[cross-posted at Daily Kos] Has anyone besides us found it kind of odd that there’s been so much “fire and brimstone” about the health care reform bill compared to Bush’s Iraq War? The first thing we’ll say about the violence and threats following Congress’s passage...
War and Peace
Video Shows U.S. Killing of Reuters Employees in Baghdad
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO9Cu91g3JI&playnext_from=TL&videos=WBaohbkRpJs&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh%2Bdiv-1r-4-HM WikiLeaks.org has released a formerly classified U.S. military video that shows the view from an Apache helicopter gunship as U.S....
“Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam”
In the first two years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. maintained a skeptical but moderate and relatively quiet position on the war in Vietnam. He spoke out forcefully and at length against the war on April 4,...
Country First
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqaNbazBmKY&feature=player_embedded “The campaign we raged” John McCain is a United States senator. In the past he was a candidate for president. He prides himself on having survived some five years in a North Vietnamese prison and...
Best Wishes for a Green and Peaceful Christmas Present
And Hoping for a More Prosperous New Year for All “The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the...
Deeper into Afghanistan: 360 Degrees of Damnation
“we must rebuild our strength here at home . . . . the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.” —President Obama, Dec. 1, 2009 We wanted to take time to try to make sense of President Obama’s speech at West Point last week in which he announced his...
Wrong Call, Mr. President
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 Having taken a long walk after a filling Thanksgiving...
Homeless on Veterans’ Day
We reprint the following editorial from today’s New York Times as a reminder that a grateful nation owes its veterans more than ceremonies and nice words. Also, we salute the admirable commitment of General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to improving...
Harm’s Way, or, A Surge of His Own?
The ceremony at Fort Hood yesterday was beautiful, and heart-breaking. The pain was all too real, and the president’s speech was sincere, somber, respectful, and probably healing. But . . . could the ceremony have been designed in part as a warm-up, a stirring of our...
The Nobel Peace Prize 2009
Warm congratulations to President Barack Obama for being selected to receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” It is a proud and happy occasion for the President and for...
A Word About Our Focus on Health Care Reform
Levee-lovin’, tree-huggin’ as ever As our regular readers will have noticed, we’ve lately been focusing most of our energies on helping the campaign for health care reform. This is part of our mission: since Katrina we’ve been pushing Congress and the White House for...
Does Believing in Social Contract Make Us Socialists? Then So Be It.
Learning What We’re Up Against, and How to Carry On If we’re learning anything from the messy struggles for health care reform and the passage of the stimulus bill back in February (how long ago that feels!)—and it’s far from clear whether anyone is learning...
Feingold Asks Obama for Timetable on Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Think Progress calls attention to a report by ABC News that Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is calling on President Obama for a timetable for when the U.S. will withdraw forces from Afghanistan. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 after the attacks of September...
Get in Barack’s Face @ my.barackobama.com: Hold Firm on Iraq Withdrawal
We are confident that despite the media reports and rumors that Barack Obama is thinking of ‘refining’ his plan to end the war in Iraq, this does not mean he is retreating from his commitment. People are asking if Obama is backpedaling to the center, willing to relax his positions to win votes. (Arianna Huffington details “Seven Things Barack Obama Should Do to Keep from Blowing It” in a recent post on Huffington Post.) Incredibly, yet predictably, the McCain campaign claims that Obama is now coming around to McCain’s position on the war. Not bloody likely. The Republicans want to blur distinctions, but the candidates’ positions are starkly different.
Omigod! Infinite Iraqi Freedom! We’re Never Leaving!
As reported in The Guardian (UK), which has seen a confidential draft agreement covering the future of U.S. forces in Iraq, the U.S. has plans for an indefinite stay there. The agreement is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorizes the U.S. “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without a time limit.
In Honor of the Dead
Four thousand and counting. And the Bush administration plans to maintain troop levels at their current numbers. To pull out now, they tell us, would dishonor the sacrifice of those who have already fallen.
Feeling No Pain: Your Representative Democracy at Work
In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” with White House correspondent Martha Raddatz aired on March 19, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, Vice President Dick Cheney revealed once again how closely he listens to public opinion.
Ignorance, Gaffes, and ‘Myopia’: Josh Marshall Calls McCain ‘Unfit for Duty’
On the fifth anniversary of the launch of the Iraq War, Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo explains why the American public should have no confidence in the foreign policy ‘authority’ of Senator John McCain—and the Democratic candidates shouldn’t give him any credit, either. McCain does not possess the expertise or geostrategic vision he likes to think he has. (Boldface added for emphasis.)
Five Years of Operation Iraqi Freedom
This picture of a U.S. soldier in the Korengal Valley in the Eastern province of Afghanistan shows the traumatized exhaustion felt most acutely by soldiers in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq after years of war—but also by the American public.
Approaching Five Years in Iraq, 4,000th U.S. Fatality
We don’t know how this will play out, but we can be sure that while the Clinton and Obama campaigns sharpen their knives against each other, American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will keep on killing and being killed—for what?—and the U.S. will still be borrowing billions monthly for those insatiable wars. And New Orleanians once able to afford rent or mortgage payments before the federal levees broke will still be homeless, encamped near City Hall and under the Claiborne Street overpass, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will still be late with its plan for Category 5–strength hurricane protection for New Orleans and vicinity.