By Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis His lines may be better delivered, but Barack Obama is sounding — and acting — more like the heir to George W. Bush than the change-maker sold to the public in his award-winning ad campaign. Indeed, when not sending billions of dollars to repressive governments across the globe, the great liberal hope is authorizing deadly [...]
General David Petraeus is in Washington, D.C., this week and, as expected, we are hearing claims of success and progress. No matter that we’ve heard these assertions and predictions before or that our elected representatives, charged on our behalf with oversight, are failing to ask such basic and elementary questions as: If we are killing [...]
Call this episode “The Men Who Stare at Senators.” We’ve been down this road before, that is, the U.S. military pulling out all the stops to sell an unpopular war. A Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings, yes he of General Stanley McChrystal fame, reports that illegal propaganda tactics were used on American VIPs and [...]
The latest general to find himself excoriated in the pages of Rolling Stone, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, should resign immediately for using psychological operations, commonly known as “psy-ops” against U.S. lawmakers visiting Afghanistan. If he will not resign immediately, President Obama should fire him. Sign our petition calling for Lt. General William Caldwell to be [...]
It’s a sizzling new speed record, for the U.S. Congress that is. It only took it six years but, hey, better late than ever, I suppose. Don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Allow me to refresh your memory. Travel back in time to when the U.S. invasion of Iraq was barely a year [...]
This would be less grim to talk about if Bush weren’t still with us. But he is, in every way that matters. The Bush Doctrine lives. No leading American politician can disavow the two key aspects of the Bush Doctrine: that we cannot distinguish terrorists from the countries where they live, and that we must [...]
The war in Afghanistan is taking place in a netherworld where facts and common sense have no place. Elections are fake. Our deadline to withdraw is a fake. Now, we learn that a fake Taliban leader has been leading us to believe that NATO was facilitating high-level talks between Taliban leadership and the corrupt Afghan [...]
Over the years all sorts of things have been said and written about Erik Prince, founder, owner, and former head of Xe Services (formerly Blackwater Worldwide). Most of it has been critical. I’ve written before that while some of it, perhaps even lots of it, has been deserved, much of it has not. But thanks [...]
European monarchs of old had court portraitists. American presidencies have Bob Woodward. The purpose is similar: to immortalize the ruler at the height of his power. To show a forceful leader mastering a daunting problem with resolve, sobriety and dedication to the interests of his fellow citizens. This being America, the occasion has to be [...]
It is noteworthy that the U.S. military’s war in Iraq is officially over and that American troops are returning home after 7 ½ bloody years. Mission Accomplished. Major combat operations over. Sounds eerily familiar. The question remains: are we really leaving? And was it worth the bloodshed? In my books, we’re getting while the getting’s [...]
