Military
Hearing about all of this Russian hacking, Trump, and politics, in general, these days seems to be like eating the same type of food every night, you literally get sick of it. This begs the question, should we even pay attention to it? Of course, we should, the political realm and the corporate stranglehold over it (and above that sit the financial elite) are taking advantage of us because WE are the ones that allow this entire charade to continue.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader puts check on Laura Bush and Michelle Obama for selective criticism when it comes to kids harmed by brutal U.S. policies: “Would be nice if Laura Bush and Michelle Obama had expressed similar heartfelt concern for the tens of thousands of children killed or seriously maimed by the wars of their husbands in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”
With a “green light” from the Trump administration and essential military support from the U.S. government, Saudi-led forces plowed ahead with an assault on the Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Wednesday, brushing aside dire warnings from international humanitarian organizations and a small group of American lawmakersthat an attack on the key aid harbor could spark a full-blown famine and endanger millions of lives. Win Without War wrote on Twitter that the attack on Hodeida is “a dark moment of shame for the United States. We could have stopped this.”
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, where every position of power is appointed by either the king or other members of the Al Saud royal family from which the nation derives its name. Trump recently visited Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the U.S., and took the opportunity to deeply criticize the two nations’ mutual foe, Iran, and its commitment to democracy weeks after it held its presidential election. Though clearly hilarious and at the same time appropriately awkward, the incident highlighted the fact that mainstream journalists rarely ask the obvious questions that might so easily expose the glaring hypocrisy of US foreign policy and its leaders.
After Pompeo’s unveiled “Plan B” for nuclear negotiations—which comes around two weeks after President Donald Trump violated the Iran nuclear accord and placed the U.S. on the path to yet another war in the Middle East—National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi argued that the Trump administration’s demands are intentionally unrealistic and “clearly designed to ensure there cannot be any new negotiation.”
If Any Other Country Was Shooting Civilians Like Israel, The US Would Be Calling For Invasion By Now
The death toll in Gaza increased dramatically on Monday as Israeli Defense Forces opened fire on thousands of Palestinian civilians, killing 41 and injuring at least 1,700, and the United States’ response served as a reminder that if the governments in Iran, Syria, North Korea or Russia had done the same thing, the U.S. would be calling for a full-scale invasion right now. It is hypocrisy at its finest, especially considering the fact that the U.S. has a history of cheering on and aiding protests against foreign governments. In fact, when the mainstream media began sharing reports of protests in Iran in December 2017, President Trump took to Twitter to cheer on the dissidents.
Once again, the Israeli military has turned its guns on Gaza—this time on unarmed protestors, in a series of shootings over the last few weeks. Gaza’s already under-resourced hospitals are straining to care for the thousands of protesters who have been injured, in addition to the 40 who have been killed.
The documents themselves are quite bizarre and, honestly, despite reports dismissing them, it is worth remembering that this is exactly what the CIA was working on for years during MKULTRA. That program was supposed to have been shut down after the Church Hearings and other congressional hearings exposed all of the CIA’s clandestine activities at the time many that violated human rights including experimentation on patients and the American population without their knowledge.
As Americans rushed to pay their taxes on Tuesday before the official deadline, peace groups reminded the public of the uncomfortable fact that an “astronomical amount” of the money sent to the IRS each year goes not to funding education or a single-payer healthcare system the U.S. supposedly can’t afford, but straight into the bloated coffers of the Pentagon.
The media’s job, we are told, is to ask skeptical questions about the people in power. That didn’t happen in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and it’s not happening now. Here are the questions that should be asked – not just on the eve of a bombing attack, but every day we continue our disastrous and drifting military intervention in the Middle East.
A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis): Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.
Holding up the U.N. charter, which allows the use of military force for members only when necessary for self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council, Bolivian ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz said, “And we also know that they have nothing but scorn for international law…”
In August 2012, then-President Barack Obama publicly warned the Assad government that the red line for his administration was “a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” which would prompt a U.S. intervention. Since Obama drew his red line, the official narrative went something along these lines: Assad decided to give Obama the political middle finger and routinely massacre civilians with banned nerve agents such as sarin gas, even in the face of warnings and hawkish calls for intervention. The latest alleged attack took place over this past weekend in a Damascus suburb in Eastern Ghouta known as Douma, just days after Trump called for the withdrawal of U.S. forced from Syria.
We need a Poor People’s Campaign to amplify the voices of regular folks above the lobby of militarized industry, a poisoned economy, to demand jobs in industries other than war-making, to demand opportunities for working class folks that don’t require killing other working class folks.
Between 1.5 and 3.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003. Now, as we begin the 16th year of the Iraq war, the American public must come to terms with the scale of the violence and chaos we have unleashed in Iraq. Only then may we find the political will to bring this horrific cycle of violence to an end, to replace war with diplomacy and hostility with friendship.
