Foreign Policy Archives

From Martha Gore at the Examiner:
While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocated a stronger U.S. response to the beating and killing of protesting Iranians, President Obama resisted. When he finally at least said he was appalled and outraged by the Iranian government behavior, it was long after both England and France had condemned [...]

What if they gave a war and nobody came? From Mark Weisbrot in The Guardian:
Enter the anti-war movement: 51 House Democrats had already voted against the war spending when it passed the House. Should they now vote in favour of it in order to give the IMF money? The Democratic leadership says yes, but [...]

From The Times:
…Speaking to reporters this time, she said bluntly that pressing China on issues such as Tibet and Taiwan ?can’t interfere with the global economic crisis?. Diplomats described her grasp of the issues as impressive and her facility to engage with her Chinese hosts as unprecedented.
She appeared to have set the stage for a [...]

Another perspective, from Reuters:
But instead of focusing on military efforts, the United States and other donors should step up their humanitarian assistance and concentrate on long-term solutions as opposed to quick fixes, Oxfam said in its memo to Obama. “With faltering reconstruction and rising instability, the United States must look beyond military solutions and [...]

An interesting perspective from Chris Jepson of the Observer:
If I were God for a day, I’d give every Afghan woman a 45-caliber pistol and 50 rounds with the instructions of, “Do what feels just. Do the right thing.” And the cemeteries filled. From one rattrap of a hellhole called Iraq to another called Afghanistan. That [...]

Parts 1 & II:

I wish I could see it – right now I’m just seeing one less woman – and an extraordinarily remarkable woman, at that – in the U.S. Senate. Here goes, from the AP:
…Friends say that even though Clinton would be relinquishing independence to become secretary of state, the position confers enormous responsibility and importance [...]

Well, sorry to hear it. That’s one less woman in the Senate. Still, it’s her life and her decision to make. From Fox News:
Hillary Clinton’s decision to accept President-elect Barack Obama’s offer to become secretary of state unleashes a scramble for her Senate seat.
Filling her shoes won’t be easy.
“She’s done a very [...]

Off today? Check the Turner Classic Movies schedule for a day of movies honoring veterans. My favorite of the day is The Guns of Naverone – Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn… how could you go wrong with that lineup?
After watching Ken Burns’ The War I’ve read quite a few books lately about [...]

From Greta Van Susteren:
Am I the only one???? I am perplexed by Colin Powell?s statement about what ?sent him over the edge – and columnist Maureen Dowd of the New York Times embracing the statement as though it makes lots of sense.
This is a portion of Maureen Dowd’s NY Times column this morning [...]

Just finished reading, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. Quotations from this book were featured in Ken Burns’ The War. Sledge’s account of the war from the front lines of two of the most vicious battles vs. the Japanese in the Pacific Theater puts Harry Truman’s decision to [...]

From CNN:
GERGEN: We have a long tradition in this country that we only have one president at a time. He’s the commander in chief and the negotiator in chief. I cannot remember a campaign which a rival seeking the presidency has been in a position negotiating a war that’s under way with another party [...]

Listening to Barack Obama talk foreign policy, I am reminded of Marni Nixon.
In 1964, instead of giving the part of Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady to Julie Andrews, the enormously talented singer who created the role on Broadway, Hollywood went with Audrey Hepburn. Julie Andrews “wouldn’t film [...]

An impressive list…

Obama’s smug, frat boy schtick is offensive enough. But the thought of someone so inexperienced and with such poor judgement at the top job in the country is scary. From Joe Wilson:
Senator Obama’s ill-conceived remarks likening small town Americans to embittered guns-and-God bigots have triggered a justifiable furor. Not only are the remarks [...]

I have subscribed to The Nation for years but will not renew because they “picked sides” – in particular, they picked the side of someone who does not well-represent their until now holier than thou progressive positions. Al Gore wasn’t good enough for likes of The Nation in 2000 – they backed Ralph Nader. [...]

From Hillary Clinton:
Hillary Clinton will set out her approach to American foreign policy in the 21st Century in a speech at George Washington University today. Joining her will be a group of senior retired military and defense officials who have endorsed her to be this nation?s next Commander-in-Chief. They are: General Wesley Clark, Lt. General [...]

Op Ed at Taylor Marsh…

“Inevitably, another national security crisis will occur. And when it does, voters shouldn’t have to wonder whether their President will be ready. As president, Hillary will be ready to act swiftly and decisively.” ~ General Wesley Clark

“We’ve seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security. We can’t let that happen again.” ~ Hillary Clinton

From Trudy Rubin in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Back in 1991, when Bill Clinton was running for president, he came to talk with the Inquirer Editorial Board.
After wonkish discussions of domestic issues, I asked him about the Middle East. He started talking and wouldn’t stop, even as his handlers dragged him to the elevator and his car. [...]

If I could only recommend one article about Hillary vs. Obama, it would be this. And also ask them why they think Obama chose Joe Lieberman as his mentor in the Senate in 2005, well after the Iraq War vote! From Ambassador Joe Wilson in the Baltimore Sun:
We simply could not allow ourselves [...]

This is good stuff, hang in there until the end. I love Rachel but think Buchanan has the right idea in this case.
Countdown Video

From Eric Alterman:
Meanwhile, in a column that shames his colleague across the page, Frank Rich explores the manner in which the rest of us have behaved like “Good Germans” in sitting still for the evil our government continues to commit in our name:
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing [...]

Huffington Post Video
“This masterful book is a measured but furious call to arms. Naomi Klein is Antigone before the King, the antidote to the feeling of inevitability that says that we must accept murder as a legitimate economic policy. She has the audacity and the courage to chronicle the human costs of an ideology in [...]

The War
“Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from all the blood and horror and tragedy our witnesses recalled is that no nation should embark upon any war without first understanding what its cost will be and without being certain that its objectives are really worth the fearful price.” ~ Ken Burns
My Parents and [...]

From Fred Kaplan in the Dallas Morning News:
On Monday, while Gen. David Petraeus prepared to testify before two House committees about the successes of the surge, seven of his soldiers died when their transport vehicle overturned in a highway accident west of Baghdad.
Two of those soldiers, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. [...]

Jeffrey Feldman asks the same question I have asked again and again, from the Huffington Post:
According to the Washington Post, Harry Reid is again ‘negotiating’ with Senate Republicans about ways to end the nightmare on Baghdad Street often referred to as ‘the war in Iraq’ (i.e., it’s not a ‘war’–it’s a burned-out military occupation). What’s [...]

Tom Paine said, “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.” Colin Powell turned summer soldier and sunshine patriot when his country – and the world – needed him most. From Raw Story:
It was revealed today that prior to the Iraq war, then-Secretary [...]

From Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek:
In the fall of 1982, I arrived in the United States as an 18-year-old student from India. The country was in rough shape. That December unemployment hit 10.8 percent, higher than at any point since World War II. Interest rates hovered around 15 percent. Abroad, the United States was still reeling [...]

WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier
I heard about this on an XM public radio show. A teacher in England found his grandfather’s letters that were sent to his brother and sister while he was a soldier on the front lines in WWI. The teacher is posting the letters as the soldier’s (his [...]

From Laurence M. Vance at Lew Rockwell:
Because the war in Iraq was not defensive, U.S. soldiers ? many of whom would claim to be Christians ? cannot claim to be acting in self-defense when they gun down Iraqis. They are invaders and occupiers, not liberators and peacekeepers. It is unfortunate that many Americans have the [...]

Bill Maher’s latest and greatest New Rule:
New Rule: Jimmy Carter must be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. Last weekend, former U.S. president and current Al Qaeda operative–Jimmy Carter, launched an unprovoked attack upon democracy itself by telling an Arkansas newspaper that the Bush Administration has been the worst in history. And people were shocked… Arkansas [...]

From the New York Times:
Never mind how badly the war is going in Iraq. President Bush has been swaggering around like a victorious general because he cowed a wobbly coalition of Democrats into dropping their attempt to impose a time limit on his disastrous misadventure.
By week?s end, Mr. Bush was acting as though that bit [...]

If we don’t speak up and question our leaders, we are letting our troops down, as well as others throughout the world who depend on us to make sure our leaders do not abuse their position of power. I applaud Rosie for having the courage to publicly speak out – and it does take [...]

From the AP:
In a survey of U.S. troops in combat in Iraq, less than half of Marines soldiers said they feel they should treat noncombatants with respect. Only about a half said they would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.
More than 40 percent support the idea of torture [...]

From The Nation:
It is the duty of Congress to check and balance the White House, especially when a President refuses to recognize the futility and mounting cost of an illegal war and occupation overwhelmingly opposed by the Iraqi people. Democratic leaders must recognize that they have already compromised too much. It is a brutal irony [...]

From Juan Cole at Salon:
As Tenet recounted the story on “60 Minutes,” Pentagon advisor Richard Perle “said to me, ‘Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday; they bear responsibility.’” Tenet told interviewer Scott Pelley that he was startled at the allegation. “It’s September the 12th,” said Tenet. “I’ve got the manifest with [...]

From Joseph Galloway:
The American military death toll in Iraq rose to almost 3,300 this week. The number of wounded and injured now tops 50,000. Continuing this war for another two years will bring the day-to-day cost to the American taxpayer to nearly a trillion dollars. Hidden long-term costs such as medical care and disability [...]

Great article by Tom Engelhardt in Uruknet:
Make no mistake, whatever words may be wielded, that “clock” of General Petraeus’s is indeed ticking –loudly enough to be a bomb. Sooner or later, it will go off and whether it proves to be an alarm, waking Congress and the American people, or an explosion demolishing some aspect [...]

From the AP:
A thinly stretched Army just got thinner.
All active-duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been informed they will serve 15-month tours – three months longer than the previous standard. Rather than continuing its recent practice of deciding on tour extensions on a unit-by-unit basis, the Pentagon decided to spread the pain evenly, giving [...]

I saw the hearings on the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital on CSPAN Tuesday. One soldier’s testimony was particularly moving. One soldier, only 23, a veteran of 4 years, is clearly carrying a heavy emotional burden. The enormity of what he had been through during combat duty in the mean streets of [...]

From the AP:
Whatever their understanding of the respective death tolls, three-quarters of those polled said the numbers of both Americans and Iraqis who have been killed are “unacceptable.” Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number [...]

From the Los Angeles Times:
“The unpalatable truth is that we will leave behind a country on the brink of civil war, in which reconstruction has stalled and corruption is endemic, and a region that is a lot less stable than it was in 2003. That is a long way short of the beacon of [...]

From the AP:
Republicans blocked a full-fledged Senate debate over
Iraq on Monday, but Democrats vowed they still would find a way to force
President Bush to change course in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops.
“We must heed the results of the November elections and the wishes of the American people,” [...]

From the AP:
U.S. and Iraqi troops battled Sunni insurgents hiding in high-rise buildings on Haifa Street in the heart of Baghdad Wednesday, with snipers on roofs taking aim at gunmen in open windows as Apache attack helicopters hovered overhead.
Iraq said 30 militants were killed and 27 captured.
New details also emerged about the downing of a [...]

Sweet, best of all, the Daily Show Mother Load is working fabulously now on my Mac with Firefox. THE best video from The Daily Show – this Trekkie was totally into what Rep. David Wu was saying:
Rep. Wu: “Unlike real the Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a [...]

As Pete Seeger sang, “Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a tall man’ll be over his head! We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy! And the big fool says to push on!”
From The Times:
The moves are part of a broad mission to surround himself, both in Washington and on the ground in Iraq, [...]

Why didn’t he speak out before his death? People’s lives were at stake. From the Washington Post:
“Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people… I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security… I don’t [...]

Read all about it at Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory blog…

From the AP:
“Enough! Bring the troops home now!” read the sign Arredondo held aloft moments after he became a citizen. “Now I can use my First Amendment to say what I need to say,” he said afterward. “Now I can express myself without being afraid of being deported.” Two years ago, Carlos Arredondo tried [...]

Now he says it. From Editor and Publisher:
“I, for one, am tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let’s cut and run or cut and walk, but let us fight the war on terror more intelligently that we have because we have fought this war [...]

From Editor and Publisher:
CNN’s John Roberts, recently returned from a month-long visit to Iraq, was interviewed by The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz for his CNN “Reliable Sources” program on Sunday. Much of the talk concerned media treatment of the war, starting with complaints by U.S. soldiers, and then the overall media coverage.
Roberts revealed that despite [...]

Once again, Kerry, who volunteered not just to go to Vietnam, but once he landed a safe assignment there, volunteered for active combat duty, let Bush, who shamelessly used his rich daddy’s connections to stay out of Vietnam and then didn’t even follow through with his minimal committment, get the upper hand. Bush, who [...]

From Jim Hightower:
Bodies. Dead ones. Dead bodies are the harsh, horrifying, riveting realties of war.
That’s why those who make war don’t want you seeing the bodies, don’t want you counting them, or thinking about them. If you see, count, or think, you’ll quickly question the war itself.
Thus, from the start of George W’s disastrous Iraq [...]

From the McLaughlin Group:
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Issue Two: The End of Iraq?
Revenge killings, death squads, gruesome bombings — the Iraq reality every day. Iraqi civilians killed since the start of the war: 655,000. So says a new Johns Hopkins study, and that’s their median estimate.
For U.S. soldiers, October is becoming the bloodiest month in at [...]

From Bob Geiger…

From the Philadelphia Daily News:
It doesn’t take much to be empathetic. All it takes is remembering that the people who suffer the effects of war, genocide, disease and poverty are people just like those we love and protect. Without delving too deeply into the matter of sin, may I suggest that few of us are [...]

From the Washington Post:
Britain’s new army commander said British troops in Iraq are making the situation worse and must leave the country soon, according to an interview published Thursday.
Gen. Richard Dannatt said the British military should “get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems,” according to the interview with the [...]

From Time:
Written last month, this straightforward account of life in Iraq by a Marine officer was initially sent just to a small group of family and friends. His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon [...]

From the AP:
The US military announced the deaths of nine soldiers and two Marines yesterday in what has been a deadly period for American forces in Iraq.
The announcement brought to at least 15 the number of service members killed in fighting since Saturday and coincided with a violent day across Iraq that left at least [...]

It’s all here in this must see video…

From Raw Story:
The White House has declassified only a small portion of a government report that many allege states the war in Iraq has made America more vulnerable to terrorism, RAW STORY has learned.
Among some of the assessments in the NIE report are that “Iraq is shaping a new generation of terror leaders,” and that [...]

I’m glad the big dog bared his teeth when Chris Wallace played dirty in an interview that was supposed to be about Clinton’s charitable work. Right off the bat, Wallace followed through on the Republican disinformation campaign where the their “docudrama” left off (right according to plan) but Clinton was ready for him. [...]

From the AP:
Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions [...]

Not only is this morally reprehensible, but this defies common sense by endangering the lives of our soldiers for nothing in return. From The Nation:
Democrats chose to outsource their policy on military tribunals to John McCain. And McCain did what he’s done best the last year: capitulate to Bush.
“Senators Snatch Defeat From Jaws of [...]

From Sidney Blumenthal in the Huffington Post:
President Bush’s war on terror now exists outside the law. His great struggle for “freedom” and “democracy” has turned into a crusade for lawlessness. After the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v Rumsfeld that his policy of denying rights to detainees and practicing torture was illegal he could have [...]

What a sad little man. From Gawker:
In an interview with Barbara Walters, Fox News harridan Bill O’Reilly claims that the FBI told him he was on Al Qaeda’s death list. Over at Radar, however, a little reportage reveals, shockingly, that O’Reilly sense of self might be inflated.
Says one Fox News correspondent:
[...]

From Selig Harrison in the Los Angeles Times:
To Taliban sympathizers, Musharraf directed an explicit message, saying: “I have done everything for the ? Taliban when the whole world was against them?.We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban.” PAKISTAN’S President Pervez Musharraf is [...]

From The Emerging Democratic Majority:
The Wall St. Journal caps a particularly bad week for Republicans with a page one article in today’s issue by Jackie Calmes, “Republican Advantage on Issue Of National Security Erodes.” It’s a fairly thorough wrap-up of recent developments on the topic, with very little that offers comfort to the GOP. Calmes [...]

CNN Poll…

From the New York Times:
July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new Iraqi government has failed.
An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed [...]

From ABC News:
“Why was Iraq deemed to be seven times more important than finding the al Qaeda leaders for the last five years?”Taking a break from his work at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto on Monday, former President Clinton warned Republicans not to politicize the London terror arrests, slammed Sen. Joe Lieberman, whom [...]

From the AP:
The new offensive has driven the number of U.S. troops in Iraq up to 135,000 — reversing a trend of declining personnel levels that had begun earlier this year. And, the increased level dampens hopes of a significant withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year, just as members of Congress [...]

The Daily Show in a brilliant take on this forced perspective…

Wesley Clark: A retired four-star general in the U.S. Army. Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000. A distinguished career in the Army and the Department of Defense. Received many military decorations over the course of his career.
Joe Lieberman: Avoided military service during the Vietnam War by receiving both student deferments [...]

Get the story at Think Progress… General Casey is the top US commander in Iraq. George Bush dismissed his concerns (“civil war this, civil war that”).

From Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Bush is That Guy. The one who thinks he is everybody’s bestest pal, the guy everyone wants to kick back with and have a few brewskies and chat about baseball and lawn fertilizer and Jesus. After all, isn’t that what we all desire of the man who decides [...]

“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” the old African proverb goes. The Bush administration skips right over the speak softly part, and goes right to using the big stick. From Rami Khouri in Salon:
What will Israel and the United States do when there are no more Arab airports, bridges and power stations [...]

Juan Cole has a roundup of news, one comment is here:
… A lot of people in Baghdad, Washington and London are uttering a lot of brave words about this descent into mass slaughter. 200 Iraqis dead on the basis of being Sunni or Shiite is equivalent proportionally to 2,200 Americans dead, killed because they were [...]

I was flipping through the channels recently and came across that slimy snake Robert Novak (the guy who blew the cover of a sensitive CIA program that was tracking the Iranian nuclear program to discredit a Bush administration critic and then joked about it at a Republican fundraiser) saying Democrats can’t handle national security. [...]

From AFP:
A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks. US President George W. Bush fared badly, with just one percent rating him a “great leader” against 77 percent who deemed him a “pretty poor” or “terrible” leader. More than two-thirds [...]

If you don’t care about human suffering, then know this: this war is going to continue to cost us well into the future. From Robert Koehler in Huffington Post:
We dropped at least 300 tons of it on Iraq during Gulf War I (the first time it was used in combat) and created Gulf [...]

From the Los Angeles Times:
Societies fall apart when people stop believing the government can keep them safe them and instead turn to militias for protection. The question is, have we crossed that threshold? My sense is, we probably have, and that’s why I’m worried about the long-term outcome.” At least 50,000 Iraqis have died [...]

From John Nichols in The Nation:
The incendiary House debate over whether the time has come to establish an Iraq exit strategy ended Friday morning with a 256-153 vote to maintain an open-ended occupation of the country where 2,500 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in fighting since 2003.
The nonbinding vote [...]

“I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad…. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and making a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero…. [I opposed] assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what [...]

From Juan Cole:
…The number of US troops killed in Iraq, whether in combat or through incidents such as vehicle collisions (often occuring during the heat of battle), has now passed the 2500 mark. An average of two die each day. Among the 18,490 wounded are thousands with serious injuries that will affect them the rest [...]

Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Pete Seeger, © 1961 Fall River Music
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have [...]