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Foreign Policy & War

Mali: Here We Go Again

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In testimony before Senate and House committees, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enthusiastically endorsed increased U.S. intervention in Africa. When government officials seem incapable of learning obvious lessons from the recent past, maybe their incentive is not to learn but to keep doing the same destructive things. President Obama’s inaugural speech contained this line, which has gone quite ... [click for more]

The Tension within American Exceptionalism

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The concept of American exceptionalism is a key foundation of American freedom and militarism, individualism and imperialism. The meaning of the term seems to be elastic, changing through time and depending upon the purpose of each speaker. It has suffered a fate similar to the word “liberalism” in drifting far from its historical roots. What is American exceptionalism? One of the ... [click for more]

The Hagel Brouhaha

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Washington is going through one of its regular melodramas with President Obama’s nomination of former senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense. (In light of America’s foreign policy, this is a title worthy of George Orwell; the position should be renamed the “secretary of war.”) To Hagel’s credit, he has the proper enemies on the right. Neoconservative advocates of perpetual ... [click for more]

Private Murders versus Government Murders

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The December 14 murder of 20 children and 6 women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, has garnered vast media attention and caused countless people with no connection to the victims to grieve for them. This is not a new phenomenon: nearly all mass murders carried out by civilians generate the same type of coverage and response. But ... [click for more]

Why Is Foreign Policy Neglected?

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Throughout the (thankfully concluded) election year, everyone — including the electorate and the blindly shilling punditry — was so very zeroed in on the domestic economy, as they perceived it, that foreign-policy issues were virtually completely neglected. No one in the mainstream debate, which was hardly one at all, cared to remark on or decry the fact that the ... [click for more]

Petraeus Fell for the Wrong Reason

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David Petraeus has fallen — but not as he should have. Before being disgraced by an extramarital affair, the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director should have been shamed out of public life for his horrendous military record in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are we talking about the same David Petraeus who is said to have heroically saved Iraq with the ... [click for more]

The Japan Problem

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There were no issues of any real substance debated by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in the presidential campaign leading up to the recent election. With foreign wars raging, the USA PATRIOT Act and the NDAA threatening Americans’ civil liberties, the police state and surveillance state increasing, drone attacks killing foreign civilians, the drug war destroying Americans’ freedoms, the ... [click for more]

Supersized Fries, Downsized Jobs

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On November 2 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that America added 171,000 jobs in October. President Barack Obama lost no time in proclaiming to crowds, “Today we learned that our companies have created more jobs in October than in any of the last five months.” Meanwhile his unsuccessful presidential challenger, Mitt Romney, called the jobs report ... [click for more]

George McGovern Reconsidered

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The late George McGovern will probably be most remembered as the man who suffered the worst defeat of any presidential candidate in United States history. In 1972, he lost 49 states, including his home state of South Dakota, to the incumbent Richard M. Nixon. The electoral drubbing would make McGovern the butt of more than a few political jokes, and ... [click for more]
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