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Today's
Stories
January 3 / 4, 2004
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
January 3 / 4, 2004
The Wrong War at the
Wrong Time
Military
Might Does Not Insure Stability
By JACK SHANAHAN
Vice Admiral, US Navy (Ret.)
Recent polls show that an increasing majority
of Americans are growing weary of absorbing the lion's share
of responsibility for running the world. They sense that the
current administration's use of military force as the primary
instrument of statecraft goes against American tradition in conducting
our relations with other nations.
While there was a "clear and present
danger" from terrorists across the globe and a need to confront
them, the Bush Administration's obsession with Saddam Hussein
took us into the wrong war at the wrong time.
As a result, terrorists are free to act
at will on a worldwide basis while the U.S. searches for a way
out of the Iraqi morass and while most of the rest of the world
watches from the sidelines.
If we haven't learned already, hopefully
we will by the time we extract from Iraq, that military power
does not automatically translate into political and economic
stability. We need urgently to find new approaches which, if
they cannot solve a crisis, at least will allow us to manage---with
the help of others--- the problems that are surfacing as part
of an entirely new set of circumstances.
The U.S. is today the world's sole superpower.
If it is our goal to maintain this status quo, like it or not,
the U.S. needs to use our considerable political, economic, moral,
and military influence to develop and shape a permanent "stand
alone" peacekeeping mechanism within the United Nations.
The United Nations has indicated that
it is willing to take a more active role in the fight on terrorism,
on conflict resolution and to carry out more peace operations.
The outbreak of ethnic fighting in the former Yugoslavia brought
extensive if not always successful U.N. involvement and mediation.
Elsewhere, in the Far East, in Africa, and in Central America,
U.N. supervised peace agreements have contributed to the return
of stability and encouraged regional participation in finding
solutions to regional problems.
While we and the UN should study past
operations for "lessons learned", we must carefully
avoid becoming mired by the past. The Cold War with its deep
east-west antagonisms is history. The future promises closer
cooperation among the five permanent members of the Security
Council, a promise already realized for many UN operations. Terrorism
threatens all five permanent members and so provides a pragmatic
basis for cooperation. This cooperative spirit suggests that
the Security Council, if provided adequate and experienced staff
support, can increasingly assume responsibility for peace operations
as alternatives to unilateral military action.
What the UN does not need, nor should
it have, is a standing military force. What it does need is a
series of initiatives from member nations that gives the UN,
under the direction of the Security Council and implemented by
the Secretary General, an effective peace keeping and peace enforcement
planning capability-in effect a contingency force headquarters.
Toward this end, member nations should undertake steps to:
· establish, within the Department
of Peace Keeping Operations, a legitimate contingency planning
staff to include standard staff support functions of intelligence,
communications and logistics in lieu of current ad hoc procedures.
· establish Regional Peacekeeping
Areas (RPKA). Nations within each RPKA, because they have vested
interests and posses unique knowledge and understanding of the
region's political, economic, military and cultural undercurrents
and influences, would establish their own contingency planning
staffs similar to that of the UN. Such staffs would be empowered
to call on, deploy and serve as the headquarters for earmarked
forces designated by regional states for peace operations.
To insure that one or two locally dominant
states cannot use the RPKA for their own (as opposed to broader
regional) benefit, RPKA interventions could be restricted to
those approved by the UN Security Council.
In many parts of the world the forerunner's
of RPKAs already exist: the OAS in the Americas, the EU in Europe,
the OAU in Africa, ASEAN in Southeast Asia and the Gulf Cooperation
Council in the Persian Gulf. Because most of these bodies were
established without a military security element as part of their
charters, some revisions to and expansion of regional "sovereignty"
would have to be negotiated.
· earmark a variety of military
units to be available for each region. Nations would indicate
the numbers and types of armed forces each would be willing to
commit to peacekeeping (under Chapter VI of the UN Charter) or
peace enforcement (Chapter VII of the UN Charter) operations
if called upon by the Security Council. Without at least this
level of involvement, RPKA contingency plans would be a sham,
the UN (and regional organization's) would be seen as "paper
tigers", and support plans for communications, intelligence
and logistics would be all but meaningless.
· identify a limited number of
member nations which could be called upon to provide or augment
a wide range of specialized support in the event a region cannot
muster these types of units. Specialized support functions which
come to mind are satellite communications and reconnaissance,
special intelligence, air and sea lift units, airfield control
detachments, fresh water (osmosis) units and training facilities.
If the U.S. really wants to protect its
national interests without finding itself overcommitted or having
to go it alone, we cannot avoid being a major leader in building
a more effective UN. Such a role does require unstinting political,
financial, and military support for UN peace operations. It also
demands the determination to work closely with other nations
in building flexible yet viable new structures for international
security. If we were to throw our considerable efforts into this
approach, within a few years the burden of meeting a broad range
of threats would be more equitably shared. With lower threats
would come lower military spending throughout the world and an
increase in resources available to address acute and growing
domestic challenges.
If the UN is to fulfill the promise it
held out to the world 58 years ago, it is imperative that the
U.S. take the lead in fostering UN organizational reform and
regional responsibility. We have the political, administrative
and military expertise to move the world; all we need is the
will to do so.
Jack Shanahan,
Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.), is a member of Business Leaders
for Sensible Priorities. He can be reached at: shanahan@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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