WARS
ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
The U.S. Military
Suffers from “Affluenza”
The word “affluenza” is much in vogue. Lately, it’s been linked to a
Texas teenager, Ethan Couch, who in 2013 killed four people in a car accident
while driving drunk… Is there one that suffers from the institutional version of
affluenza (however fuzzy or imprecise that word may be) so much that it has had
immense difficulty shouldering the blame for its failures and wrongdoing? The
answer is hidden in plain sight: the U.S. military. Unlike Couch, however, that
military has never faced trial or probation; it hasn’t felt the need to abscond to Mexico or been forcibly returned to the homeland to face the music… To cite a
point of comparison, in 2015, federal funding for the departments of education,
interior, and transportation maxed out at $95 billion -- combined! Not only is
the military our favored son by a country mile: it’s our Prodigal Son, and
nothing satisfies “him.” He’s still asking for more (and his Republican uncles are clearly ready to turn over to him whatever’s left of the family savings, lock,
stock, and barrel)… An institutional report card with so many deficits and
failures, a record of deportment that has led to death and mayhem, should not be
ignored. The military must be called to account. How? By cutting its allowance.
More
“I know if I was
a parent up there, I would be beside myself if my kids’ health could be at
risk,” said President Obama on a recent trip to Michigan. “Up there” was Flint, a rusting
industrial city in the grip of a “water crisis” brought on by a government
austerity scheme… President
Obama would have good reason to worry if his kids lived in Flint. But the
city’s children are hardly the only ones threatened by this public health crisis. There’s a lead crisis for children in
Baltimore,
Maryland, Herculaneum, Missouri, Sebring, Ohio, and even the nation’s capital, Washington,
D.C., and that’s just to begin a list. State reports suggest, for instance, that "18 cities in Pennsylvania and 11
in New Jersey may have an even higher share of children with dangerously
elevated levels of lead than does Flint." Today, scientists agree that there is
no safe level of lead for children and at least half of American children have
some of this neurotoxin in their blood. The CDC is especially concerned about the more than
500,000 American children who have substantial amounts of lead in their bodies.
Over the past century, an untold number have had their IQs reduced, their school
performances limited, their behaviors altered, and their neurological
development undermined. More
GOP Candidates
Compete Over Who Will Commit Most War Crimes Once Elected
At a rally in New Hampshire on Monday night, Donald Trump was
criticizing Ted Cruz for having insufficiently endorsed torture – Cruz had said
two nights earlier that he would bring back waterboarding, but not “in any sort
of widespread use” – when someone in the audience yelled out that Cruz was a
“pussy”. Trump, in faux outrage, reprimanded the supporter, repeating the
allegation for the assembled crowd: “She said he’s a pussy. That’s terrible.
Terrible.” The spectacle of one Republican presidential candidate being
identified by another as a “pussy” for failing to sufficiently endorse an
archetypal form of torture exemplifies the moral state of the current race for
the GOP nomination. More
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NEW
WARS / OLD WARS –
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
U.S. and Russia
Announce Plan for Humanitarian Aid and a Cease-Fire in Syria
Secretary of
State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov,
announced that they had agreed on the delivery over the next few days of
desperately needed aid to besieged Syrian cities, to be followed by a “cessation
of hostilities” within a week on the way to a more formal cease-fire. “We have
agreed to implement a nationwide cessation of hostilities in one week’s time,”
Mr. Kerry said early Friday morning, after all-day meetings. “That is
ambitious.” …
If executed, the
agreement, forged by the International Syria Support Group, would mark the first sustained and
formally declared halt to fighting in Syria since the civil war began in 2011,
early in the Arab uprisings. But even a formal cease-fire would be partial — it
excludes the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and the Nusra Front,
both designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations — and highly
fragile. More
Will US, Russia be
able to turn 'words on paper' into action in Syria?
With attention
in Munich focused on rapidly producing concrete humanitarian deliverables and a
reduction in violence in Syria, ambitions receded for a near-term resumption of
the intra-Syrian political talks in Geneva . For now, that might suit both the
Syrian opposition, currently pushed back on its heels, and the Damascus
government, emboldened by its recent military gains, backed by Russian
airstrikes. A permanent end to hostilities, however, would not come without an
eventual political resolution, Kerry asserted… The next days will be a “good
testing time,” de Mistura said. “Are the Syrian people going to see these
outcomes? Then they will believe in future conferences, and they believe in
their own future. And the ISSG has shown that they are ready to commit
themselves.” There were signs, however, that the Syrian opposition, as well as
some of its regional backers, were prepared to improve its position should the
attempt at a truce break down, an event that is not difficult to imagine.
More
In snub to Turkey, US
says Syria’s PYD is not a terror group
"We do not
recognize the [Democratic Union Party] PYD as a terrorist organization. We
recognize Turks do," US State Department spokesman John Kirby
told a daily press briefing this week. The remarks are expected to come as a
surprise to Ankara, who asked Washington to choose sides: either Turkey or the
PYD. The PYD is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). US
officials say its armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), is the most
effective partner on the ground in the fight against ISIL in northern Syria. The
PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European
Union. Kirby said Turkey's concerns over the Syrian Kurdish militants are not
new and that both allies continue to hold consultations on the matter. The
public split between Washington and Ankara on the status of the PYD was so
serious that Kirby went to great lengths to reiterate that Turkey and the US are
good friends. More
Senator Wonders How
Much Longer U.S. Will Blindly Support Saudi Arabia
On Capitol Hill,
where a majority of lawmakers voted to scupper the deal, there is a push to
reassert the U.S.’s unwavering commitment to Saudi security -- even in instances
where it isn’t necessarily in the best interests of the U.S. "In the wake of
the Iran nuclear agreement, there are many in Congress who would have the United
States double down in our support for the Saudi side of this fight in places
like Yemen and Syria, simply because Saudi Arabia is our named friend, and Iran
is our named enemy,” Murphy said Friday. The view Murphy described has a host
of supporters in Washington, from scholars at Saudi-funded research
institutions like the Arab Gulf States Institute to some of Obama's top
aides and Murphy's colleagues. Obama's State Department has approved billions
in various military sales to Saudi Arabia since the Iran deal wrapped up,
including $11 billion in warships and over $1 billion in new bombs. Though it is not explicitly
stated, observers see the Obama administration’s efforts to shore up the Saudi
military and continued support for the disastrous war in Yemen as a tacit
trade-off for the kingdom's accepting the nuclear deal. More
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There is
so much propagandistic coverage of Syria that it is hard for even well-meaning
peace activists to sort things out. Here are two articles from a
point of view rarely encountered in the mainstream press. The first is from a
British correspondent – with impeccable mainstream credentials –reporting from
Aleppo.
A Syrian acquaintance from
Aleppo, now living in Boston, wrote: “If you want to know what is really
happening in Aleppo and was barely reported on any media, I would say please
take the time & read this long yet important article. This is the story I
know & I keep telling everyone. The two men whose names were mentioned in
the article are people I know & I can say they are telling the truth (though
they have different political views, but the reality is something they can
disagree on).
“Same stories I keep hearing from
all my friends & family back in Aleppo. Even from those people who fled the
Rebel-held areas as they refused to join them. They are now staying in
Government areas... not only because they support the government (they might not
but of course they also don't support those other people who they can't tell
from where they came & what they want), but because these are the areas
where they can live a "normal life" without being forced to carry a weapon
against the other side. I just wanted to confirm that what I & everyone
else read in this article is true. As I have experienced it before I came here,
& my family has & still experiencing it everyday for the last almost
four years.”
The
second article is from a Syrian government (i.e. Assad regime) spokeswoman. One
should treat it with caution, obviously. But why are Syrian “rebels” quoted
endlessly in the MSM news but we are never invited to hear what the Syrian
government has to say?
JOURNEY TO ALEPPO:
How the war ripped Syria's biggest city apart
At the start of
2012, by which time much of Damascus was at war, the Aleppan business community
says it was targeted in a series of assassinations and killings. Political and
religious leaders say they were threatened with death or torture unless they
went across to the rebels. “We knew we were being targeted,” says Fares
Shehabi, head of Aleppo’s chamber of industry. “We knew what was coming. We sent
a message for the army to be sent to Aleppo.” The request was ignored. On 5
July of that year an armed convoy - the Brigade of Tawheed, an Islamist group
that has previously praised Nusra - rolled into ancient Aleppo. It
dispersed, burnt down police stations, set up road blocks. Within a few weeks,
the rebel brigades had taken over most of the city. “At first we thought they
were Syrians,” said Shehabi. “But after a few weeks we got reports about
foreigners. Fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Saudi, Iraq, Eqypt.”
“This was not regime change, it was invasion. And why was it taking a religious
theme? Why does it have a beard? We are not ready to replace a secular society
with a religious one.” More
The Rise of ISIS and
Other Extremist Groups: the role of the West and Regional Powers
The Syrian
government’s immediate response to the protests, despite the violent incidents
at the very onset of events, was reconciliatory, as some of the demonstrators
had genuine demands. On 24 March 2011, the Syrian leadership convened a long and
important meeting in an effort to contain what seemed to be a looming crisis. I
was asked to hold a press conference in order to acknowledge, in the name of the
leadership, the people’s legitimate demands and to announce decisions and
measures that addressed most of these demands. On that day, I announced to the
Syrian people the lifting of emergency laws, in place since 1963, and a
comprehensive reform package that would lead to further political freedoms, a
multi-party law, and the drafting of a new constitution for Syria. Next day,
people told me that they out to have dinner celebrating Syria averting a looming
crisis. A feeling of relief prevailed all over the country due to the
leadership’s quick response to the demands… This conciliatory approach, however,
was met with much worse intransigence by those who claimed to represent the
Syrian people and was by then occupying much of the airtime on Al-Jazeera and
al-Arabyia. These two channels played an inciting role, encouraging people to
protest and rebel against the Syrian government, and they constituted the
primary source for news about Syria to all Western media outlets.
More
The U.S. Military
Bombs in the Twenty-First Century
It’s probably
accurate to say that in the course of one disappointment or disaster after another from Afghanistan to
Libya, Somalia to Iraq, Yemen to Pakistan, the U.S. military never actually lost
an encounter on the battlefield. But nowhere was it truly triumphant on the
battlefield either, not in a way that turned out to mean anything. Nowhere, in
fact, did a military move of any sort truly pay off in the long run… what
politician in present-day Washington would have the nerve to suggest the
obvious? Isn’t it finally time to pull the U.S. military back from the Greater
Middle East and put an end to our disastrous temptation to intervene ever more
destructively in ever more repetitious ways in that region? That would, of
course, mean, among other things, dismantling the vast structure of military bases Washington has built up across the Persian Gulf
and the rest of the Greater Middle East. Maybe it’s time to adopt some version
of Senator Aiken’s mythical strategy. Maybe Washington should bluntly declare
not victory, but defeat, and bring the U.S. military home. More
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