The Real Story at Geneva II: Foreign Meddling in Syria ‘Must Stop’
January 22, 2014
The Geneva II talks on the Syrian civil war in Switzerland started today. In the lead up to the conference, the media focus, unfortunately, had been on which parts of the Syrian opposition would attend and whether or not Iran, the Assad regime’s close ally, would attend (the U.S. pressured the UN to uninvite Iran […]
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In South Korea, US Special Ops Train to Help Overthrow North Korean Regime
January 22, 2014
Today at Al Jazeera America I argue that the U.S. should stop occupying South Korea, not only because they don’t belong there but because the highly militarized alliance between the U.S. and South Korea doesn’t actually weaken North Korea, but helps sustain the regime by incentivizing China to continue to prop up Pyongyang. At Medium.com, […]
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Robert Gates on How Israel & Saudi Arabia Pressure US into Wars of Choice
January 21, 2014
Robert Gates’s new memoir, which I’ve mentioned I’m making my way through, has a nice example of how dangerous entangling alliances can be. Not only does Gates write frankly about how U.S. interests are subordinated to those of our weaker allies, but he is unusually candid about the Bush administration’s use of force in the […]
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Obama Refuses to Repeal AUMF, Keeps US On ‘Perpetual War Footing’
January 21, 2014
In recent months, President Obama has been pressured in the face of widespread public outrage to make two important speeches on national security. In May, he gave a lengthy talk on U.S. drone policy in which he placated public concerns by saying that America needed to get off “a perpetual wartime footing.” In January, unprecedented […]
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Fear and Leviathan
January 20, 2014
Governments use fear of threats at home and abroad to increase their power and abridge individual freedom. If there is any singular lesson in Antiwar.com’s motto, War is the Health of the State, that is it. Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, has a must-read piece in the New York Times Opinion Pages that […]
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‘Sunni Awakening’ Part 2: We’re Still Fighting the Iraq War
January 20, 2014
The excited media coverage of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s new memoir Duty as an unusually frank retelling of his time in the Bush and Obama administrations caused me to make an exception to my lifelong moratorium on reading the memoirs of politicians or government officials. Reviews and excerpts of the book revealed Gates […]
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Abandon Hegemony in Asia-Pacific, Or Risk Catastrophic War
January 17, 2014
Denny Roy, a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center, writes at The Diplomat that the crux of the tensions between the U.S. and China is a contest for power in the Asia-Pacific region. The squabbling over competing sovereignty claims of this or that island chain in the East and South China Seas, he writes, is peripheral […]
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Illegal Israeli Settlements Stoke Tensions in West Bank
January 17, 2014
Here’s a rare on the ground look the daily battles being fought between illegal Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. From Al Jazeera America:
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Sen Feinstein: Iran Sanctions Bill ‘Is A March To War’
January 15, 2014
Senator Diane Feinstein took to the floor of the Senate to argue against the bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran in the interim period between the 6-month agreement and a final deal down the road. She said this attempt to foil negotiations is really “a march to war,” that would signal to the […]
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The NYT’s Unbalanced Reporting On Military Training, Education in Gaza
January 15, 2014
This piece from the New York Times reports on Hamas boot camps in Gaza where teenagers receive military training and repeats oft-cited claims about Hamas textbooks that don’t recognize Israel. It is a one-sided depiction of an ugly reality that exists, of course, on both sides. Having seen two major Israeli military operations in Gaza […]
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