Foreign Policy & War

Darwinian Stupidity

by Rich Schwartzman November 28, 2011

One has to question the mindset of the current administration in Washington. The country is $15 trillion in debt due to the ever-increasing welfare-warfare state. The warfare side of the equation is imperialistic to the point of crippling stupidity. Not only do we already have as many as 900 military bases, and military personnel in an estimated 130 different countries, ...

War with Iran Would Be Madness

by Sheldon Richman November 23, 2011

President Obama's refusal to rule out military action against Iran and GOP contender Mitt Romney's recent threat of war against Iran should appall anyone who believes, with the free-market liberal Ludwig von Mises, that not war, but peace, is the father of all things. If the U.S. government or its client state Israel were to attack Iran, all hell ...

GOP Debate Reveals Depraved and Deluded Political Class

by Tim Kelly November 21, 2011

The most recent GOP foreign policy debate revealed the depraved and deluded state of Americas political class. There was a time when U.S. presidents sought plausible deniability for things like torture and assassination; now such sordid practices are openly supported by candidates seeking the country's highest elected office. Several candidates were asked their opinion regarding waterboarding. Herman Cain said that ...

Thank You for Your Service

by Rich Schwartzman November 16, 2011

It was another Veterans Day without me wearing the display cap with my old chevrons and campaign ribbons. I put that cap together in the mid-1980s to help me deal with survivors guilt. I had spent 16 months in Southeast Asia, but I was at U-Tapao in Thailand, not a base in Vietnam. U-Tapao was a major B-52 base where ...

The Road to the Permanent Warfare State, Part 7

by Gregory Bresiger November 15, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 |Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 |Part 12 |Part 13 In later years, NSC-68 would be held up by revisionist historians as the inevitable ...

Drone Warfare Is Fraught with Danger

by Sheldon Richman October 24, 2011

One can understand why Libyans would celebrate the end of the Qaddafi dictatorship. But the American people should nonetheless be concerned about what the U.S. government did in North Africa. On the day Qaddafi was killed, the New York Times reported that “the death … is the latest victory for a new American approach to war: few if any troops ...

The Road to the Permanent Warfare State, Part 6

by Gregory Bresiger October 22, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 |Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 |Part 12 |Part 13 If there is a single factor which more than other explains the predicament in ...

Korea Shows All That Is Wrong With U.S. Foreign Policy

by Laurence M. Vance October 19, 2011

The tension on the Korean peninsula escalated late last year when South Korea began live-firing drills off its coastline. That was after North and South Korea shelled each other for the first time since the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. U.S. forces in the area went on high alert even as the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George ...

Why Did the United States Invade Afghanistan?

by Tim Kelly October 12, 2011

The tenth anniversary of the U.S. led war in Afghanistan came and went with very little attention from the mainstream media. U.S. policymakers are nevertheless confronted with many questions regarding that conflict, such as its affordability, the effectiveness of various strategies, and even whether U.S. forces should remain in that country at all. Those are all important issues, but the ...

Pat Buchanan versus The Good War

by Tim Kelly September 23, 2011

Patrick J. Buchanan, in Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War (reviewed in Freedom Daily in three parts, beginning here), charges British statesmen with blundering into wars that resulted in the devastation of Europe and the fall of their empire. It is not surprising that this book has a caused a stir, for it draws into ...

Peace Prize-Winner Obama Savages Somalia

by Sheldon Richman September 20, 2011

A human catastrophe is taking place in Somalia, the result of drought, famine — and the savage war conducted by the Obama administration, complete with a CIA training facility and prison. According to the Guardian, 150,000 desperate Somalis, mostly women and children, have walked more than 60 miles to a crowded refugee camp in Kenya in the past three ...

Dying to Corrupt Afghanistan

by James Bovard September 19, 2011

American soldiers are dying so that Afghan politicians can continue looting U.S. tax dollars. Foreign aid has long been notorious for creating kleptocracies governments of thieves. The $50+ billion foreign aid that the United States has dumped on Afghanistan over the past decade is a textbook case of how foreign handouts drag a nation down. Corruption has been a huge ...