War and Planet Earth: Toward a Sustainable Peace

Toward the end of Homer's Iliad, a formative work for the military ethic of the West that was to extend its influence for nearly three thousand years to the present day, the gods hold council to respond to a shocking event taking place on the plains of Troy: the hero Achilles has tied the body of Hector, his most recent victim, to the back of his chariot and is dragging him around the walls of the city. In the course of this debate the god Apollo delivers a famous line: "For he [Achilles] is torturing the mute Earth in his fury." (Il. 24:54)

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Gilbert Mercier: The American Empire Is Collapsing, And Americans Will Be The Last to Know

50 years from now historians will probably be writing about the fall of the American empire. But history is writing itself furiously in the present, accelerated by the revolution of global freedom of information. What would have taken years to unlikely gather is accessible to anyone with a few strokes on a computer keyboard. So never mind the historians of the future, and lets see how reality is shaping up today.

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Martha Rosenberg: Soldiers, Drugs and Suicide

More soldiers than ever are on drugs that have been linked to suicide and violent behavior. In 2009 there were 160 active duty suicides, 239 suicides within the total Army including the Reserves, 146 active duty deaths from drug overdoses and high risk behavior and 1,713 suicide attempts. In addition to suicide, other out-of-character behavior like domestic violence is known to erupt from the drugs.

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Andy Kroll: The New American Oligarchy -- Creating a Country of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Rich

There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington’s bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It’s a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors. It’s a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy.

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Chris Hedges: Hope, Real Hope, Is About Doing Something

On Dec. 16 I will join Daniel Ellsberg, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern and several military veteran activists outside the White House to protest the futile and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of us will, after our rally in Lafayette Park, attempt to chain ourselves to the fence outside the White House. It is a pretty good bet we will all spend a night in jail. Hope, from now on, will look like this. Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.

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Jeremy Scahill: America's Failed War in Afghanistan -- No Policy Change Is Going to Affect the Outcome

At the end of the NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal this weekend, the leadership of the Afghan Taliban issued a statement characterizing the alliance's adoption of a loose timeline for a 2014 end to combat operations as "good news" for Afghans and "a sign of failure for the American government." At the summit, President Barack Obama said that 2011 will begin "a transition to full Afghan lead" in security operations, while the Taliban declared: "In the past nine years, the invaders could not establish any system of governance in Kabul and they will never be able to do so in future."

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Ray McGovern: Warmonger: Bush in His Own Words

Why should George W. Bush have been "angry" to learn in late 2007 of the "high-confidence" unanimous judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier? Seems to me he might have said "Hot Dog!" rather than curse under his breath.

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Few Afghans know reason for war, new study shows

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don't know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.

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Wikileaks set to release new Iraq war logs 'seven times bigger than the first'

Wikileaks has announced it is to release a second batch of Iraq war logs which will be seven times bigger than the first. In a defiant posting on its official Twitter account, the websites founders said it was under intense pressure over the disclosure but vowed to press ahead anyway.

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Ira Chernus: Is Palestine America's Next Vietnam?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasnt been alone in playing for time when it comes to American policy, thats for sure. (Think, for instance, of our Afghan War commander General David Petraeus.) But Netanyahu played out the pre-election months with some skill and much shuffling of feet, as he officially pondered Obama administration proposals to reinstitute a settlements freeze in return for copious concessions. All the while, of course, West Bank building has been ramping up, as the 2010 elections crept ever closer. Now, its happened and lets be blunt: its a good moment for him and his policies -- in Washington. The new crew of Republicans who were swept into Congress seem to consider fealty to him and his right-wing government the sine qua non of political life.

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