An analysis by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, which the U.S. Army has not approved for public release but has leaked to Rolling Stone magazine, provides the most authoritative refutation thus far of the official military narrative of success in the Afghanistan War since the troop surge began in early 2010.
You know you live in a police state when the president allows the military to continuously harass a prisoner against whom no crime has been proven by interrupting him every five minutes of the day to ask him, "Are you okay?" and forces him to stand to attention naked at roll call. What it can do to one man it can do to every man.
In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama announced a renewed commitment to manufacturing in the United States. While the commitment to rebuilding the country's manufacturing base is welcome -- manufacturing has historically been a source of good-paying jobs for workers without college degrees -- he unfortunately left the most important item on the list off the agenda.
As I listened to the president frame his address last night around the "successful" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I couldn't help but ask myself: What about the war crimes? What about torture, Abu Ghraib, drone strikes, "collateral damage," Guantanamo Bay? What about the Haditha massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians? What about the most recent video of U.S. Marines desecrating the bodies of the Taliban they had presumably killed? What about the estimated 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and the millions more displaced?
U.S. President Barack Obama recently announced that his government will soon unveil a new military strategy that switches focus to the Asia-Pacific region. The new focus shows that the United States fears the rise of China, which has enjoyed considerable economic growth over the past ten years.
The parallels between the Bush and Obama administrations are so striking as to make me wonder, is there any difference between these administrations at all? The answer, sadly, seems to be a resounding no.
The video of US marines urinating on Afghan corpses does not shock me. Though their behavior is disgusting and unacceptable, I find the public's reaction to this video far more troubling. People are not outraged that there are dead Afghans; they are outraged at the manner in which the dead are treated. This is indicative of our culture's tolerance for war and war crimes – as long as they are done in a gentlemanly fashion.
The new military strategy announced by U.S. President Barack Obama has one surprising section, which says that $450 billion should be cut from the country’s defense budget over the next 10 years.
If you’re not allowed to enslave people any more, or even loot their resources, then what is the point of being a traditional great power?
Iranian Foreign Ministry has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief to avoid politicizing Tehran’s nuclear issue.
Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: local, state, and federal, in that order.