Robert Fisk: Our Actions in the Middle East are What is Endangering Our Security.

The speed with which the Baghdad church massacre by al-Qa'ida has frightened the peoples of the Middle East is a sign of just how fragile is the earth's crust beneath their feet. Unlike our Western television news, Al-Jazeera and Arabia show the full horror of such carnage. Arms, legs, beheaded torsos leave no doubt of what they mean. Every Christian in the region understood what this attack meant. Indeed, given the sectarian nature of the assaults on Shia Iraqis, I'm beginning to wonder whether al-Qa'ida itself - far from being the center/kernel/font of "world terror" as we imagine - might be one of the most sectarian organizations ever invented. Nor, I suspect, is there just one al-Qa'ida but several, feeding off the injustices of the region, a blood transfusion which the West (and I'm including the Israelis here) feeds into its body.

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William Astore: The Face of War (Don't Look!)

Note for TomDispatch readers: For the last year or so, Timothy MacBain -- with one of the great soothing voices around -- has been producing top-notch audio interviews with TomDispatch authors at a rate of one or two per week. Today, TD is posting his latest interview, with retired Lt. Col. William Astore on what it felt like to come out of the military and learn how to write honestly about wars. You can hear it by clicking here or download it to your iPod, here. I just wanted to remind TomDispatch readers that, given MacBains growing archive of your favorite TD writers, you can be listeners here, too. Dont miss a chance to check out the Astore interview and others. Theyre special.

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The High Price of Patriotism

Its over for the U.S. in Afghanistan, but that doesnt mean the death and destruction are about to stop. Quagmires dont just go away. However, the signs are everywhere that the American course in that nation is doomed, that those directing this forlorn attempt at occupation of a country that has never tolerated occupation know there is no positive end in sight, and that the locals from President Hamid Karzai to the competing warlords and the Taliban are cutting their own deals on the assumption that our wishes no longer matter.

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Wikileaks' Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How US Ignored Torture

A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.

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The Chances of a War with China are Rising

The United States conducts monetary policy the same way it conducts foreign policy; unilaterally. When Fed chairman Ben Bernanke signaled last week that he was planning to restart his bond purchasing program (Quantitative Easing) he didn't consult with allies at the IMF, the G-20 or the WTO. He simply issued his edict, and that was that. The fact that the Fed's policy will flood emerging markets with cheap capital, pushing up the value of their currencies and igniting inflation, is of no concern to Bernanke. He operates on the same theory as former Treasury Secretary John Connally who breezily quipped to a group of euro finance ministers, “The dollar is our currency, but your problem.”

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David DeGraw: The Covert Origins of the Af-Pak War - The Road to World War III

This report is an excerpt from David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” It is a continuation from the previous section, “Inside the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, BCCI Operations.”

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David Swanson: U.S. Wars Are Bankrupting the World

The endless and infinite "war on terra" is bankrupting the planet. I don't mean moral bankruptcy; that goes without saying. I mean financial bankruptcy. And don't take my word for it. This is the argument made in a new book called "Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror Is Bankrupting the World," by Loretta Napoleoni, a financial reporter for Internazionale, l'Unita, il Caffe, Mondo e Missione, El Pais, Vanity Fair Spain, and Vanity Fair Italy.

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The War Addicts: the Pentagon and Military Would Do Almost Anything to Continue Neverending War

Sometimes its the little things in the big stories that catch your eye. On Monday, the Washington Post ran the first of three pieces adapted from Bob Woodwards new book Obamas Wars, a vivid account of the way the U.S. high command boxed the Commander-in-Chief into the smallest of Afghan corners. As an illustration, the Post included a graphic the military offered President Obama at a key November 2009 meeting to review war policy. It caught in a nutshell the favored solution to the Afghan War of those in charge of fighting it -- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General David Petraeus, then-Centcom commander, General Stanley McChrystal, then-Afghan War commander, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others

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Hillary Clinton and State Dept. to Celebrate War Criminal Henry Kissinger, While the White House Repeats His Deadly Mistakes

Nothing more symbolizes how the temptations of power can corrupt youthful values and idealism than Secretary Hillary Clinton's invitation to Henry Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke to keynote a major State Department conference on the history of the Indochina war. As an idealistic college student, Clinton protested Kissinger's mass murder of civilians in Indochina. She knows full well that had the international laws protecting civilians in war been applied to Kissinger's bombing of civilian targets in Indochina he would have been indicted for crimes of war.

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Retribution for a World Lost in Screens

Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. She exacted divine punishment on arrogant mortals who believed they could defy the gods, turn themselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around them. The price of such hubris was almost always death.

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