more than three years later, he’s still not certain how he made that six-hour journey.[Read More…]

Putin Changed the Subject, But Confronting Martin Luther King’s “Giant Triplets” Is More Urgent Than Ever I recently participated in a commemoration of Martin Luther King’s address “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence,” originally delivered on April 2, 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church. King used the occasion to announce his opposition to the ongoing war in[Read More…]

Regular readers of Countercurrents may recall a recent article I wrote entitled, “Japan’s Concealed Past, Condemned Future” ( https://countercurrents.org/2022/04/japans-concealed-past-condemned-future/). In that article I argued that because the Japanese people had been, in the postwar era, deliberately deceived into believing that the military, not Emperor Hirohito, had been responsible for the war, they were likely to be condemned to go to[Read More…]

One of the many qualifications for the role of president of the United States is to never miss an opportunity to praise the greatness and courage of our men and women in uniform.  A second and far weightier requirement is to always, or nearly always, finish a public address with these sacred words: “May God bless our troops.” They are,[Read More…]

Remember Captain Renault ( Claude Rains) in Casablanca when he had them close Rick’s Cafe Americain. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) runs to him and says ” Why are ya shutting me down?” Renault shouts back ” There’s gambling going on here.” At that moment the croupier runs over to him with a pile of chips saying ” Here’s your winnings sir.”[Read More…]

Since the Korean war, the USA could not pass a reasonable long time without at least one enemy, if not more, around the globe. It constantly finds a foe on the horizon. They can find or discover an adversary when needed and notably, they need it always! No need to give chronological examples to readers. And in Washington’s lens, it[Read More…]

Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away, while losing the other four disastrously. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as the Global War on Terror, were the losses, of course; the Cold War being the solitary win[Read More…]

In the long and storied history of the United States Army, many young officers have served in many war zones. Few, I suspect, were as sublimely ignorant as I was in the summer of 1970 upon my arrival at Cam Ranh Bay in the Republic of Vietnam. Granted, during the years of schooling that preceded my deployment there, I had[Read More…]

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies August 2020 U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed 10 Afghan civilians. Credit: Getty Images The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air[Read More…]

Terrorist Groups Have Doubled Since the Passage of the 2001 AUMF It began more than two decades ago. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” and told a joint session of Congress (and the American people) that “the course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain.” If he meant a 20-year slide to defeat[Read More…]

This Christmas season, as always, CIA controlled mainstream media is filled with unctuous images of the hungry homeless in America being charitably served food by private citizens and institutions. It has long become an American tradition of kindness during the season celebrating the birth of all loving Jesus along with gift giving Santa Claus and this tradition often receives government[Read More…]

Professional sports is a cutthroat business. Succeed and the people running the show reap rich rewards. Fail to meet expectations and you get handed your walking papers. American-style war in the twenty-first century is quite a different matter. Of course, war is not a game. The stakes on the battlefield are infinitely higher than on the playing field. When wars[Read More…]

The U.S. military drastically undercounted civilian deaths caused by airstrikes in the Middle East since 2014, according to a New York Times investigation published Saturday. The New York Times reviewed a hidden Pentagon archive comprised of the military’s confidential assessments of over 1,300 reports of civilian casualties in airstrikes, and found, “since 2014, the American air war has been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence,[Read More…]

As August ended, American troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan almost 20 years after they first arrived. On the formal date of withdrawal, however, President Biden insisted that “over-the-horizon capabilities” (airpower and Special Operations forces, for example) would remain available for use anytime. “[W]e can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground, very few if needed,” he explained, dispensing immediately with[Read More…]

Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department. For the victims of American terrorism far outnumber the American[Read More…]

The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was marked by days of remembrances — for the courageous rescue workers of that moment, for the thousands murdered as the Twin Towers collapsed, for those who died in the Pentagon, or in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, fighting off the hijackers of the commercial jet they were in, as well as for those who fought in[Read More…]

The bad news stemming from the ill-planned and ill-managed U.S. evacuation of the Afghan capital just kept coming in. The Washington Post put it this way in blowing the whistle on the culminating disaster: “U.S. military admits ‘horrible mistake’ in Kabul drone strike that killed 10 Afghans.” Following the August 26th terrorist attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport that took the lives of 13[Read More…]

As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29th airstrike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. At least, that’s what the Pentagon told the[Read More…]

Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its wars, Yoda was just plain wrong. That part of the future is all too easy to imagine. It involves, you won’t[Read More…]

It ended in chaos and disaster.  Kabul has fallen and Joe Biden is being blamed (by congressional Republicans in particular) for America’s now almost-20-year disaster in Afghanistan.  But is the war on terror itself over? Apparently not. It seems like centuries ago, but do you remember when, in May 2003, President George W. Bush declared “Mission accomplished” as he spoke proudly of his invasion[Read More…]

Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist US foreign policy. “Every ten[Read More…]

“The thirty-year interregnum of U.S. global hegemony,” writes David Bromwich in the journal Raritan, “has been exposed as a fraud, a decoy, a cheat, [and] a sell.” Today, he continues, “the armies of the cheated are struggling to find the word for something that happened and happened wrong.” In fact, the armies of the cheated know exactly what happened, even if they[Read More…]

It was all so long ago, in a world seemingly without challengers. Do you even remember when we Americans lived on a planet with a recumbent Russia, a barely rising China, and no obvious foes except what later came to be known as an “axis of evil,” three countries then incapable of endangering this one? Oh, and, as it turned[Read More…]

Sometimes, as I consider America’s never-ending wars of this century, I can’t help thinking of those lyrics from the Edwin Starr song, “(War, huh) Yeah! (What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing!” I mean, remind me, what good have those disastrous, failed, still largely ongoing conflicts done for this country?  Or for you?  Or for me? For years and years,[Read More…]

Rudyard Kipling, Bard of Empire, wrote a poem titled “The White Man’s Burden”. Written in February 1899, Kipling urged the US to colonize the Philippines and take up the burden of the Empire. A couplet reads: “Your new caught, sullen peoples, half devil and half child, take up the white man’s burden”. As the US gladly donned the imperial mantle,[Read More…]

Kudos to Bob Dylan for his great 60s song ‘ It’s All Over Now Baby Blue ‘. HIs lyrics, as usual, can fit into any social and political commentary: You must leave, now take what you need You think will last But whatever you wish to keep You better grab it fast Yonder stands your orphan with his gun Crying[Read More…]

“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Kurt Vonnegut’s famous novel about the World War II bombing of the German city of Dresden appeared the year I graduated from West Point. While dimly aware that its publication qualified as a literary event, I felt[Read More…]

The world facing desperate situations of climate change, planetary degradation and nuclear war preparation desperately needs protection from inhumane deceiving war promoting Western media, and from where shall it come if not from the bountiful and powerful two great designated adversaries of the Western powers, China, the world’s most populous nation and largest economy, and the Russian Federation encompassing 11%[Read More…]

Developments on the world stage are stunning. Almost every day, geopolitical incidents and moves are appearing magical. The developments are challenging the Empire’s geopolitics in regions. Months ago, the Empire gave an impression that it’ll regain ground whatever has been lost, prestige that slipped down from its crown. Immediate moves were taken, at least for public view. Those were image-rebuilding[Read More…]

Take the time, please, and read the enclosed lyrics of the Animals ‘s 1960s hit song ‘ Sky Pilot’. It tells more than this writer could ever hope to express. It was written during the height of the Vietnam War, which wasn’t our war at all. It was a civil war between the Vietnamese people, which became one of  our[Read More…]

Why don’t America’s wars ever end? I know, I know: President Joe Biden has announced that our combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by 9/11 of this year, marking the 20th anniversary of the colossal failure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to defend America. Of course, that other 9/11 in 2001 shocked us all. I was teaching history at the[Read More…]

Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that moment, given the sweet code names “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” I was[Read More…]

Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war. Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to[Read More…]

Wikipedia defines Kapos , which originated from the German concentration camps, as the following:  Kapos were inmates of Nazi camps who were appointed as guards to oversee other prisoners in various tasks. There were three main types of Kapos : work supervisors, block elders, and camp administrators. Well, this American empire has its own Kapos. Since we are a Military[Read More…]

Fifty-four years ago, standing at the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his now-famous “Beyond Vietnam” sermon. For the first time in public, he expressed in vehement terms his opposition to the American war in Vietnam. He saw clearly that a foreign policy defined by aggression hurt the poor and dispossessed across the[Read More…]

Since the end of WWII, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union, it appears as if US political leaders feel they are trapped in a time warp and are unable to break free. They seem to believe that they must repeat the same disastrous foreign policy of regime change over and over. Since 9/11, the US has attacked or[Read More…]

I have just watched Michael Moore’s latest Rumble podcast [1] in which he asks the question “What is it about us?” while referencing the Columbine massacre and relating it to the current set of U.S. mass murders. The subtext to the title “What is so different about Americans?” asks “Are we homicidal by nature?” While there are no truly easy[Read More…]

Empires live and die by their illusions. Visions of empowerment can inspire nations to scale the heights of global hegemony. Similarly, however, illusions of omnipotence can send fading empires crashing into oblivion. So it was with Great Britain in the 1950s and so it may be with the United States today. By 1956, Britain had exploited its global empire shamelessly[Read More…]

Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over[Read More…]

Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it.  On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria.  The premise for the attacks was implausible.  “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,” claimed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “and to ongoing threats to[Read More…]

The issue of deadly racism in the USA has been brought to the attention of all Americans by the persistent efforts of impassioned activists, especially by carrying placards with photographs of African-American victims of deadly police actions. Article suggests how the greater toll of darker skinned people murdered by Americans overseas could become a burning issue of concern for American[Read More…]

It was a brisk September evening in 1983. Strolling down the street, she carried her sleeping baby in a cloth pouch that was somewhat like a backpack positioned to be at her front. The child was warm against her body and the warmth felt good as a buffer against the chill in the night air. Meanwhile all around her was[Read More…]

Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we. At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944, I’m a little “young” to remember[Read More…]

Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies The first day of the 2020 school year in Taiz, Yemen (Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP) Most people regard Trump’s treatment of immigrant children as among his most shocking crimes as president. Images of hundreds of children stolen from their families and imprisoned in chain-link cages are an unforgettable disgrace that President Biden must move[Read More…]

After four years of Donald Trump’s fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition. In that classic American tale by Washington Irving published in 1819, an amiable but shiftless farmer strolls out of his colonial village to go[Read More…]

The Massive and Unseen Costs of America’s Post-9/11 Wars at Home and Abroad “I got out of the Marines and within a few years, 15 of my buddies had killed themselves,” one veteran rifleman who served two tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011 said to me recently. “One minute they belonged and the next, they were[Read More…]

A Bidenesque Tour of America’s Regional and Global Military Adventures Hard as it is to believe in this time of record pandemic deaths, insurrection, and an unprecedented encore impeachment, Joe Biden is now officially at the helm of the U.S. war machine.  He is, in other words, the fourth president to oversee America’s unending and unsuccessful post-9/11 military campaigns.  In terms of active U.S.[Read More…]

How can you tell when your empire is crumbling? Some signs are actually visible from my own front window here in San Francisco. Directly across the street, I can see a collection of tarps and poles (along with one of my own garbage cans) that were used to construct a makeshift home on the sidewalk. Beside that edifice stands a[Read More…]

“POWs Never Have A Nice Day.”  That sentiment was captured on a button a friend of mine wore for our fourth grade class photo in 1972.  That prisoners of war could never have such a day was reinforced by the sad face on that button.  Soon after, American POWs would indeed be released by their North Vietnamese captors as the American war[Read More…]

In choosing a title for his final, posthumously published book, the prominent public intellectual Tony Judt turned to a poem by Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, published in 1770. Judt found his book’s title in the first words of this couplet: Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates, and men decay A poignant sentiment but let me acknowledge that[Read More…]

It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some instructions from fellow-runner Jan about taping his[Read More…]

Co-Written by William J. Astore and Danny Sjursen If you have a moment, how about joining two retired officers, Bill Astore and me, Danny Sjursen, as we think about this country’s catastrophic forever wars that, regardless of their deadly costs and lack of progress, never seem quite to end? Recently, in a podcast chat about our very different but somehow twin journeys through those wars,[Read More…]

On November 30, 2020, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC) – a state-owned company specializing in engineering and defence electronics – for having provided technological support to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s administration. The CEIEC has been supporting the state firm National Anonymous Telephone Company of Venezuela[Read More…]

In the military realm, Donald Trump will most likely be remembered for his insistence on ending America’s involvement in its twenty-first-century “forever wars” — the fruitless, relentless, mind-crushing military campaigns undertaken by Presidents Bush and Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. After all, as a candidate, Trump pledged to bring U.S. troops home from those dreaded war zones and,[Read More…]

A Military Spouse’s Perspective on Bringing the Troops Home from Afghanistan and Iraq By the end of this year, the White House will reportedly have finally brought home a third of the 7,500 troops still stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq (against the advice of President Trump’s own military leaders). While there have been stories galore about the global security implications of this plan, there has[Read More…]

We’re now living in an age of opacity, as Rudy Giuliani pointed out in a courtroom recently. Here was the exchange: “‘In the plaintiffs’ counties, they were denied the opportunity to have an unobstructed observation and ensure opacity,’ Giuliani said. ‘I’m not quite sure I know what opacity means. It probably means you can see, right?’ “‘It means you can’t,’ said[Read More…]

Co-Written by Cassandra Stimpson and Holly Zhang A Rising China Lifts All Boats (Submarines, Aircraft Carriers, and Surface Ships), Not to Speak of Fighter Planes, in the Military-Industrial Complex War: what is it good for? Apparently, in Washington’s world of think tanks, the answer is: the bottom line. In fact, as the Biden presidency approaches, an era of great-power competition[Read More…]

Introduction Regularly, the media has reported the dire effects of European dominance on the communities of a disenfranchised minority: the public execution of African-Americans by police, the epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) in Canada, the shadow of residential schools in North America, the legacy of red-lining, the impact of the murders of the oil-rich Osage[Read More…]

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are[Read More…]

Co-Written by Nicolas J S Davies and Medea Benjamin In the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11, the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and tortured prisoners of war and terrorism suspects, in flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions. As a result, the United States lost standing among many of its traditional allies around the world. President Barack[Read More…]

America is becoming exceptionally exceptional. In some votes at the U.N. General Assembly — the Assembly of nations — only Israel,  or one or two other U.S. allies, vote along with it, and all others either vote against it, or else abstain in order to prevent U.S. retaliation against their own nation. No other nation is anything like that. In[Read More…]

Germans witnessed their radio and newspapers hail the Nazi invasion and occupation of most of Europe while praising fallen German soldiers for their service to the fatherland; a fatherland representing the world’s most wondrously superior people. Sounds similar to the indiscriminate praise monolithic US corporate media heaps upon exceptionally marvelous and righteous USA and her many proud invasions and occupations.[Read More…]

Some years ago, a newspaper article credited a European visitor with the wry observation that Americans are charming because they have such short memories. When it comes to the nation’s wars, however, he was not entirely on target. Americans embrace military histories of the heroic “band of [American] brothers” sort, especially involving World War II. They possess a seemingly boundless[Read More…]

  On March 26th, the coronavirus accomplished what no foreign adversary has been able to do since the end of World War II: it forced an American aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, to suspend patrol operations and shelter in port. By the time that ship reached dock in Guam, hundreds of sailors had been infected with the disease and nearly[Read More…]

Many tens of thousands of precious Yemeni children have already starved to death, died of cholera, or been blown to bits by US made and managed missiles. It is the American public’s cruel indifference that makes Americans guilty of genocide. As Martin Luther King once said, “comes a time when silence is treason.”   US WARS AND MILITARY ACTION INTERNATIONAL LAW,[Read More…]

Think of it as a war system that’s been coming home for years. The murder of George Floyd has finally shone a spotlight on the need to defund local police departments and find alternatives that provide more genuine safety and security. The same sort of spotlight needs soon to be shone on the American military machine and the wildly well-funded[Read More…]

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington has initiated its largest spending binge in history. In the process, you might assume that the unparalleled spread of the disease would have led to a little rethinking when it came to all the trillions of dollars Congress has given the Pentagon in these years that have in no way made us safer from, or[Read More…]

Co-Written by Morgan Palumbo & Jessica Draper  It was a bare-knuckle brawl of the first order. It took place in Washington, D.C., and it resulted in a KO. The winners? Lobbyists and the defense industry. The losers? Us. And odds on, you didn’t even know that it happened. Few Americans did, which is why it’s worth telling the story of[Read More…]

There comes a time when shooting around in circles just hits walls, bullets splinter off sidewalks, and shatter a window here and there. But people are in safety. They watch from a distance and with self-assurance. Venezuela has received five tankers from Iran loaded with hydrocarbons – petrol gas, additives – shipped through a totally US-militarized Caribbean Sea, amidst warnings[Read More…]

  Covid-19, an ongoing global human tragedy, may have at least one silver lining. It has led millions of people to question America’s most malignant policies at home and abroad. Regarding Washington’s war policies abroad, there’s been speculation that the coronavirus might, in the end, put a dent in such conflicts, if not prove an unintended peacemaker — and with good reason,[Read More…]

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian gunboats, should they harass American vessels at sea. His declaration comes after a confrontation in the Persian Gulf. “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” the U.S. president[Read More…]

For nearly a century, the U.S. regime has made it its goal to terrorise (defenceless) nations it deemed geopolitically unfriendly to its imperialist dictates. It is a well-financed and deliberate campaign of unprovoked aggression, heinous war crimes and wanton destruction to dominate the world. Without effective deterrence, every nation is at the mercy of U.S. barbarism. What is terrorism? The[Read More…]

Last October, a group of eight Apache attack and CH-47 Chinook helicopters carrying U.S. commandos roared out of an airfield in Iraq. They raced through Turkish airspace and across the Syrian border, coming in low as they approached a village just north of Idlib Province where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his bodyguards, and some of his children were spending the[Read More…]

Frankly and in summary: recently The United States of America has crossed several lines, committing atrocities, in many parts of the world. In the past, no country could get away with this; such situations would inevitably lead to war. Presently, war is “avoided” only because the world is too frightened of Washington and its mafia-style deeds. Countries on all continents[Read More…]

Years ago the late great historian and author Gore Vidal came up with that phrase ‘Perpetual War’. He knew, that even back to the early days of our republic, we are a nation predicated on Perpetual War. Whether it be war on Native Americans ( who were here way before the Mayflower landed), or war on different people of color[Read More…]

My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I mean, if another great power had been[Read More…]

The expression “self-licking ice cream cone” was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an institution far vaster than NASA and thoroughly dedicated to working for its own perpetuation and little else. Thinking about that led me to another phrase based on America’s seemingly endless[Read More…]

Afghanistan is a famous desert for empires, a burial ground which has consumed those in power who thought that extra fortification and trading most might benefit them.  It remains a great, and somewhat savage reminder about those who suffer hubris, overconfidence and eagerness in pursuing their agendas.  But the country has also served another purpose: a repository for the untruths[Read More…]

How many Americans know that even in Hindu India, Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani (whom Trump has assassinated) was recognized as having been perhaps the world’s leader of the fight against both ISIS and the Taliban — two fundamentalist-Sunni (that is, pro-jihadist) groups that especially threaten India. Why don’t Americans know this crucial fact? In whose benefit is it that they[Read More…]

There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest of the world. Essential terms like “freedom”, “democracy”, “liberation”, even “terrorism”, are all mixed up and confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world. Before we begin analyzing, let us recall that countries such as[Read More…]

In March 1906, on the heels of the U.S. Army’s massacre of some 1,000 men, women, and children in the crater of a volcano in the American-occupied Philippines, humorist Mark Twain took his criticism public. A long-time anti-imperialist, he flippantly suggested that Old Glory should be redesigned “with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.” I got[Read More…]

 From Obama to Trump, the Escalation of Drone Warfare We’re only a few days into the new decade and it’s somehow already a bigger dumpster fire than the last. On January 2nd, President Trump decided to order what one expert called “the most important decapitation strike America has ever launched.” This one took out not some nameless terrorist in a distant land[Read More…]

  Why doesn’t the U.S. respect the decision made by the Iraqi Parliament and move out of Iraqi territory? – The short answer is, because the US doesn’t respect anybody’s – any country’s – decision or sovereignty, as long as it doesn’t meet their objectives. Now, the US is steadfast and will not leave the region. Already President Assad has[Read More…]

Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional victories America has had in this century? Arguably, none has been more striking than the triumphal success of the American war system. Oh, you’re going to bring that up immediately?[Read More…]

U.S. “Plans” for the Afghan War Might Prove a Crime Against Humanity On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone circled over Afghanistan’s Paktia province, near the city of Khost. Below was al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden — or at least someone in the CIA thought so — and he was marked for death. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it later, both awkwardly[Read More…]

For a decade and a half, the U.S. Army waged war on fierce tribal Muslims in a remote land. Sound familiar? As it happens, that war unfolded half a world away from the Greater Middle East and more than a century ago in the southernmost islands of the Philippines. Back then, American soldiers fought not the Taliban, but the Moros,[Read More…]

US imperialism’s Afghanistan War reveals imperialism’s limit. It’s, as Mao said decades ago, a paper tiger. The war is the evidence. The just published The Washington Post report – “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war, At war with the truth”, (by Craig Whitlock, December 9, 2019) – carries the story of this limit. It’s, to some, a[Read More…]

Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep[Read More…]

There is some incongruity between my role as an editor of a book about the costs of America’s wars and my identity as a military spouse. I’m deeply disturbed at the scale of human suffering caused by those conflicts and yet I’ve unintentionally contributed to the war effort through the life I’ve chosen. I am the co-editor with Catherine Lutz[Read More…]

  The 50-Year History of U.S. Dominance of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as[Read More…]

US GIs have been duly honored on Veterans Day. Now let everyone remember regarding any order to invade and or kill in another country: “An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed but obeying such an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military[Read More…]

Patches, pins, medals, and badges are the visible signs of an exclusive military culture, a silent language by which soldiers and officers judge each other’s experiences, accomplishments, and general worth. In July 2001, when I first walked through the gate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at the ripe young age of 17, the “combat patch” on one’s[Read More…]

They called it Castle Black, an obvious homage to the famed frozen citadel from the HBO series Game of Thrones. In the fantasy world of GoT, it’s the stronghold of the Night’s Watch, the French Foreign Legion-esque guardians of the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. This Castle Black, however, was all too real and occupied by U.S. Special Operations forces, America’s most elite troops.[Read More…]

Only starting on 28 October 2019 — after seven years of the U.S. and its allies stealing Syria’s oil — did U.S. ‘news’-media start  to apply the word “theft” or “steal” (or any equivalent term) to what was happening to Syria’s oil; and, even then, the blame for stealing it was focused only against U.S. President Donald Trump, who was[Read More…]

Will Trump go to war with the Iranians or the homeless? Or both? Trump is a coward. The nation of Iran has the means and the will to fight. Do you recall the will displayed by Iranians when repelling foreign invaders when Iraq attempted to invade Iran as a de facto US proxy force? Conversely, the homeless do not possess[Read More…]

  Recently, on a beautiful Kansas Saturday, I fell asleep early, exhausted by the excitement and ultimate disappointment of the Army football team’s double overtime loss to highly favored Michigan. Having turned against America’s forever wars and the U.S. military as an institution while I was still in it, West Point football, I’m almost ashamed to admit, is my last[Read More…]

How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million times greater: $1.5 trillion? That happens to be the estimated cost of the Pentagon’s program to build, deploy, and maintain the no-longer-so-new F-35 jet fighter over its lifetime. How can any people invest so[Read More…]

An intergovernmental coalition about a new U.S. initiative planned to counter Russia in Europe hosted a presentation on September 12, 2019 in Warsaw. Media reports said: The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) describes its initiative – Countering Malign Kremlin Influence – as a framework to help democratic institutions safeguard elections, counter propaganda and misinformation, and avoid dependence on Russian[Read More…]

Haven’t the critics worked it out yet?  US President Donald Trump chugs to the coal of nonsense that may come in the wrapping of some sense. Initial mad-cat comments, when cobbled together, might reveal some pattern in time. Take, for instance, the recent offer to purchase Greenland.  Considered laughable, purchasing territories has notable, historical precedent in US foreign policy.  Territorial[Read More…]

It used to be done regularly and it worked: The West identified a country as its enemy, unleashed its professional propaganda against it, then administered a series of sanctions, starving and murdering children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups. If the country did not collapse within months or just couple of years, the bombing would begin. And the nation, totally[Read More…]

  When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of the U.S. military, which I believed kept us safe. To my mind then, they were classic manifestations of American technological superiority over the godless Communists. With all its scandals, especially[Read More…]

Western Zionist media and political establishments are up in arms accusing the Islamic Republic of Iran of “violating” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the “Iran Deal”. This is never about Iran’s non-compliance with that Deal. To the contrary, Iran has consistently and verifiably abided by the Iran Deal since it was signed in 2015 by[Read More…]

The Afghanistan government requested Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump explain his boast of terminating the Afghan war in 10 days by wiping out Afghanistan and its 10 million residents. “The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate,” Sediq Sediqqi, the spokesperson for the President of Afghanistan, said in a statement. The statement said: “Given[Read More…]

If you were Iranian and learned that U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton wanted to attack your country, wouldn’t you feel terrified? But we’re taught to dismiss that. The training begins early: Complete the assignment. Get good grades. Insulate your life. Automate your soul. Don’t worry about U.S. bombs pulverizing Baghdad or U.S.-funded death squads mutilating peasants in Latin America.[Read More…]

Subordinates rarely have a good time of dictating matters to their superiors. In the webbed power relations that pass as realpolitik, Australia is the well behaved child in the front of the room, yearning to be caned and spoilt in equal measure.  Ever since Australia’s Prime Minister John Curtin cast his eye to Washington in an act of desperation during[Read More…]

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies While the mystery of who is responsible for sabotaging the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman remains unsolved, it is clear that the Trump administration has been sabotaging Iranian oil shipments since May 2, when it announced its intention to “bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its[Read More…]

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers In the last week, the realities of US foreign policy have been exposed by a leaked audio tape, a leak about a US attack on the Russian electrical grid, and US attempts to extradite Julian Assange. All the information points to a foreign policy that violates international law and standards, perpetrates wars and[Read More…]

The recent White House decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group and other military assets to the Persian Gulf has led many in Washington and elsewhere to assume that the U.S. is gearing up for war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate[Read More…]

US President Donald Trump used his second day of high-profile appearances at the United Nations Wednesday to amplify Washington’s war-threats against Iran and bully countries around the world. At a UN Security Council session ostensibly devoted to preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, Trump put the world on notice: the US—acting in flagrant violation[Read More…]

Bolton’s Game: Not Sovereignty, Not International Law—Clearing the Path for U.S., Geopolitical Primacy To be sure, on September 10thJohn Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor, pushed all the thematic buttons that might beexpected of a luncheon speaker invitedto address the Federalist Society, long known asthe ideological home of rabid advocates of the so-called ‘new sovereignty.’ The hallmark of this pre-Trump neocon[Read More…]

This essay is inspired by Professor James Petras’ article, describing that the US never wins wars despite trillions of investments in her war budget and obvious military superiority https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-the-century-of-lost-wars/5653844 Professor Petras is of course right, the United States is currently engaged in seven bloody wars around the globe (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya) and has not been winning[Read More…]

  University of Illinois College of Law, Before the Foellinger Auditorium, September 7, 2018 (Transcript revised) I am Francis Boyle, Professor of Law here at the College of Law. I’m the Senior Professor at the College of Law. I’ve taught here 41 years in a row without a break. I know Obama. He was behind me at Harvard Law School.[Read More…]