Dear World, Americans Don't Want War in Syria

Open letter to the citizens of the world about our war-mongering government.

Anthony Freda Art

Eric Blair

Dear World,

As the U.S. government fabricates its way into yet another aggressive war, this time in Syria, I understand why you might resent average Americans because we allow this war path to continue.

After Gaddafi's carcass was dragged through the streets of Libya, our Secretary of State told you with a demonic smirk "We came. We saw. He died." I get it, they make us look like bloodthirsty thugs.

You might think we all agree with endless wars and unlawful drone strikes. You might think we condone the indefinite detention or torture of other humans. You may think we approve of the global police state and spy grid paid for by our tax dollars. You may believe we support our government's hubris bravado to conquer the world. You may even hate us for it.

Despite what you're told on the two-way telescreen, we are not okay with what our government is doing.  Our government has gone completely rogue. They don't represent us. We do not share its enthusiasm for blood. We're disgusted by it.

Obama’s Syria Policy Looks a Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy

Dees Illustration

Dr. Ron Paul

President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Postreported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

GOP Rep Says Strike On Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Would Not Be An Act Of War

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95% of 'Syrian rebels' not Syrians - report

Youtube - RT

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Israel Lobbyist - We Need a False Flag to Start War with Iran!

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This is Your Murderous War Policy on Blow(back): Any Questions?

Activist Post

For those still confused about what the term "blowback" means in regards to America's despicable foreign policy of preemptive war, violent regime change, and sponsorship of terrorist groups to do their dirty work, perhaps the two images below can clarify what many peace activists have been warning about for some time.

NATO cheered Gaddafi being murdered and dragged through the streets
by terrorist rebels sponsored by the West.

The Not-So-Secret War in Pakistan Exposed

We Are Change

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Eisenhower's worst fears came true. We invent enemies to buy the bombs

Britain faces no serious threat, yet keeps waging war. While big defence exists, glory-hungry politicians will use it

War Mind
 Anthony Freda Illustration

Simon Jenkins
Telegraph

Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain's borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again our leaders crave battle. Why?

Last week we got a glimpse of an answer and it was not nice. The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert Gates, berated Europe's "failure of political will" in not maintaining defence spending. He said Nato had declined into a "two-tier alliance" between those willing to wage war and those "who specialise in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks". Peace, he implied, is for wimps. Real men buy bombs, and drop them.

This call was echoed by Nato's chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who pointed out how unfair it was that US defence investment represented 75% of the Nato defence expenditure, where once it was only half. Having been forced to extend his war on Libya by another three months, Rasmussen wanted to see Europe's governments come up with more money, and no nonsense about recession. Defence to him is measured not in security but in spending.

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Vision: An Antiwar Movement That Puts Peace Over Politicians

Instead of continuing the hard work of protesting unjust wars, too many people took the election of politicians with "D"s after their name as their own Mission Accomplished.

Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis
AlterNet

After campaigning as the candidate of change, the man awarded a Nobel Prize for peace has given the world nothing but more war. Yet despite Barack Obama's continuation – nay, escalation – of the worst aspects of George W. Bush's foreign policy, including his very own illegal war in Libya, you’d be hard-pressed to find the large-scale protests and outrage from the liberal establishment that characterized his predecessor's reign (and only seems to pop up when a Republican's the one dropping the bombs).

That's not for a lack of things to protest. Since taking office, Obama has doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan and now looks set to break his pledge to begin a significant withdrawal in July. He has unilaterally committed the nation to an unapologetically illegal war in Libya and in two years has authorized more drone strikes in Pakistan than his predecessor authorized in two terms, with one in three of their victims reportedly civilians. In Yemen, he has targeted a U.S. citizen for assassination and approved a cluster bomb strike that,according to Amnesty International, killed 35 innocent women and children.

Kucinich and Rand Paul Talk About Bipartisan Lawsuit Against Libya War (Video)

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Pentagon Papers finally published, 40 years on

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the
 Pentagon Papers in 1971
© AFP/Getty Images/File Neilson Barnard

AFP

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The Pentagon Papers, a US government report into the Vietnam War, were finally published in full, 40 years after embarrassing details of the document were leaked.

President Lyndon Johnson's administration commissioned a Vietnam Study Task Force in 1967 to write a comprehensive report about America's ill-fated involvement in the Vietnam conflict.

Excerpts were leaked to the New York Times in 1971, by former United States Military Analysist Daniel Ellsberg, showing that successive US administrations had lied to the public about Vietnam, and triggering then president Richard Nixon to attempt to prevent any further such leaks.

The Media Distract the Public from War

Dees Illustration

Sheldon Richman
Future of Freedom

If one is to judge by the tone of the television commentators, America must be deep in a crisis. Long stretches of cable time are devoted to the breaking news. Each detail is presented as more grave and consequential for the republic than the last. The fate of the country surely hangs in the balance.

What is it? War? Fiscal crisis? Mass unemployment? A double-dip recession?

No. A congressman was caught sending lewd photographs of himself to women over the Internet.

This is what now consumes so much of the news media’s attention. This is what outranks in news value continuing occupations of foreign countries, three overt and an undetermined number of covert wars, and a looming fiscal crisis. As America’s imperial elite seeks to hold on to and extend its global power in defiance of economic reality, the spectacle of a congressman, Anthony Weiner of New York, appparently sharing pictures of his private parts with female strangers has taken center stage.

6 in 10 Americans Now Oppose Obama's War in Libya

The president has made himself vulnerable by launching the conflict without congressional cover. Will Republicans capitalize?

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Six in 10 Americans don't think the U.S. should be involved in Libya, according to a new CBS News poll. It found that only 30 percent of Americans think we're doing the right thing by intervening militarily in that country. That includes majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents. As a point of comparison, 51 percent of Americans and a majority of Republicans think we're "doing the right thing" in Afghanistan. The Libya numbers are bad news for the man in the Oval Office.

What does it mean for a president seeking reelection to have launched a wildly unpopular war without congressional approval? That his Republican challengers should run to President Obama's left on at least some aspects of national security. It might've been awkward to do so given that much of Obama's national security strategy is identical to the one that Republicans praised under George W. Bush. But this affords a surprisingly easy opportunity to win support from an electorate that is tiring of expensive foreign wars: The GOP nominee need not disavow conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan that rank and file conservatives defended for so long. He or she need only rail against the expense, execution, and questionable strategic value of fighting in Libya.

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US calls Libya rebel council 'the legitimate interlocutor'

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shakes
hands with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheik
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan
© AFP/Pool Susan Walsh

AFP

ABU DHABI (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here Thursday described the Libyan rebel council as "the legitimate interlocutor" of the Libyan people, a senior US State Department official said.

Clinton "used the word 'the' rather than 'a' in describing the TNC (Transitional National Council) as the legitimate interlocutor for the Libyan people through this interim period," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Clinton, he said, made the distinction in a speech to representatives of world powers preparing for a Libya without Colonel Moamer Kadhafi.

"This is our own signal of moving toward that transition of working with the TNC on its own roadmap through this interim period," he said.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license.

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Hip-Hop Star Lupe Fiasco calls Obama/US "The Biggest Terrorist" (Video)

Activist Post

CBS interviewed hip-hop star and activist, Lupe Fiasco, where he called Obama and the U.S. government the "biggest terrorist.":

"In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America...I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. You know, the root cause of terrorism is the stuff that the U.S. government allows to happen, and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's just some oil." -- Lupe Fiasco

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The Heavy Cost of the Bush-Obama Murder Rampage

Dees Illustration

Anthony Gregory
Lew Rockwell

In every election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.

On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.

House Passes Authority for Worldwide War

Sam Milgrom
ACLU

The House just passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including a provision to authorize worldwide war, which has no expiration date and will allow this president — and any future president — to go to war anywhere in the world, at any time, without further congressional authorization. The new authorization wouldn’t even require the president to show any threat to the national security of the United States. The American military could become the world’s cop, and could be sent into harm’s way almost anywhere and everywhere around the globe.

Before the vote, the House debated an amendment that would have struck the worldwide war provision. That amendment was introduced by a bipartisan group of representatives: Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Given the enormity of the proposed law, you’d expect the House to debate the amendment to strike it extensively, but that’s not what happened. The amendment was debated for a total of 20 minutes. That’s right. Twenty minutes to debate whether Congress should hand the executive branch sweeping worldwide war authority.

US lawmakers pass $690 billion Pentagon bill

The US House of Representatives passed a
$690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday
© AFP/DOD/File

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives passed a $690 billion Pentagon budget Thursday that bars American ground forces in Libya and limits the Obama administration's powers on handling Guantanamo detainees.

Lawmakers voted 322-96 in favor of the budget plan which met the Defense Department's request for $119 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also placed restrictions on President Barack Obama's authority to reduce the US nuclear weapons stockpile under the new START treaty with Russia, prompting a White House veto threat earlier this week.

NATO's Feast of Blood

A Dispatch from Tripoli

Cynthia McKinney reports
from Libya
Wikimedia Image

Cynthia McKinney
Counterpunch

While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union’s survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.

NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a “cordon sanitaire” around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the “Cold War.”

Paul: Do Nothing Senate Lets Obama Break War Powers Law (Video)

Youtube





Here’s what noted Republican Abraham Lincoln once wrote on the subject:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don’t.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.'

Related Article:   

Republicans in Congress to Crown Obama King

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