Andrew J. Bacevich - Unleashed: Globalizing the Global War on Terror

As he campaigns for reelection, President Obama periodically reminds audiences of his success in terminating the deeply unpopular Iraq War.  With fingers crossed for luck, he vows to do the same with the equally unpopular war in Afghanistan.  If not exactly a peacemaker, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can (with some justification) at least claim credit for being a war-ender.

Yet when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration’s success in shutting down wars conducted in plain sight tells only half the story, and the lesser half at that.  More significant has been this president’s enthusiasm for instigating or expanding secret wars, those conducted out of sight and by commandos.

President Franklin Roosevelt may not have invented the airplane, but during World War II he transformed strategic bombing into one of the principal emblems of the reigning American way of war.  General Dwight D. Eisenhower had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.  Yet, as president, Ike’s strategy of Massive Retaliation made nukes the centerpiece of U.S. national security policy.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175547/

The amazing expanding Pentagon

When President Obama and Mitt Romney cross swords on defense policy, it can sound like a schoolyard fight: Who loves the military more? Who is tougher? Who would lead a more muscular America?

This is the way we expect candidates to talk about defense: in terms of power, force, even national pride. But increasingly, when it comes to the role the Department of Defense actually plays for the nation, it misses the point. Over the past decade, the Pentagon has become far more complex than the conversation about it would suggest. What “military” means has changed sharply as the Pentagon has acquired an immense range of new expertise. What began as the world’s most lethal strike force has grown into something much more wide-ranging and influential.

Today, the Pentagon is the chief agent of nearly all American foreign policy, and a major player in domestic policy as well. Its planning staff is charting approaches not only toward China but toward Latin America, Africa, and much of the Middle East. It’s in part a development agency, and in part a diplomatic one, providing America’s main avenue of contact with Africa and with pivotal oil-producing regimes. It has convened battalions of agriculture specialists, development experts, and economic analysts that dwarf the resources at the disposal of USAID or the State Department. It’s responsible for protecting America’s computer networks. In May of this year, the Pentagon announced it was creating its own new clandestine intelligence service. And the Pentagon has emerged as a surprisingly progressive voice in energy policy, openly acknowledging climate change and funding research into renewable energy sources.

Read More:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-27/ideas/31837499_1_foreign-policy-pentagon-schoolyard-fight

Stephen Lendman - IS AMERICA GOING TO WAR? Anti-Iranian Propaganda in High Gear

Listen to Stephen weekly on Thursday's at 11am (Eastern) and Saturday and Sunday at 1pm (Eastern)

When America goes to war or plans one, the media march in lockstep. 

Articles, commentaries, editorials, and broadcasts feature Washington handout-style journalism. 

Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure. Readers and viewers are deceived and betrayed.

For years, Iran and Syria have been targeted for regime change. Independent governments aren't tolerated. Puppet ones are planned to replace them. Scoundrel media play leading roles.

On May 24, The New York Times headlined "Iran Nuclear Talks End with No Deal."

P5+1 talks failed as expected. Washington bears full responsibility. Deal-making isn't at issue. It's portraying Iran as uncooperative for added justification to wage war.

"The six wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which is considered a short step from bomb grade."

In fact, it's a giant one to 90% required for weapons making. It's especially so without intent to produce them.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31069

Jack A. Smith - American Politics: THE ELECTIONS WON'T BRING PROGRESSIVE CHANGE, SO WHAT CAN?

Less than six months before the November presidential elections in an exceptionally distressed United States the narrow, unpleasant parameters of political possibility are emerging. Two alternatives confront the American people, both to the right of center

1. If President Barack Obama is reelected, with the Democratic Party retaining control of at least one chamber of Congress, there probably will be four more years of economic stagnation, high unemployment, increasing poverty and inequality, more wars, erosions of civil liberties and global warming.

2. If Mitt Romney is elected, with the right/far right Republican Party dominating either House or Senate, every particular of the travail afflicting the country today will be multiplied, with emphasis on fulfilling the desires of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

What else could be expected during the present conservative era? Paul Krugman, the liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, recently described Obama, whom he supports, as having ruled like "a moderate Republican circa 1992." Viewing the ultra-conservatives, African American professor and left intellectual Cornell West detected "creeping fascism."

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31042

Eric Holt-Giménez - Obama's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: Nothing New About Ignoring Africa's Farmers

President Barack Obama wants to convince the world that he is actually a liberal after all.

First he not-so-hastily follows Vice-president Joe Biden's support for gay marriage to assure us he is a social liberal. Then, last week at the G8 meeting, he announces The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition -- a $3 billion corporate investment initiative to end hunger in Africa -- to remind us he is still an economic liberal.

Not that the world needs reminding.

Like Bush, Clinton and every other president since Ronald Reagan, Obama believes that proprietary technologies, unregulated global markets and the unchecked power of corporate monopolies will solve all our social, economic and environmental ills. Never mind that 30 years of economic liberalization has impoverished the farmers of the global South, kicked off global warming, pushed the number of hungry people up over 1 billion and dragged us into the largest world-wide economic depression since -- well, the last liberal Great Depression.

The New Alliance is an initiative to convince the world that government and industry are finally doing something about world hunger. But as one African civil society group pointed out, it is not new and it is not an alliance.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/25-5

Paul Craig Roberts - Washington’s Hypocrisies

The US government is the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst--Israel.  But this doesn’t hamper Washington from pointing the finger elsewhere.

 

The US State Department’s “human rights report” focuses its ire on Iran and Syria, two countries whose real sin is their independence from Washington, and on the bogyman- in-the-making--China, the country selected for the role of Washington’s new cold war enemy.

 

Hillary Clinton, another in a long line of unqualified Secretaries of State, informed “governments around the world: we are watching, and we are holding you accountable,” only we are not holding ourselves accountable or Washington’s allies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the NATO puppets.  

 

Hillary also made it “clear to citizens and activists everywhere: You are not alone. We are standing with you,” only not with protesters at the Chicago NATO summit or with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, or anywhere else in the US where there are protests.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31046

Barack Obama: Let’s Steal 150 Million Dollars An Hour From Our Children

Do you think that someone could steal 150 million dollars and get away with it?  Well, the truth is that such a theft is taking place every single hour of every single day.  The federal government is stealing 150 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren and Barack Obama thinks that is a good thing.  The new Obama budget projects a $1.33 trillion federal budget deficit for the 2012 fiscal year.  That is significantly higher than the $1.15 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office was projecting because it includes a whole bunch of stimulus spending that the Obama administration plans to do.  So let's do a little math.  When you divide $1.33 trillion by 365 days, you get 3.6438356 billion dollars.  So on average, the United States will be adding more than 3.6 billion dollars to the national debt every single day during fiscal 2012.  And when you divide $3.6438356 billion by 24 hours, you get 151.8 million dollars.  So on average, the U.S. national debt will be going up by more than 151 million dollars every single hourduring fiscal 2012 if Obama has his way.  This is a theft from our children and our grandchildren that is so vast that it is almost unimaginable.

The 2012 budget deficit that the Obama administration is projecting would be equivalent to approximately 8.5 percent of GDP.  We simply cannot afford to be running these kinds of outrageous budget deficits year after year.

Read More:

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/barack-obama-lets-steal-150-million-dollars-an-hour-from-our-children

Mehdi Hasan - Sadly Barack Obama, like Mitt Romney, is an apologist for the 1%

Poor Mitt Romney. Despite defeating a weird and wacky line-up of candidates in a gruelling Republican primary race, and despite selling himself as "the CEO president", he can't seem to shake off his image as a slash-and-burn private equity boss, a modern-day incarnation of Gordon Gekko.

It hasn't escaped his opponents' attention. In 2008, Romney's then rival for the nomination, Mike Huckabee, mocked him for looking like "the guy who laid you off". Last year, during his own brief and bizarre bid for the presidency, the billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump ridiculed Romney as "a funds guy" who would "buy companies … close companies [and] get rid of the jobs". And, last week, Team Obama released a campaign ad attacking Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, and referring to the Republican candidate as a "vampire".

In a show of co-ordinated faux outrage, Republicans have since called on the president to disown such attack ads. But drawing attention to Romney's record as a corporate raider is fair game. As co-founder and chief executive of Bain Capital, Romney did make hundreds of millions of dollars from private equity deals, and did lay off hundreds of workers in the process.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/24/barack-obama-mitt-romney-apologist

Obama's Five Trillion Dollar Lie

Why isn't the U.S. economy in a depression right now?  The number one reason is because the federal government has stolen more than five trillion dollars from future generations since Barack Obama was elected and has used that money to pump up our grossly inflated standard of living.  Whether the federal government spends money wisely or foolishly, the truth is that the vast majority of it still ends up in the pockets of the American people who then use it to buy the things they need for their daily lives.  If the U.S. government had not borrowed and spent an extra five trillion dollars that we did not have over the past several years, we would be in the middle of a rip-roaring economic depression right now.  So any talk that Barack Obama is "improving the economy" is a total farce.  It is a five trillion dollar lie.  The reality is that Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have been stealing trillions of dollars from future generations in order to make things tolerable in the present.  If the federal government adopted a balanced budget next year, the debt-fueled prosperity that we are currently enjoying would start disappearing very rapidly and all hell would break loose in America.

At this point, the U.S. national debt is over 15.7 trillion dollars.

When Ronald Reagan took office it was less than a trillion dollars.

If you were to divide the national debt up equally, it would come to more than $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

So the share of the national debt for an average family of four would be about $200,000.

Read More:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/obamas-five-trillion-dollar-lie

Michael Brenner - Seven Sins of the Democrats

The Democrats are in a shambles. Progressives, ne liberals, are in particularly dire straits. They have been marginalized and their influence on public policy wanes even as events reconfirm their values, their philosophy and their historic cause. They face an election that pits extreme rightists against an incumbent president who fits comfortably into the national establishment’s moderate wing. They have no standard bearer. Their core constituencies are being ignored or patronized. The terms of debate on the great issues of the times have been set without reference to them or their ideas.

They have themselves to blame since they have committed the Seven Sins of politics.

SLOTH 

Democrats are slow on the uptake. Their reaction time – whether to events, shifts in public mood, or Republican actions – is lethargic compared to the quick response of the latter. This goes along with a tendency to drift lethargically with the tides rather to make their own waves and to ride them resolutely. Exhibit number one is the swelling anger in the country after the financial breakdown of 2008.  This was a natural for the Democrats. The discrediting of Republican dogma and their business underwriters, the abuse of financial power, exposure of the fatal flaws in the snake oil of market fundamentalism, a spotlighting of the huge gap between the fortunes generated by casino capitalism while mean earnings for salaried people stagnated. Yet it was the crackpot right through the subsidized Tea Party movement that channeled all that passion to the reactionary end of the political spectrum? Democrats, liberal Democrats anyway, still can’t figure it out. Nor can they accept the glaring truth that they were sold out by the Obama administration in the name of the White House’s own self-serving commitment not to rock the boat by doing anything that challenged seriously the status quo. The same scenario developed with the 2010 volte-face in the direction of ‘austerity’ and subverting Social Security and Medicare in the name of budgetary discipline.

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/05/22/SEVEN-SINS-OF-THE-DEMOCRATS/