The major corporate news outlets, and all the smaller outlets that follow their lead, and all the partisan outlets that obey the White House, have created a false story that was clearly turning Kucinich’s own constituents against him. According to this story, of the dozens of Democrats and over a hundred Republicans not committed to voting for the insurance corporation bailout bill, only Kucinich’s vote mattered, so the blame would go to him if it failed, just as Ralph Nader alone was blamed for Al Gore losing the election that Gore won in Florida in 2000.
March 17, 2010 | Filed under
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Tom Hayden wants peace, but he’s sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday’s unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy — it could be “redeployment” to Iran in 2038 or anything else.
March 13, 2010 | Filed under
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The stated goal of the US-led War in Afghanistan, according to the Obama Administration, is to defeat the Taliban and establish a stable democratic government over the entire country. Critical to that goal is establishing a professional Afghan army and police force that is not corrupt, and that has the respect of the Afghan people. But reports out of Canada suggest that far from creating such a military and police force, the so-called International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) is turning a blind eye to the thuggish criminality of those organizations, both to avoid growing opposition in ISAF member countries, and to avoid offending those organizations in Afghanistan.
March 7, 2010 | Filed under
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Today’s war in Afghanistan also has its My Lai massacres. It has them almost weekly, as US warplanes bomb wedding parties, or homes “suspected” of housing terrorists that turn out to house nothing but civilians. But these My Lais are all conveniently labeled accidents. They get filed away and forgotten as the inevitable “collateral damage” of war. There was, however, a massacre recently that was not a mistake–a massacre which, while it only involved fewer than a dozen innocent people, bears the same stench as My Lai.
March 4, 2010 | Filed under
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With the Obama administration’s January 2010 deadline for closing Guantanamo Bay now in the past, two Kuwaiti detainees remain imprisoned in Cuba where they have been held without trial for more than eight years. While the U.S. government is primarily responsible for the suffering these Kuwaitis have endured, the Government of Kuwait is also responsible for allowing the injustice to continue.
February 28, 2010 | Filed under
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As I write this article, I’m seated in a hotel room across from the train station in Geneva, Switzerland. There’s a slight, dull pain in my forehead from a two-inch line of stitches that are pulling together a gash that runs diagonally across my brow, thanks to a stumble on a high step on a sidewalk in the rain last night, that sent me flying airborne headfirst into a round metal lamppost.
February 27, 2010 | Filed under
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As evidenced by the recent outpouring of generous support for the people of Haiti, America remains a caring and compassionate nation. But when it comes to human rights and the rule of law, the United States falls woefully short, trailing behind the rest of the civilized world. Case in point, the U.S. government is seriously considering indefinite detentions for some Guantanamo detainees.
February 19, 2010 | Filed under
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The fighting is still underway in the town of Marjah, in what is being described as the first battle in Obama’s War in Afghanistan, or alternatively as the biggest battle of the US War in Afghanistan. But already, the US has lost that battle.
February 19, 2010 | Filed under
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I’ve followed the struggles of progressives within the California Democratic Party from the opposite coast and admired their achievements but wondered about their limitations. They’re the first to pass resolutions opposing wars, but for the most part their members in Congress vote to fund the wars just the same.
February 18, 2010 | Filed under
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Sarah Palin stood before an audience of 600 at the first Tea Party convention and in her twinkly home-spun rhetoric, declared we don’t need a professor of law but a commander-in-chief. As expected, she received roaring applause. And, as expected, she was wrong.
February 16, 2010 | Filed under
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