War Without End, Amen: Into the Afghan Abyss with Obama
I have disagreed vehemently with Patrick Buchanan on almost every issue over the years, but he is right on the money when he says that Barack Obama’s Afghanistan strategy is an eerie replication of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam strategy, and will almost certainly have the same result: years and years of death and ruin, ending in defeat. Buchanan charts it out:
Dogs of War: Hijacking National Policy
There is always much talk in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) of the Israeli tail wagging the American dog. As we have often noted here, there are many figures on the anti-war side who seem to believe that the owners and operators of the gargantuan American war-and-empire machine — people like the Bushes, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, just to name a few prominent players of current and recent times — are basically decent, amiable,
Death for Dinner: Haley Barbour Kills Dale Leo Bishop
As you probably already know, they executed Dale Leo Bishop in Mississippi last night. I had urged readers to write to Governor Haley Barbour and respectfully request that he commute Bishop’s death sentence to life imprisonment, since he did not actually murder anyone, although he did take part in a terrible crime. Barbour refused — even though he had just released a man who had murdered his wife in the street: blew her head off with a shotgun. But that actual murderer had been a servant in Barbour’s mansion; wiping the dribble off Barbour’s jowls is obviously a qualification for
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop
Dale Leo Bishop is scheduled to be killed tomorrow by the state of Mississippi — despite the fact that he did not kill anyone, although he assisted an attack that turned into a murder. The actual murderer, oddly enough, was sentenced to life in prison; but Bishop, who is mentally ill, was sentenced to die. [For more, see previous post on this subject.]
All of his judicial appeals have been exhausted now. Outside a highly unlikely intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, the only hope Bishop has is a
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the ‘Flip-Flop’ Charge
I think it is time for all those who have opposed the American invasion of Iraq to stand up for Barack Obama and acquit him of the ludicrous charge hurled at him by so many on the so-called “left”: namely, that he has somehow “sold out” the anti-war movement with his recent statements about “refining” his long-held plans for a carefully calibrated end to the war.
Of course, the candidate himself has spoken most eloquently on this issue, pointing out that the
News That Stays News
A bit under the weather, so apologies for the light posting. Hope to be back in gear soon, so keep checking in.
Meanwhile, here is some abiding wisdom on the inevitable ramifications of macro-economic cycles in an unrestricted “free” market system (also known as “One law for the rich, another law for the poor”). This learned disquisition originally appeared in 1854, and was updated in 1993 by one of our most eminent men of letters (doctorates from Princeton and St Andrews University). Perpend:
Brutal Crime, Excessive Punishment: The Imminent Death of Dale Leo Bishop
Next week, the State of Mississippi is going to strap Dale Leo Bishop to a prison guerney and shoot him full of deadly chemicals. He’s going to die for murder although he killed no one. He’s going to die even though his case was grossly mishandled by a lawyer who refused to present mitigating evidence of the horrible abuse Bishop suffered as a child and his life-long struggle with mental illness. He’s going to die even though the man whom prosecutors admit is the one who committed the murder has been spared, while Bishop has been condemned
Renunciation and Escalation: Conflicting Tides in the Terror War
As we noted here last year, “an important development has been taking place in the real “war” on terror — not the profit-making, fear-and-domination machine of the Bush Administration’s devising, but the genuine struggle to quell the violence of Islamist extremism. Yet despite the great potential of this breakthrough, an overwhelming majority of Americans have never heard of it. Certainly it has not been featured — or even mentioned — by the corporate press and government PR engines in the United States. And why not? Because it is a breakthrough toward peace — and
Torture Triptych: Portrait of the Real America, July 2008
A panel of federal judges upholds the presidential autocrat’s right to seize American citizens and place them in military detention:
Court Backs Bush on Military Dententions (NYT)
Read that story in conjunction with this interview with Jane Mayer, about her new book on how the Bush-Cheney faction’s long-held, pre-9/11 doctrine of presidential autocracy was written on the bodies on tortured captives:
Six Questions for Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side (Harpers)
<img decoding="async"
Imperial Wizards: The Nangarhar Massacre and U.S. Plans for Central Asia
At first, the Pentagon denied that American planes had slaughtered dozens of Afghan civilians on their way to a wedding in the Nangarhar mountains. “Pure propaganda,” said the usual media and blogosphere sycophants. “It’s always ‘a wedding’ being hit, the same old story.” The military brass promised the usual investigation, no doubt hoping it would all go away. But then Afghan government officials confirmed the truth, and the BBC’s Alastair Leithead was the first outsider to visit the actual site of the massacre: