b. traven A dimwit president and his neo conservative handlers have left a feckless president and his neo liberal handlers a conflicted, imponderable, and explosive world we now live in. Obama, with the same nationalistic hubris of his predecessor has pivoted our massive sea power to the Pacific and Far East to thwart what he…
b. traven Last Friday, Eric Shinseki took the fall at Veterans Affairs. His resignation was driven mainly by reports of substandard medical facilities. But substandard medical care for veterans is hardly new (or news): the VA has never been funded adequately by a penny-pinching government that prefers to ladle money to defense contractors for more…
W.J. Astore Rachel Maddow at MSNBC aired a new documentary last night on why we went to war against Iraq in 2003. In a word: oil. Bush and Cheney were looking to overthrow Saddam Hussein as a prerequisite to controlling and privatizing Iraqi oil production. Pre-war planning in the U.S. as well as Great Britain…
W.J. Astore Note to readers: I wrote these words in November 2008, just after Obama was elected President for the first time. I’ve decided not to edit them. Perhaps they capture the thoughts (however flawed) of one American who was trying to understand the mess we had made of Iraq. Straight Talk on Iraq: Of…
Andrew Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army colonel and professor of international relations, writing in January 2009 as Barack Obama took office as president, made the following cogent observation about the need for true “change” in Washington: When it comes to national security, the standard navigational charts used to guide the ship of state are obsolete.…
Remember in 2011 after SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden and Disney wanted to trademark the unit’s name for a collection of toys and games and miscellanea? It’s one of those blips on our collective cultural radar that seems insignificant, yet it points to our tendency to see war and empire as a game,…
The Contrary Perspective 