Greenwald on the Five Wars US Is Fighting in Muslim Countries

[EFerrari]

2009 in Perspective: Glenn Greenwald on the Five Wars US Is Fighting in Muslim Countries

As 2009 draws to a close, today we begin by taking a step back and putting this year in perspective.

The war in Afghanistan was escalated twice in 2009 by President Obama and with it, the death toll of Afghans and US and NATO forces. In the latest news, a suicide bomber attacked a CIA base in Afghanistan Wednesday, killing eight Americans. In Pakistan, the number of US drone strikes has increased dramatically over the past year and in Iraq there are still tens of thousands of US troops deployed. Now, Obama a new military front appears to be opening up against Yemen with Obama ordering cruise missile attacks there.

Meanwhile, the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay remains open and human rights groups have decried what they call an Obama administration policy of preventive detention.

On the domestic front, the president’s top legislative priority–healthcare reform–is lurching forward with legislation passing both the House and Senate. But many question the nature of the reform with no public option and no employer mandate.


http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/31/glenn

Audio, video at link; transcript up soon.

[EFerrari]

1. Kick

[G_j]

2. and only Congress can declare war

oh well... just a piece of paper...

[Vidar]

3. K&R.

[Goldstein1984]

4. It's getting fuzzy... so confusing...

Is terrorism war or crime? - I think crime
Is torture interrogation or crime? - I think crime
Is summary execution (i.e. assassination) of criminals illegal? - I think it is
Is killing civilians in the process of assassination criminals illegal? - I think it is

Has the "war on terror" become a license to kill anybody we want in any country we want by any means we choose? - I think it has

Has the "war on terror" become the same excuse for empire building that the "war on drugs" has become in Latin America? - I think it has

War is peace
Love is hate
Ignorance is strength

And I contribute...

Democracy is fascism

[EFerrari]

6. The war on terra is mostly counter-insurgency just as the war on drugs is.

Lately the hypocrisy of our policy and stance toward Iran for doing exactly what we are supporting in Honduras is really bothering me. Although, so far, four times as many activists/protestors/civilians have been killed in Honduras as have lost their lives in Iran.

As Glenn said in this interview, when the Iranian government imprisoned a journalist for three months, our media had a field day with the story. Yet, we had Sami al Haj in Gitmo for SEVEN YEARS without charging him with any crime and his interrogators asked him about al Jazeera, not about terrorism.

The hypocrisy is nauseating.

[Flaneur]

7. One is a war on a substance, the other a war on an abstraction.

Silly us.

[Goldstein1984]

9. All part of the War on the Working Class

[leftstreet]

12. +1

[EFerrari]

14. It's cover to suppress the people while the corporations use us

our money and other resources.

[Goldstein1984]

8. Our policy on Honduras, was on the right track until

DeMint raised a stink and traveled to Honduras to lend his support to the business interests and their coup government. Obama seemed to back off after that, and ended up tacitly supporting the coup by making no further statements in favor of democracy, except to give a blessing to the election administered by the coup government. The hypocrisy is palpable.

Here's another one: During the first post-election protests in Iran, Twitter was going to go off-line for 48 hours for a scheduled software upgrade, but our government intervened and asked them to postpone the upgrade because Twitter was being used to coordinate the protests. When American citizens protested at the G20 Summit, the Philadelphia police responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and LRAD weapons. Subsequently, federal authorities arrested a person, confiscated his computer, and ransacked his apartment for using Twitter to help the protestors avoid the Philadelphia police.

We are not what we pretend to be.

[EFerrari]

13. Even before DeMint, Obama never cut off funding, never stopped training

their military at the SOA. I don't buy that the plane carrying Zelaya fueled up at our base w/out anyone knowing he was on it and before the coup, Negroponte was in Honduras conferring with Micheletti. DeMint was just the icing.

And you make a good point about the Twitter incidents.

[Goldstein1984]

16. I believe you are correct

The transient support for Zelaya was unlikely a sincere effort, given the business interests and a Honduran military leadership trained and indoctrinated by the U.S.

Watch. Latin America will be the next front in the War on the Working Class. They'll call it the war on drugs, and maybe they'll toss in the war on terror, and if those don't cover enough ground we'll just be defending vital national interests.

[EFerrari]

17. The adiministration or rather, hardliners within it, are already

ratcheting up militarization; Clinton has already threatened the region not to get close to Iran; it's already started. I think Honduras was just a trial balloon.

[Goldstein1984]

18. And we'll continue to demonize democratically elected leaders

like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales because they are democratically elected socialists, and that's bad for business.

Honduras was just all about adding Zelaya to the list.

[wuvuj]

10. It's not fascism when we do it....

[amborin]

5. KNR

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." Ernest Bevin

[Echo In Light]

15. K&R

[Octafish]

19. The only thing we can afford is war.

Making war on weaker nations and "The Other" is how empires get what they want for the aristocracy "In-Crowd."

Thank you for the info, EFerrari. DemocracyNow is one of the few lights in the darkness. You are another.

[EFerrari]

21. Happy New Year, my friend. Hope it's a good one for us.

:grouphug:

[inna]

20. KR+20

Important post.

[Arctic Dave]

22. K&R

[Agony]

23. Kick nt