Regarding any order to invade and or kill in another country: “An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed but obeying such an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while following orders — if the[Read More...]
by Richard Martin Oxman “What’s the difference between our enabling the Saudis to blockade Yemen and making it possible for Stalin, Mao and Hitler to commit their atrocities?” — Question asked by one of the authors home schooled teenage charges The Saudi-led coalition has not allowed Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) flights into Yemen for the past few days, directly hindering[Read More...]
Four US soldiers died in Niger on October 4, and the president’s insensitive phone call to the widow of one has brought the subject of the military in every corner of the world back in the news. The UN has 193 members. The US has over 240,000 troops in at least 172 of them, some of which are embroiled in[Read More...]
It has been a week of repeated insults to U.S. adventurism and Donald Trump’s ill-defined Middle East policy. In Iraq, thanks to Iranian backing and astute negotiation, Kirkuk province is back in the hands of the Shia government in Baghdad halving the Kurds’ oil revenues. Iran now has a land bridge through Syria to the Mediterranean improving the accessibility[Read More...]
On the one hand, people will deduce that their best interests are served by investing in productive activities that ameliorate deprivation of one kind or another. On the other hand, people will always try to legitimize the means they use as acceptable practice when faced with competition for access to valuable resources. It’s also the case that…like Endymion…people tend[Read More...]
In order to simplify the Syrian theater of proxy wars, it can be divided into three separate and distinct zones of influence: that are, the Syrian government-controlled areas, the regions administered by the Syrian Kurds and the areas occupied by the Syrian opposition. Excluding Idlib in northwestern Syria, which has been occupied by the Syrian opposition, all the major population[Read More...]
Comparing testimony from Vietnamese women and American soldiers, Gina Marie Weaver, in her book Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in The Vietnam War, finds that rape of Vietnamese women by American troops during the US invasion of Vietnam was a “widespread”, “everyday occurrence” that was essentially “condoned”, even encouraged, by the military, and had its foundation in military training and US culture. [Read More...]
Peace Teach-In, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, September 23, 2017 It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the line of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy… Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by[Read More...]
Here we go again! Years after most Americans forgot about the longest warthis country ever fought, American soldiers are again being deployed to Afghanistan. For almost 16 years now, at the command of three presidents and a sadly forgettable succession of generals, they have gone round and round like so many motorists trapped on a rotary with no exit. This time their[Read More...]
When it comes to the “world’s greatest military,” the news has been shocking. Two fast U.S. Navy ships colliding with slow-moving commercial vessels with tragic loss of life. An Air Force that has been in the air continuously for years and yet doesn’t have enough pilots to fly its combat jets. Ground troops who find themselves fighting “rebels” in Syria previously armed and trained by[Read More...]
