NEW
WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Stop
the Escalation of War in Iraq!
President Obama
just announced that he will send 450 more American service members to Iraq. They
will join the 3,000 troops already there, risking their lives in a deepening
crisis that has no U.S. military solution.
Luckily, two Iraq
War veterans in Congress are standing up to calls for even more war. Reps. Ruben
Gallego (D-AZ) and Mark Takai (D-HI) are currently organizing a sign-on letter
against escalating the U.S. military mission in Iraq.
Reps. Gallego and
Takai know about Iraq because they fought there themselves. They understand the
hard truth that American troops will not bring peace to Iraq nor heal the bitter
sectarian divide fueling the conflict. They understand that if the Iraqi
military won't fight - as it has repeatedly failed to do when ISIS has advanced
- we cannot fight this war for them. As Reps. Gallego and Takai say in their
letter:
"While the Iraqi
military and the Iraqi people deserve our support in this struggle, an enduring
victory over ISIS will only be possible if they demonstrate a real and lasting
commitment to defeat our mutual foe. If we fight in their stead, our success
will be temporary and our gains will be fragile."
‘The
American Century’ Has Plunged the World Into Crisis
There’s
a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign
policy must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the
planet. Generally going by the name of “American exceptionalism,” it’s the
deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine, technology, education,
and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief is
an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the
world… The
coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According
Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for
the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — including the long-term health problems of
veterans — will cost U.S. taxpayers around $6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S.
spends each year on defense-related items. The “official” defense budget of some
half a trillion dollars doesn’t include such items as nuclear weapons, veterans’
benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions a year
in interest we’ll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the
U.S. had already paid out $316
billion in interest. The domestic collateral damage from that set of
priorities is numbing.
'Humanitarian'
Warmongers
When
the modern human rights movement began in the 1970s, no one expected it to
become part of the antiwar camp. Indeed, Human Rights Watch’s predecessor,
Helsinki Watch, was funded by a fat grant from the Ford Foundation, then led by
McGeorge Bundy, a leading architect of the Vietnam War. But it’s also true that
no one expected the human rights industry to acquiesce so uncritically in
Washington’s militarism. It’s one thing for John McCain to criticise Obama for
not being confrontational enough with Russia. But it’s a bit jarring to hear
Suzanne Nossel, the former head of Amnesty International’s US branch, sniping at
Obama for ‘reiterating that military options are off the table’ in dealing with
the Ukraine crisis. Senior figures in the human rights world, in and out of
government, have been less sceptical about the humanitarian benefits of
assassination and counterinsurgency warfare than many military
figures.
More
What If
There Is No Plan B for Iraq?
In
one form or another, the U.S. has been at war with Iraq since 1990, including a
sort-of invasion in 1991 and a full-scale one in 2003. During that
quarter-century, Washington imposed several changes of government, spent
trillions of dollars, and was involved in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people. None of those efforts were a success by any conceivable definition of
the term Washington has been capable of offering. Nonetheless, it’s the American
Way to believe with all our hearts that every problem is ours to solve and every
problem must have a solution, which simply must be found. As a result, the
indispensable nation faces a new round of calls for ideas on what “we” should do
next in Iraq… Yet despite the risk of escalating Iraq's shadow civil war, the
U.S. now is moving to directly arm the Sunnis… The fundamental problem
underlying nearly every facet of U.S. policy toward Iraq is that “success,” as
defined in Washington, requires all the players to act against their own wills,
motivations, and goals in order to achieve U.S. aims. More
Isis: A
Year of the Caliphate
Have US
tactics played into Islamist hands?
The
“Islamic State” is stronger than it was when it was first proclaimed on 29 June
last year, shortly after Isis fighters captured much of northern and western
Iraq. Its ability to go on winning victories was confirmed on 17 May this year
in Iraq, when it seized Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and again four
days later in Syria, when it took Palmyra, one of the most famous cities of
antiquity and at the centre of modern transport routes… Isis has more long-term
opportunities in Syria than Iraq because some 60 per cent of Syrians are Sunni
Arabs, compared to only 20 per cent in Iraq. It has yet to dominate the Sunni
opposition in Syria to the extent it does in Iraq, but this may come. As
sectarian warfare escalates, Isis’s combination of fanatical Sunni ideology and
military expertise will be difficult to overcome. More
U.S. to
pre-position tanks, artillery in Baltics, eastern Europe
The
United States will pre-position tanks, artillery and other military equipment in
eastern and central Europe, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday,
moving to reassure NATO allies unnerved by Russian involvement in Ukraine.
Carter made the announcement a little over 200 km (125 miles) from the Russian
border, in the Estonian capital Tallinn, where he met Baltic defense chiefs and
spoke to troops aboard a U.S. warship that had just completed drills in the
Baltic Sea… Carter said the Baltic states - Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia -- as
well as Bulgaria, Romania and Poland had agreed to host the arms and heavy
equipment. Some of the weaponry would also be located in Germany. The U.S.
decision to stage heavy equipment closer to Russia's borders will speed
deployment of rotating U.S. forces as NATO steps up exercises in Europe
following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region last year.
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