W.J. Astore In the early 1970s, the US counted Iran as a close ally. A big fan of warplanes and weapons, I recall the US selling the F-14 Tomcat, the plane flown by Tom Cruise in “Top Gun,” as well as HAWK surface-to-air missiles and other advanced weaponry to the Shah of Iran. Back then,…
W.J. Astore Hillary Clinton will soon be announcing her candidacy for the presidency. She has learned from 2008, or so reports say, and will be reaching out to voters in “intimate” settings like pseudo-town halls, rather than the mass rallies of her previous candidacy, which were supposed to anoint her as the “inevitable” Democratic candidate…
W.J. Astore On 30 April 1970, 45 years ago this month, President Richard M. Nixon ordered an invasion into Cambodia. Explaining his reasoning for widening the war in Southeast Asia, Nixon declared: If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy…
Daniel N. White The criminal foolishness of advocating war against Iran is rather obvious. Senator John McCain, US Naval Academy ‘58, is a criminal fool by anyone’s definition to advocate launching a war we would certainly lose, as he so recently did from the floor of the Senate. This is obvious and the failure of…
W.J. Astore American reporting on Iraq focuses on the eternal now, such as the rise of ISIS or recent battles in Tikrit. Rarely is any context given to these events, and rarer still is any accounting of the costs of war (still rising) to the Iraqi people. Let’s return to 2003 and the U.S. invasion…
b. traven There’s an old comedy routine by Abbott and Costello. Abbott tells Costello, “Who’s on first.” (It’s a baseball routine.) Costello, not getting that the player’s surname is “Who,” keeps demanding: “No, I want to know who’s on first?” It goes downhill from there as the two comedians talk past one another, each exasperating…
James Keye I created this list of “American Myths” 25 years ago thinking that some significant part of the people would begin to understand them over time. What seems to be happening is that the country is dividing into those who cling with increasing aggression to these myths as others realize the falseness of them.…
Originally posted on The Contrary Perspective:
Trust me! W.J. Astore Once again, Hillary Clinton is in the news for the wrong reason. She used a private email account while she was Secretary of State, rather than an official government email account. As a result, not all of her (unclassified) emails are part of the public…
b. traven We’ve spent the last twenty-five years pulling Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s chestnuts out of the fire in the Middle East. First with Desert Storm in Kuwait in 1990-91, then Iraq in 2003, and now Iraq redux. We’ve made such a hash of these military interventions that only a mixed metaphor will do…
Nicolas J S Davies As I wrote this essay on the 12th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (March 19-20), the news was filled with its violent repercussions across the Middle East and the world. The latest atrocity was a multiple suicide bombing at two mosques in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, that have killed…
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