Foreign Policy & War

Reagan, the Bushes, and Saddam Hussein

by Russ Baker August 1, 2010

Throughout the Reagan-Poppy Bush years, the White House had been an eager backer of Saddam. The two administrations had provided millions of dollars in aid and had permitted the export of U.S. technology that Iraq used to build a massive arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly nuclear weapons. George W. Bush would repeatedly express outrage over Saddam’s 1988 gassing ...

Endless Occupation?

by Sheldon Richman June 28, 2010

So Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out and Gen. David Petraeus is back at the helm in Afghanistan. I don’t like hackneyed phrases, but if this isn’t rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, what is it? America’s occupation of Afghanistan has no end in sight. The July 2011 date for the beginning of withdrawal is something that even President Obama ...

UN Human Rights Council Discusses Secret Detention Report

by Andy Worthington June 14, 2010

On June 3, unnoticed by most of the U.S. media, the UN Human Rights Council held an interactive dialogue to discuss the “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” prepared by Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, Martin Scheinin, the Special ...

Serving the Empire, Killing for Lies

by Sheldon Richman June 3, 2010

We made it through another Memorial Day. Thankfully, most people think of it as just the start of summer. They don’t seem to use it as America’s political leaders have long wanted: as a day of reverence for America’s world domination. In his radio address this past Saturday President Obama urged all Americans to “serve” the members of the armed ...

Is the Peace Movement Finally Awakening?

by Sheldon Richman May 24, 2010

What America needs most today is a peace movement, a broad-based coalition that opposes not only the American empire’s operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (as well as less overt activities elsewhere), but also their attendant accretion of presidential power, which diminishes or eliminates civil liberties and the traditional protections accorded criminal suspects. Unfortunately, there have been impediments to the ...

Bringing Freedom and Prosperity to Afghanistan

by James Bovard May 1, 2010

The Obama administration is seeking to rechristen the Afghan debacle it inherited from the Bush administration. Obama’s efforts to legitimize the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan simply ignore the previous record of American actions in that nation. But the past debacles ensure the failure of Obama’s ramped-up interventions. Afghanistan was recently judged to be the second most corrupt nation on Earth. ...

Lessons for America from Germany’s Hyperinflation, Part 1

by Jim Powell May 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 Many Americans may be inclined to assume that Germans were barbaric because they supported Hitler, and whatever happened there couldn’t possibly apply to the United States. But the Germans have had much more in common with Americans than we might realize. Germans were educated and industrious. Germany had world-class universities. Germans long led the world ...

The Income Tax and the Welfare-Warfare State

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 23, 2010

On April 15, 2010, Jacob Hornberger gave the following speech at an event sponsored by the Young Americans for Liberty at Purdue University.

The CIA and the Assassination of John Kennedy, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Even though the CIA was the premier government agency in the world whose expertise was assassination, coups, and regime change, it does not necessarily follow that it employed its talents and abilities here in the United States in November 1963. But it’s an important factor that should have been considered ...

The CIA and the Assassination of John Kennedy, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Among the reasons the CIA should have been made a specific target of a criminal investigation in the John Kennedy assassination were: (1) the CIA was the world’s premier expert in assassination and coups; and (2) the CIA was in a partnership with one of the most crooked and murderous private ...

Barack Obama: No Radicalism to Be Found

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2010

A portion of the American people believe that President Barack Obama is a left-wing radical bent on transforming U.S. society in his image. There’s an easy way to dispel that misconception: Look at what he does and what he says. In domestic affairs Obama has stayed within the narrow establishment zone. The health-care “debate,” for example, has featured no radical ...

From Safe Republic to Unsafe Empire

by Bruce Fein February 1, 2010

It is the best of times for the American Empire. The United States bestrides the planet as an unrivalled colossus. Its annual military budget exceeds $650 billion. That staggering sum is greater than the annual military expenditures of the next 25 countries combined. The defense spending of Russia, the superpower opponent of the United States during the Cold War, is ...