The easy worship of the use of force abroad for the past 15 years is coming home to roost in an escalation of police-state tactics and violence a majority of the public dangerously accepts if not condone.
us foreign policy
Iran Nukes Deal Will Protect Against Saudi and Israeli Threats
Iran hasn’t launched a single war in 50 years. Israel has launched eight, Saudi Arabia has kept funding America’s worst enemies–ISIS, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Who are the real threats to Mideast peace?
How George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu Helped Iran Win the Middle East
Bush’s wars in the Middle East left Iran as the most influential actor in Iraq, while Netanyahu’s vulgarity and stupidity have fundamentally misunderstood the Iran challenge of regional mastery.
Obama Doctrines, Bland Rhetoric, and the Mealy-Mouthed West
From President Barack Obama’s oxymoronic first-term mantra “leading from behind” to the recent German variant “leading from the center,” empty phrases have become the currency of Western governments, writes Ana Palacio.
It’s Not Benghazi: Hillary Clinton’s Real Scandal Is Honduras.
Desperate Honduran children are seeking refuge from a human rights nightmare that would cast a dark cloud over Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid right now if the media were paying any attention.
Israel’s March of Folly
Israel’s latest attack on Gaza reflects yet again that peculiar blend of arrogance and bigotry that has characterized Israeli policy toward Arabs since 1982: the arrogance that Israel is infallible, and the bigotry that sees Arabs either as inferior creatures to be walled off or as terrorists to be killed. It shouldn’t be surprised when the beasts rebel.
The Trouble With Veterans Day
It’s hard to see how, if a war is unjust, it can be heroic to wage it. So it’s flat-out preposterous to claim that everyone who has ever been in the U.S. military is a hero, argues Arnold Oliver, a Vietnam veteran who finds it troubling that Veterans Day has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic worship service of militarism.
The Trouble With American Exceptionalism
Do we have moral authority as a nation, asks Cary McMullen. Do we have the humility Obama spoke of, namely that we are acting not in self-interest but in the interest of justice? Are we exceptional not just in our history but in our standing among nations as an exemplar of righteous ideals?
Obama’s Born-Again Missile Envy Over Syria: Wrong on All Counts
Whether the Syrian regime used chemical weapons or not, Obama would be wrong to attack, even if Congress approves. It’s not America’s war to fight, it’s not Obama’s judgment to make, and his red line is an absurd marker when contrasted with two and a half years of atrocities, and 100,000 deaths, that never got a peep.
From Guernica to Who Gives a Damn: Modern Warfare’s Droning Savagery
There was a time when people could actually be shocked by the slaughter of civilians during a war. No more. We kid ourselves that our warfare is moral and clean and good and that it’s the other guys who commit the war crimes. Don’t believe it, argues Donald Kaul.