Megalomaniacs

My article "US Foreign Policymakers Can't Be Trusted," written for the Independent Institute, is in today's spotlight at Antiwar.com.

America’s Foreign-Policy Makers Endanger Us

American politicians frequently declare that the government’s first duty is to protect us from foreign threats. If that’s so, why have they embroiled us in the Middle East?

Instead of keeping us safe, they seem to strive to put us in harm’s way by provoking one side or the other in sectarian, ethnic, tribal, and political conflicts. With one glaring exception -- Israel versus Palestine -- the U.S. government has been on almost every side of these complicated conflicts at one time or another, depending on the geostrategic context.

Considering that record, maybe we should reassess this thing called government. Perhaps if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t need it.

Foreign Policy Failure Everywhere

If one tried to design a foreign policy to embroil Americans in endless conflicts that would otherwise be quite remote, one could hardly do better than recent presidents of the United States. What could you do that these men have not done to keep Americans mired in distant turmoil?

Read it here.

Brian Williams Helped Pave the Way to War

The scandal of the week is NBC anchor Brian Williams’s shabby bid for self-glorification by falsely claiming he was in a U.S. military helicopter forced to land in the Iraqi desert after being hit by ground fire in 2003. Of course so-called news people shouldn’t make up stuff to look good, but there’s something much worse: uncritically passing along official lies intended to prepare the American people for war.

Read it here.

TGIF: The Poison Called Nationalism

I understand the love of the place one knew as a child. I understand the love of home, of family, of community, of neighbors, and of people with whom one has shared experiences and beliefs. I understand the love of virtuous principles as expressed in historical documents (such as the Declaration of Independence). That kind of love does not ignite hate for the Other or create admiration for the warrior who enjoys killing the Other on order. That takes the poison of nationalism and an obsession with the nation it creates.

Read it here.

Liberty.me Interview

I'll be discussing Chris Kyle with Naomi Brockwell at Liberty.me on Wednesday at 6 p.m. eastern. The details are here.

Kyle and Lanza: The Comparison

Kyle and Lanza

My article on Chris Kyle, “The American Sniper Was No Hero,” understandably upset many people, especially the penultimate sentence:

Excuse me, but I have trouble seeing an essential difference between what Kyle did in Iraq and what Adam Lanza did at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I can see a case for omitting that sentence. The strongest argument, which is strategic not substantive, is that it might anger readers so much that they would forget everything else I said in the article. I grant that could be so, although I’m inclined to believe that people whose anger moved them to answer me in the crudest possible manner would have been just as angry at the mere words “the American sniper was no hero.” We’ll never know.

The American Sniper Is No Hero

Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym forcompetent government-hired killer.

If Clint Eastwood’s record-breaking movie, American Sniper, launches a frank public conversation about war and heroism, the great director will have performed a badly needed service for the country and the world.

Read it here.

The Politicians Are Scaring You Again

They are doing it again. “They” are the war-party politicians, Democrats and Republicans. “It” is scaring you into supporting another war in the Middle East.

Read the full op-ed.

Will American Ground Troops Be Sent to Fight ISIS?

With the United States dropping bombs on yet another Muslim country, we might benefit from a close look at President Obama’s anti–Islamic State strategy.

Obama and his spokespeople are always quick to make two points: first, that no American ground forces will be sent into combat against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and second, that the United States will merely be part, albeit a leading part, of a broad coalition of Arab and NATO countries.

Read it here.

Liar, Liar!

Calling President Obama's ISIS plan a "counterterrorism operation" is a lie to pacify the American public. ISIS is not a terrorist group (though it's capable using terrorism as a tactic.). It's a nonstate conquering army that is taking and holding territory in order to build a formal state.

P.S.: If Obama really thought ISIS presented a significant threat to Americans at home, would he rule out sending ground troops?

Is the Foreign-Policy Elite Clueless?

The American foreign-policy elite seems to have no idea what it’s doing.
Americans may believe the government — especially the foreign-policy side — is at least minimally competent, but when one surveys decisions from the last few decades, one has to wonder. 

The current crop of policymakers, like earlier ones, know what they want to do: make the world safe for American leadership — or, less euphemistically, American hegemony: No rivals for American influence or access to resources and markets can be tolerated. As 

President George H.W. Bush said, “What we say goes.”
Even by that standard, the policy architects and executors look incompetent — or unbelievably cynical.

Read the full op-ed here.

Wrong, Hillary

Hillary Clinton says there would be no Islamic State had her advice been taken about arming the "moderate" opposition in Syria. To which Stephen Zunes replies:

In reality: 1) Much of ISIS's weaponry has come from overrunning FSA [Free Syrian Army, i.e., the "moderate" opposition's] positions and from fighters who left FSA and joined ISIS; 2) The FSA consists of hundreds of independent uncoordinated militia of largely untrained fighters, additional arms would not have made them effective; 3) Their [the Islamic state's] coming to power in northern Iraq is a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, which Clinton supported and Obama opposed.

Mission Creep in Iraq

There are several reasons not to intervene militarily in another country’s conflict, even modestly. One is the potential for mission creep.

We already could detect the signs of mission creep in Iraq. Now, with the stepped-up U.S. airstrikes after the Islamic State’s horrific execution of American reporter Jim Foley, the signs are clearer than ever.

Read it here.

Out of Iraq, Etc.!

Nearly a century ago, after four bloody years of World War I, British colonialists created the state of Iraq, complete with their hand-picked monarch. Britain and France were authorized — or, more precisely, authorized themselves — to create states in the Arab world, despite the prior British promise of independence in return for the Arabs’ revolt against the Ottoman Turks, which helped the Allied powers defeat the Central powers. And so European countries drew lines in the sand without much regard for the societies they were constructing from disparate sectarian, tribal, and ethnic populations....

History alone does not tell us what, if anything, outside powers should do now; there’s no going back in time. But we can say that without foreign interference, even a violent evolution of the region might have been far less violent than it has been during the last century. At least, the violent factions would not be seeking revenge against Americans.

It's all here.

TGIF: The Middle East Harvests Bitter Imperialist Fruit

The wall-to-wall coverage of the disintegration of Iraq ought to carry this credit: This bloodshed was made possible by the generosity of British and French imperialists.

The stomach-wrenching violence in Iraq — not to mention the horrendous civil war in Syria, the chronic unrest in Palestine/Israel, and problems elsewhere in the Middle East — are direct consequences of the imperialist acts of the British and French governments at the end of World War I, the history-altering catastrophe that began 100 years ago this August 4.

Read the full article here.

The Noninterventionists Told You So

Contrary to popular belief, there is no satisfaction in being able to say, “I told you so.” This is especially so with Iraq, where recent events are enough to sicken one’s stomach. Yet it still must be said: those who opposed the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003 — not to mention his father’s war on Iraq in 1991 and the sanctions enforced through the administration of Bill Clinton — were right.

The noninterventionists predicted a violent unraveling of the country, and that’s what we’re witnessing. They agreed with Amr Moussa, chairman of the Arab League, who warned in September 2002 that the invasion would “open the gates of hell.” There was no ISIS or al-Qaeda in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

Here's the entire article.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

It's funny. You'd think there'd be satisfaction in being able to say "I told you so" on Iraq. There isn't.

TGIF: Obama's Iraqi Fairy Tale

One need not condone Vladimir Putin’s ham-handedness to see that Obama has no leg to stand on when he contrasts Russia’s essentially bloodless and provoked annexation of Crimea with America’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq. Unfortunately, the Americans who committed this cold-blooded mass murder and societal destruction are less likely to face justice than Putin is for his crimes in, say,Chechnya.

Read the full TGIF.

An Answer for Hillary Clinton

When Hillary Clinton refers to her husband's presidency, she likes to ask: Which part didn't you like, the peace or the prosperity?

Well, I didn't like his murderous bombing in the Balkans and Iraq, and his child-killing sanctions on Iraq (which helped lead to 9/11). I didn't like his screwing over of the Palestinians and unswerving support for the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine. I also didn't like his housing-bubble-inflating HUD policies.

What say you, Mrs. Clinton? Do you support those policies?