Foreign Policy & War

Manufacturing Terrorists

by Matthew Harwood September 1, 2013

The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism by Trevor Aaronson (Ig Publishing, 2013), 272 pages. Predators stalk Muslim-American communities across the nation today. They talk of brotherhood and of sacrifice. They talk of jihad and the duty of fellow Muslims to come to the defense of the faithful. Often they prey on the most vulnerable within ...

U.S. Has No Moral Standing to Condemn Assad

by Sheldon Richman August 28, 2013

Whether or not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, President Obama has no legitimate grounds to intervene. U.S. airstrikes, intended to punish and deter Assad and degrade his military but not overthrow his regime, would deepen the U.S. investment in the Syrian civil war and increase the chances of further intervention. Obama’s previous intervention is what has brought us to this ...

TGIF: Truman, A-Bombs, and the Killing of Innocents

by Sheldon Richman August 9, 2013

Sixty-eight years ago today a president of the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a city full of innocent Japanese. It was the second time in three days that Harry Truman had done such a thing: He had bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The fatalities in the two cities totaled 150,000–246,000. The victims – mostly children, ...

The U.S. Empire Provokes Terrorism

by Sheldon Richman August 8, 2013

Perhaps we’ll never know if intercepted chatter between al-Qaeda leaders — which prompted the U.S. government to close dozens of diplomatic missions in the Muslim world and to issue a worldwide travel alert — was serious or not. But mischief shouldn’t be ruled out. Without cost or risk, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, head of ...

Book Review: Opponent of Empire

by Martin Morse Wooster August 1, 2013

Rome’s Last Citizen:  The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar by Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press, 2012),  311 pages. A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty / is worth a whole eternity in bondage. — Joseph Addison, Cato Some of us know that the Cato Institute is named for Cato’s Letters, a series of essays ...

El Mal del Estado de la Seguridad Nacional

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 31, 2013

Las dos palabras más importantes en la vida de los americanos durante los últimos 60 años han sido “seguridad nacional”. El término ha transformado la sociedad americana a peor. Ha pervertido sus principios y valores. Ha atrofiado las conciencias. Ha alterado el orden constitucional. Y ha producido un gobierno, democráticamente elegido, que ejerce poderes totalitarios. Ahora vivimos en un país ...

Stupidity or Plan?

by Scott Horton July 1, 2013

Are America’s disasters abroad a result of stupidity or some elaborate plan? An observer of modern U.S. foreign policy can be torn on that one. It makes sense that generals, contractors, and other national-security state types will invent and follow a deliberate policy of divide and rule, as well as to create crises to move on to the next big job. ...

The U.S. Base on Diego Garcia: An Overlooked Atrocity

by Sheldon Richman June 4, 2013

The largest criminal organizations in the world are governments. The bigger they are, the more capable of perpetrating atrocities. Not only do they obtain great wealth through compulsion (taxation), they also have an ideological mystique that permits them uniquely to get away with murder, torture, and theft. The U.S. government is no exception. This is demonstrated by, among many other ...

TGIF: So What If Freedom Isn’t Free?

by Sheldon Richman May 31, 2013

“Freedom isn’t free.” We’ve all heard this glib line. It usually is uttered as an admonition to those who criticize some government imposition that is defended in the name of national security. The last time I heard it I had just condemned military conscription — the draft — as slavery. It’s also brought out to rebut those who refuse to ...

Obama’s Willful Foreign-Policy Blindness

by Sheldon Richman May 30, 2013

Republicans are upset about President Obama’s May 23 foreign-policy address, yet politics aside, it’s hard to say why. “We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News Sunday. But four days later in his Memorial Day remarks, Obama said, “Our nation is still at war.” Why did the ...

TGIF: The Greatness of Peace Activist John Bright

by Sheldon Richman May 24, 2013

As we approach Memorial Day — or what I like to call Revisionist History Day — it’s fitting to contemplate the words of one of the world’s great peace activists, John Bright (1811–1889). Bright, a Quaker and Nonconformist, is best known for leading (with Richard Cobden) Britain’s Anti-Corn Law League, the organization that fought successfully to abolish ...

TGIF: No Intervention in Syria

by Sheldon Richman May 10, 2013

If after the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya (dare I say Vietnam?) some people still want the U.S. government to intervene — further — in the war inside Syria (but fueled by outsiders), we must conclude, not that they can’t learn the lessons of recent history, but that they won’t because doing so would be contrary ...