Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED: Fine, We Won; Just Come Home

America, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, War

“We won, we’re going home! We won! Its over! America, we brought democracy to Iraq!” Bless the poor survivor of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, who shouted these pathos- (and bathos) filled words out of “the back of his Stryker vehicle.” Jubilation among the soldiers, the second most abused and bamboozled people to have (voluntarily) taken part in the Iraq fiasco, is more than understandable. The first are the Iraqis, whom we conscripted involuntarily. (MURDER BY MAJORITY.)

I noticed that Keith Olbernmann and Rachel Maddow, who were honest about Bush’s war during the Bush years, have reversed course, declaring victory. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that 1) their guy Obama now owns the Iraq war. 2) Midterm elections are nearing.

“Amazing. We finally made it out, we made it back. We’re good. Happy to be here. Happy to go home. We got our mission done successfully and it was good to go.” So said Pvt. Nicholas Kelly. I’m chocking back the tears as I write (thinking of stuff like this, which I chronicled during the years of writing about Iraq).

Pvt. Troy Danahy of Hampton, N.H: I missed “Just America in general. I just miss grass, simple, little things, winter, snow and all that.”

After a mere week of 90 plus degrees in the shade here in the Pacific North-West, the olfactory sensations that come with the cool never fail to make my heart overflow for this beautiful landscape that is my home. Can you imagine how intoxicating the fragrance of home is to the poor men who’ve suffered the suffocating climate of Iraq, that barren, inhospitable, dangerous dump?

I’ll leave it at that. It’ll be a while before these men arrive on these shores of ours. Still, Welcome home. I’m a little tongue-tied, emotional, and teary-eyed myself.

Is it really over, or is this just another of their cruel, craven jokes?!

UPDATE: Recommended: “Iraq in the rear-view mirror” by Ned Parker. The Powers That Be have promised that the remaining troops will not see combat. I presume this means no more patrols for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices).

UPDATED: Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism

Barack Obama, Bush, Economy, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Government, IMMIGRATION, Justice, Law, Political Economy, Regulation, Republicans, States' Rights

The following is from “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism,” now on WND.Com:

“Sean Hannity wants to know how Arlen Specter could go from ‘supporting George Bush, in some years 80-90 percent of the time, to supporting Barack Obama 96 percent of the time, considering the two men’s principles – their core values, their belief system – are in diametrical opposition.’

They are? How so? …

Bush pursued wars that have contributed to the bankrupting of this country and the death of thousands of innocents. Obama has sustained the same momentum in those far-flung occupied lands. The gabbers on television who coo and kvetch nostalgic about Bush’s virtues should console themselves thus: Yes, The Decider was the originator; Obama nothing but a second-hander. But give Barack a break. The 44th president may not be as blessed with killer core values as the 43rd. But he’s doing his best. Has he not expanded the one theatre (Afghanistan) to compensate for drawing down in the other (Iraq)? …

Moocher Obama has pulled ahead of Looter Bush with respect to deficits and debt. The Bush budget for 2009 was a trivial $3 trillion, while Obama’s 2010 budget was a respectable $3.5 trillion. According to “Bankrupting America,” “Bush doubled the debt to almost $6 trillion and Obama’s plans would leave us with an IOU of an additional $8.5 trillion by 2020.”

C’mon. Six trillion; 8 trillion: the act of racking up such financial liabilities exists on a continuum of criminality ? it does not constitute a difference in kind (or in “core values”).” …

Barack’s tidal wave of regulation is hard to beat … But a second-best to BHO The Regulator is not to be sneezed at. The Decider is still in the running for America’s Best Enforcer (a very bad thing indeed). …”

The complete column is “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism.

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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UPDATE (Aug. 6): DICK’S DOCTOR. I mentioned Dick Cheney in the column:

“Barack’s tidal wave of regulation is hard to beat – in particular the financial-reform bill, which goes beyond Dick Cheney’s wildest dreams in increasing the overweening powers of the executive branch. (Barack will be able to seize a firm he designates as systemically risky.)”

Even Dick’s doctor is a mini-dictator. My ears perked up. I heard someone talk about federal law preempting state law. No, this was not a discussion of Arizona’s SB 1070. There was more muttering about compelling drug stores, at the pains of punishment (for that is what a new law means) to carry defibrillators. I was, in fact, listening to a snippet from an interview cardiac surgeon to Mr. Cheney was giving to Liz, daughter to the dictator. In case Dick dropped while shopping in their aisles, the good doctor wanted the feds to compel certain outlets (not sure which) to carry the life-saving defibrillator.

Liz nodded.

War Party Inc. Rages At WikiLeaks

Foreign Policy, Glenn Beck, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, War

Here’s how you know the Republicans are the enemies of liberty and justice. Not a word have their megaphones among the media said about “the deaths of tens of thousands,” often at the hands of our forces, revealed in the release, by WikiLeak, “of over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.”

FoxNews focuses on the obscure Iran-extremism connection. Fox would never jeopardize an occupation.

The Washington Times took the side of the administration by choosing to belabor its warnings about the potential harm the truth could do “to those that are in our military, those that are cooperating with our military, and those that are working to keep us safe” (namely the networks of criminals, terrorists, and warlords we are nurturing in that blighted part of the world).

Similarly—and predictably—The War Street Journal zeroed in on the administration’s hunt for a culprit, “Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst charged this month with leaking [the] classified information”— “thousands of military documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks.

I had to switch Glenn off; his sermons sans information are fit for packaging in a cheap, motivational DVD box set. But no, I heard nothing from him either that would indicate that he favored pulling back the curtain to show the facts of this war.

In fascistic fashion, other NEOCONSERVATIVES called for the arrest of the founder of WikiLeaks. “Julian Assange, once described as the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel of cyberspace, is uncompromising in his scrutiny of big business and big government.”

Kudos to Rachel Maddow’s program which told it like it is, with no regard for Obamby’s feelings.

“The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.”

“THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ BEGINS TO EMERGE FROM THE SHADOWS,” writes war correspondent Eric Margolis.

And that’s a good thing.

Court Rules For Kosovo (Liberation Army)

Foreign Policy, Islam, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, UN

Our friend Nebojsa Malic appeared on Russian TV (fronted by American and British women) to discuss “the predictable and shocking” “decision of the International Court of Justice, made public on July 22, that the unilateral declaration of independence by the provisional government of Kosovo did not violate any applicable rule of international law.”

Read his complete analysis, where he states that “‘If there was one consistent theme to the U.S. position, it was that the Serbs should lose’ : Americans and Europeans [have insisted] that the integrity of Croatia and Bosnia trumped the Serbs’ right to self-determination. Yet when it came to Kosovo, the ‘principle’ shifted again, so the rights of Kosovo Albanians trumped the integrity of Serbia! … ‘If there was one consistent theme to the U.S. position, it was that the Serbs should lose.”

RT: