Endless War category archive

Read J. M. Ashby on the cover-up.

(I found a better embed and replaced the first one, which was up for only about five minutes.)

Addendum, Early that Afternoon:

Noz looks behind the bluster:

Once again, I think what Israeli critics really fear about the Iranian nuclear deal is rapprochement between Iran and the West. A lot has happened since the U.S. broke off relations with Iran in 1979. These days there are a growing number of issues that Iran and the U.S.are effectively on the same side (the fight against ISIS is the obvious example). That prospect, not a nuclear deal, is what really terrifies the Israelis, and for that matter Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, the other members of the GCC, and Egypt.

Via Job’s Anger.

Trevor Timm, writing at The Guardian, finds the Republican response to the tentative agreement with Iran to consider an agreement, to be quite telling.

A small part of the Middle East may soon be off limits to US bombing and killing, so naturally Republicans and their neocon allies are furious.

The tentative Iran deal announced on 3 April, in which Western leaders and the Islamic republic agreed on strict limits to Iran’s nuclear program, was hailed by many as a breakthrough, given that it could avert yet another US-led war in the Middle East. So almost immediately, it was denounced by key conservative members of Congress, neocons, and Republican presidential candidates, whose unquenched thirst for blood almost always outweighs their supposed commitment to peace.

Do read the rest.

Thom and his guests investigate why the Republican Party is trying to sabotage talks with Iran.

Via Job’s Anger.

Read Tom Levenson.

Mother Jones reprints (reposts?) William Astore’s “7 Reasons America Is Stuck in Never-Ending War.” Here’s one, the seventh; follow the link for the rest.

The new “normal” in America is war: The 9/11 attacks happened more than 13 years ago, which means that no teenagers in America can truly remember a time when the country was at peace. “War time” is their normal; peace, a fairy tale.

What’s truly “exceptional” in twenty-first-century America is any articulated vision of what a land at peace with itself and other nations might be like. Instead, war, backed by a diet of fear, is the backdrop against which the young have grown to adulthood. It’s the background noise of their world, so much a part of their lives that they hardly recognize it for what it is. And that’s the most insidious danger of them all.

Dan Simpson looks back at 60 years of American interventionism–Indochina, the Middle East, Afghanistan, among others–and becomes profoundly depressed at the outcomes. A snippet:

And I have concluded that the U.S. role in former French Indochina — Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — from roughly 1963 to 1975, was fairly destructive at that time and for the future. Our bombing and, in effect, occupation of parts of that area destroyed physical and societal infrastructure and left the region a wreck. Without taking the big leap off the end of the board, it seems to me that we are doing the same thing in the Middle East and Afghanistan now.

Some analysts argue that this is U.S. policy, that the United States deliberately busts up countries and regions to keep them susceptible to our influence and incapable of presenting problems for us — though I don’t know that I would agree. The proclaimed cause can change. It might be anti-communism, anti-terrorism or the promotion of democracy, but our armed aggression and the resulting broken, weakened countries is the same, for the most part.

Read it, and think.

Warning: Language.

The funnest Republican thing–mongering war.

Via Balloon Juice.

Excerpt:

Six years into his presidency . . ., this man still thinks he can peruade us through reasoned argument. Has he met us?

Video moved below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

Read more »

Jeb “Oh God Please Not Another” Bush turns to the same stable of warmongers as his apparently (in Republican eyes) non-existent brother did so as to supplement his wisdom and perspicacity.