NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

How the Iraq War Began in Panama

Sandwiched between the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and the commencement of the first Gulf War on January 17, 1991, Operation Just Cause might seem a curio from a nearly forgotten era, its anniversary hardly worth a mention. So many earth-shattering events have happened since. But the invasion of Panama should be remembered in a big way.  After all, it helps explain many of those events. In fact, you can’t begin to fully grasp the slippery slope of American militarism in the post-9/11 era -- how unilateral, preemptory “regime change” became an acceptable foreign policy option, how “democracy promotion” became a staple of defense strategy, and how war became a branded public spectacle -- without understanding Panama… As with most military actions, the invaders had a number of justifications to offer, but at that moment the goal of installing a “democratic” regime in power suddenly flipped to the top of the list. In adopting that rationale for making war, Washington was in effect radically revising the terms of international diplomacy. At the heart of its argument was the idea that democracy (as defined by the Bush administration) trumped the principle of national sovereignty.   More

 

Rewriting Syria’s War

Rosen [a researcher with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue] also argues against the assumption that Assad presides over an Alawite-dominated regime. “Most of the regime is Sunni, most of its supporters are Sunnis, many [if] not most of its soldiers are Sunni,” he writes. “The regime may be brutal, authoritarian, corrupt and whatever else it is described as, but it should not be seen as representing a sect.”

The sectarianism that does exist in Syria, Rosen argues, is preponderantly on the side of the anti-Assad opposition… Rosen argues that the entirety of the armed anti-Assad opposition is dedicated to Sunni domination of Syria rather than any sort of secular, democratic future for the country. “There are no actual moderate insurgents either ideologically or in terms of their actions,” he writes at one point. Nor did most insurgents pick up weapons at the beginning of the uprising to defend themselves; instead, they did so “out of religious zeal or political extremism.”  U.S.-backed rebel leaders are dismissed as “warlords” and mercenaries. The so-called “moderate rebels,” he writes, “still all favor an Islamic government, they are anti-liberal, their views on women, secularism, democracy, non-Sunnis, anything for that matter are deeply conservative and often Sal[a]fi and they engage in grave human rights violations [or] war crimes.”  More

 

“DEMOCRACY PROMOTION: Selling ‘Peace Groups’ on US-Led Wars

“War is peace” double-speak has become commonplace these days. And, the more astute foreign policy journalists and commentators are beginning to realize the extent of how “liberal interventionists” work in sync with neocon warhawks to produce and sustain a perpetual state of U.S. war… Afghanistan is still in shambles with the majority of the people living in extreme poverty; Libya, which had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent, is now a failed state; Western intervention transformed Iraq from an emerging country with moderate prosperity into an impoverished country with a starving population. In the lead-up to each intervention, “experts” emerged to explain that while anti-imperialism is good in general and in past scenarios, this time is different. Is it?   More

 

VALI NASR: To Leave The Mideast, Unite It

It is increasingly evident that America is finding Iran’s cooperation necessary for managing conflicts like those in Iraq and Syria.

In short, America has learned it needs Sunni partners and Shiite partners. So its aim should be to reduce rather than inflame those rivalries. That requires intense but inclusive diplomacy to array the region’s resources in fighting the Islamic State, and then in closing the door to other extremists who might succeed it… America’s issues with Iran, however profound, are no longer impervious to tools of diplomacy, as they became after 1979. Sunni fanaticism, by contrast, is the current revolutionary force threatening the international order… Contributing to a more stable Middle East will require continuous engagement with both sides in the region, and that would become easier the sooner we started.  More

 

More Sanctions for Russia, More Military Aid for Kiev Will Undermine the Fragile Ceasefire

Last week President Obama garnered equal parts praise and condemnation when he announced that the US would end its five-decade long embargo of Cuba. And while it is certainly the case that doing so was long overdue, at almost exactly the same moment, Obama also signed the cynically titled Ukrainian Freedom Support Act (H.R. 5859) authorizing further sanctions against Russia. And in so doing the administration in effect, jettisoned one cold war relic while giving renewed credence to another. Passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, the timing of the Act-which provides for $350 million worth of military aid to Kiev-could not have been worse in light of the fact that the December 9 ceasefire between Kiev and the separatists' forces seems to be holding.  More