Iraq

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

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 […]

Afghanistan

Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan: Did the Mighty, Cutting-Edge US Military Machine founder on Guerrillas’ humble Improvised Explosive Devices?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Victory always seems to be just around the corner or at the end of the tunnel, until it isn’t. With the humiliation of defeat compounded by the difficulties extricating US personnel, second guessing is well underway and will likely last for years. The corruption of the government […]

Bush

Top 4 Times US Troops were Bombed under Republican Presidents and No one Resigned or was Impeached

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The silly season has descended permanently on Washington, D.C., so that minor congressmen are calling for the resignation or even impeachment of President Joe Biden over the ISIL-K bombing at Abbey Gate in the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26. Chris Cilizza called out the Nikki Haleys, […]

Afghanistan

The Endless Shadow of the War on Terror: Living With It Forever and a Day

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com) – It ended in chaos and disaster. Kabul has fallen and Joe Biden is being blamed (by congressional Republicans in particular) for America’s now almost-20-year disaster in Afghanistan. But is the war on terror itself over? Apparently not. It seems like centuries ago, but do you remember when, in May 2003, President George […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan only the latest US war to be driven by deceit and delusion

The Conversation

By Gordon Adams | – In Afghanistan, American hubris – the United States’ capacity for self-delusion and official lying – has struck once again, as it has repeatedly for the last 60 years. This weakness-masquerading-as-strength has repeatedly led the country into failed foreign interventions. The pattern first became clear to me when I learned on […]

Congress

In Bid to Recapture Congress’ Power to Declare War, Key Senate Committee advances Repeal of Iraq War Authorizations

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trish Turner at ABC News reports that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted to repeal the two Authorizations for Use of Military Force in Iraq passed in 1991 for the Gulf War and in 2002 for George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. I’m personally happy about this, since I […]

Archaeology

The U.S. Committed Cliocide (Destruction of History) in Iraq, and even Returning Gilgamesh Can’t Fix it

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US government has returned 17,000 archeological artifacts to Iraq, many of them over 4,000 years old. This, according to Al Jazeera The objects and tablets were looted from the country during the chaos of the Bush administration’s rule of that country and were smuggled into the U.S., then sold […]