Today's Stories

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Miliary

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 4, 2008

Changing the Rules

The Syria Attack

By CONN HALLINAN

A little more than a month ago, four U.S. Blackhawk helicopters crossed the Syrian border from Iraq and attacked a civilian farmhouse near the town of al-Sukkariyeh. The U.S. claims the farmhouse was an al-Qaeda way station and the eight men killed during the raid were terrorists, including a major al-Qaeda leader, Abu Ghadiya. The Syrians say the dead—five of them members of the same family—were building a house and had nothing to do with terrorism or al-Qaeda. A BBC report found that most of the dead appeared to be construction workers, including a night watchman, which suggests the raid may have been botched.

Sorting out what happened, who authorized the attack, and what the motivations behind it were is not an academic exercise, but one that goes to the heart of the Bush Administration’s “pre-emptive war” policy and the problems the doctrine presents to the in-coming Obama Administration.

When President George W Bush outlined the strategy of pre-emptive war in his 2002 West Point address, he broke with more than 50 years of international law and a central tenent of the United Nations Charter. One of the pivotal initiatives that emerged from the carnage of World War II were rules to prevent unilateral attacks by one country on another. Since the aggressors in WW II—Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan—all claimed they were fighting “preventive wars,” the UN insisted that only an actual or “imminent” armed attack could trigger an all-out conflict. And such wars were only legal if the UN Security Council authorized them.

There are a number of countries that have ignored these restrictions. The U.S., the Soviet Union, China, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, South Africa, Morocco and Britain all invaded other nations without bothering to get the blessing of the Security Council, mostly because it would not have been forthcoming. Still, the philosophy of “imminent danger” did play a certain restraining role through much of the last half century. For instance, the U.S. went through the process of obtaining UN authorization for Gulf War I.

But in the name of “liberal interventionism,” the Clinton Administration and NATO openly broke with the covenant in 1999 and launched a 75-day air war on Serbia. Indeed, on a number of occasions the Bush White House has pointed to the Yugoslav War as a precedent for its own pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush Administration, however, added “terrorism” as a rationale for war. As the 2002 National Security Strategy document puts it, “The United States of America is fighting a war against terrorists of global reach. The enemy is not a single political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism—premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against innocents.”

Elevating “terrorism” to “imminent danger” has allowed the Bush Administration to invade two countries, expand the powers of the executive, undermine constitutional checks on surveillance, and ignore U.S. and international laws on torture and incarceration.

Since “terrorism” is a tactic and a stratagem likely to be with us as long as one side in a conflict is vastly more powerful than the other, to wage “war on terror” is to fight a never-ending conflict.

In his book “Terror and Consent,” Philip Bobbitt, a Columbia law professor and former national security advisor in the administrations of Jimmy Carter, George H. Bush, and Bill Clinton, and foreign policy advisor to John McCain, argues that “nation states” are passé, because terrorism is everywhere and nowhere. If you believe there are terrorists in Syria you can invade because the old rules of national sovereignty no long apply. (For a fuller discussion of Bobbitt, see David Cole’s discussion of his philosophy in the Dec. 4 New York Review of Books).

So what was the attack on Syria about, and who authorized it? Was it a strategic decision made at the highest levels of government? Or CIA and Special Forces hot shots—Task Force 88 is rumored to be the unit involved—snorting too much methamphetamine?

The latter explanation is possible. When Donald Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary he endowed the Special Forces with a great deal of independence, and it is not entirely out the question that the attack was just the military doing what the military does.

According to U.S. Col Pat Lang, a retired intelligence officer, Special Forces many times operate outside of the established military command structure. “If left to themselves, they would do this kind of thing. They don’t follow policy, they carried out their assigned mission,” he says.

Which doesn’t mean that the highest levels of the Administration were not involved. Lang says the White House has often “bypassed the established chain of command” and that he has a “sneaking suspicion that the authority to do this comes right out of the White House.”

That “authority” is based on a 2004 classified order by the Bush Administration giving the U.S. the right to attack “terrorists” in some 15 to 20 nations, including Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran. According to the New York Times, “Each specific missions requires high-level government approval.”

The timing of the raid was certainly odd. While back in 2002 the Bush Administration declared Syria part of the “axis of evil,” relations between Washington and Damascus have improved in the last year.
The former U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, recently praised Syria for tightening its border with Iraq, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem at the UN in September. Syria also agreed to open an embassy in Baghdad, established diplomatic relations with Lebanon, and helped broker a ceasefire between the warring parties in that country. Damascus has improved its relations with the European Union (EU) as well, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Lastly, with Turkey as a middleman, Syria and Israel have been discussing a peace treaty and a return of the Golan Heights. In short, Syria is beginning to break out of the isolation imposed on it by the U.S. and the EU.

Which may be why it was targeted. A number of hawks in the Bush Administration, in particular Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East, Elliot Abrams and Vice-President Dick Cheney, have long advocated “regime change” in Syria. According to the Financial Times, the Bush Administration has discussed who should replace Assad, and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was put in charge of the operation. Cross border attacks were seen as a way to make Assad look “weak,” thus encouraging a military coup.

Abrams has long been close to Benjamin Netanyahu, who may be Israel’s next prime minister and who is implacably opposed to negotiations with either Syria or the Palestinians. A Netanyahu policy paper titled “A Clean Break” and authored by Cheney’s national security advisor, David Wurmser, advocates war with Syria. According to Israeli diplomats, during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, Abrams encouraged Tel Aviv to attack Syria.

So was this a hit by the hawks? An attack on Syria would not only derail the delicate negotiations over Golan, it would also fire a shot across the bow of the EU. Jonathan Freedland of the British Guardian says that the raid was to remind “those uppity Europeans who’s in charge.”
The Syrians are being very careful about how they react to the attack. While Damascus announced it would close a U.S. school, it has done little more than issue verbal protests. Syrian Foreign Minister al-Moallem told Der Speigel that Damascus has no wish to “escalate the situation,” nor give the U.S. an excuse to widen the attack. “We are not Georgia,” he added.

Whether it was Special Forces out of control—unlikely—or a high level effort by hawks in the Bush Administration to torpedo efforts to reduce tensions in the region—likely—,once again the U.S. has committed what in any other era would be considered an act of war. Princeton international law scholar Richard Falk called the raid a “serious violation of international law” and charged the Administration with “a unilateral expansion of the scope of the right of self-defense.”

President-elect Barak Obama has somewhat contradictory views on this question of “pre-emptive war.” During the election he openly called for violating Pakistan’s borders: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and (then Pakistan) President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

On the other hand, he says he wants to strengthen international organizations like the UN. And while his bellicosity on Afghanistan is worrisome, it might be more an effort to finesse a withdrawal from Iraq, and counter charges that he is “weak on terrorism,” than a full-blown commitment to escalate the conflict.

For the past several decades the U.S. has felt it had the right to define its own sovereignty as pre-empting all others. That philosophy has led to several ruinous wars and deep international animosity directed at this country. If the Obama Administration is serious about change it can start by rejecting force as a policy tool, a philosophy that has more in common with the law of the jungle than international law.

Conn Hallinan is an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

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