Peace and Security
Be Glad You’re Not Yemeni
Yemen is finally being thrust upon American consciousness. Little good can come of that. Up to now, the Yemenis had been allowed to suffer in private desperation. That’s over.
Wanted: 21st-Century Gun Laws for 21st-Century Weapons
Before the Tucson shootings are lost forever in the mists of time (which, given this country’s attention span, figures to be two weeks from now), we might do well to ponder the various reactions to the outrage.
The Eternal Drug War
The Afghanistan War sometimes seems interminable. It just became the longest hot war in U.S. history. The Cold War was longer; Now Pentagon officials dream of holding Kabul longer than that. Europe’s Hundred Years War remains the record holder, but things moved slower back then.
Ruled by Rifles
The Pentagon and the National Rifle Association have a lot in common these days. They’re in love with guns. They maintain powerful lobbies. They refuse to acknowledge the dangerous consequences of their policies.
The Tragic U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If that doesn’t accurately describe the more than nine-year-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, I don’t know what does.
National Insanity
A Nation of Laws?
The failure of the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan to contain the anti-government insurgency has led the Obama administration to expand the undeclared war in Pakistan. According to the Long War Journal, the number of U.S. attacks in Pakistan, using unmanned Predator drones, has gone from five in 2007 to 117 in 2010.
The Glory of War
Some 32,000 Americans have been maimed in Iraq and another 8,000 so far in Afghanistan. And for what?
Unmanned Drones
Enough Already: Close Gitmo
In January 2009, as one of his first acts as president, Obama signed an executive order that committed the United States to closing the prison within a year and ending the practice of torture.
