Iraq

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many other critical domestic matters. And yet — big surprise! — there’s always plenty of money for the […]

Featured

American Legacy of Instability in Iraq continues as caretaker Prime Minister Narrowly avoids Assassination by Drone

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al-Jazeera reports that Iraqi authorities on Sunday announced that Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi escaped being assassinated by three drones loaded with explosives that targeted his residence in the Green Zone in the center of Baghdad around dawn. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which damaged the prime […]

Afghanistan

Celebrating Rep. Barbara Lee, our Cassandra who warned against the Failed 20-Year Wars

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – For decades, I kept a poster on my wall that I’d saved from the year I turned 16. In its upper left-hand corner was a black-and-white photo of a white man in a grey suit. Before him spread a cobblestone plaza. All you could see were the man and the stones. […]

Featured

Epitaph for a Failed US Occupation: The Late Gen. Odierno’s Arch-Nemesis Muqtada al-Sadr wins Iraq

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The elections in Iraq have brought it briefly back into U.S. headlines, though it is a long time since Americans have given the mess they made there any thought. The late Gen. Ray Odierno, the former head of the 8.5-year-long occupation of Iraq who died on Saturday, once fingered a […]

Bush

Iraq is seeking 10 Gigawatts of Solar Power; if World had gone Green in ’80s, Would the US have ever invaded Iraq?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a historic irony, Iraq is turning to solar energy, according to Dania Saadi at SPGlobal. Ali Jawad at the Anadolu Agency reports that the Baghdad government is seeking to generate 10 gigawatts of solar power for electricity by 2030, though it already has several projects in train that will […]

Arab World

As Biden prepares to declare US 20-year War over at U.N., Remembering the Bush Lies that Started it all

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Aamer Madhani and Josh Boak at the Associated Press report that President Biden in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this year will seek to bring the curtain down on 20 years of American war, and will argue that instead the US will wage a multilateral campaign against […]

Bush

The Accumulated Evil of the Whole: That time Bush and Co. made the September 11 Attacks a Pretext for War on Iraq

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Kyle Swenson at the Washington Post reported in 2018 that Floridian Ishnar Lopez-Ramos was in love, but her intended only had eyes for another woman. So Ms. Lopez-Ramos enlisted two 22-year-old accomplices to target the other woman, who worked at the Ross Dress for Less at a shopping Center near […]

Afghanistan

September 11 and the Debacle of ‘Nation-Building’ in Iraq and Afghanistan

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – In one of his interviews before the Taliban retook Afghanistan, John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, blamed the American failure in Afghanistan on a change in Washington’s mission from anti-terrorism to “nation building.” In his view, Washington should just have held strategic […]

Afghanistan

How Can America Wake Up From Its Post-9/11 Nightmare?

Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies | – ( Code Pink | – Looking back on it now, the 1990s were an age of innocence for America. The Cold War was over and our leaders promised us a “peace dividend.” There was no TSA to make us take off our shoes at airports […]