Foreign Policy Category Archive

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How to Waste Two Trillion Dollars

Eric Margolis •ï¿½May 3, 2024

•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½4 Comments • Reply

Brown Universityâ€™s cost of the Afghan war project just concluded that Americaâ€™s longest war cost an estimated $US 2.2 trillion dollars â€“ thatâ€™s â€˜trillion dollars.â€ If we add in George W. Bushâ€™s fake `war on terror,â€™ Brownâ€™s scholars estimate that the cost rises to US $8 trillion! Most of this huge amount was financed by... Read More

Clean Our Mess: Release Guantanamo Detainees in the US, Close the Camp

Ted Rall •ï¿½January 28, 2022

•ï¿½1,000 Words •ï¿½15 Comments • Reply

Parents teach their children: You make a mess, you clean it up. Twenty years ago, the United States government transformed its naval base at Guantanamo Bay into a legal, moral and foreign-policy disaster. It's time for President Joe Biden to fulfill his promise to complete the task his predecessors didn't have the wisdom or desire... Read More

Supreme Court Hearings On Palestinian Man Anally Raped and Hung from Hooks By CIA Causes Biden Administration to Tremble

Eric Striker •ï¿½October 12, 2021

•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½225 Comments • Reply

After years of having his case hung up in federal courts, Abu Zubaydah could finally be given the opportunity to tell his story. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the cause of United States v. Abu Zubaydah, which deals with the largely known details of a Palestinian man who was captured in Pakistan by the... Read More

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The (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror

C.J. Hopkins •ï¿½February 8, 2021

•ï¿½1,500 Words •ï¿½190 Comments • Reply

If you enjoyed the Global War on Terror, youâ€™re going to love the new War on Domestic Terror! Itâ€™s just like the original Global War on Terror, except that this time the â€œTerroristsâ€ are all â€œDomestic Violent Extremistsâ€ (â€œDVEsâ€), â€œHomegrown Violent Extremistsâ€ (â€œHVEsâ€), â€œViolent Conspiracy-Theorist Extremistsâ€ (â€œVCTEsâ€), â€œViolent Reality Denialist Extremistsâ€ (VRDEsâ€), â€œInsurrectionary Micro-Aggressionist Extremistsâ€... Read More

Americaâ€™s War on Terror Is the True Cause of Europeâ€™s Refugee Crisis

Patrick Cockburn •ï¿½September 13, 2020

•ï¿½1,200 Words •ï¿½36 Comments • Reply

Desperate refugees crammed into cockle-shell boats landing on the shingle beaches of the south Kent coast are easily portrayed as invaders. Anti-immigrant demonstrators were exploiting such fears last weekend as they blockaded the main highway into Dover Port in order â€œto protect Britainâ€™s bordersâ€. Meanwhile, the home secretary, Priti Patel, blames the French for not... Read More

From 9/11 to the Great Reset

Pepe Escobar •ï¿½September 10, 2020

•ï¿½1,900 Words •ï¿½315 Comments • Reply

9/11 was the foundation stone of the new millennium â€“ ever as much indecipherable as the Mysteries of Eleusis. A year ago, on Asia Times, once again I raised a number of questions that still find no answer. A lightning speed breakdown of the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune trespassing these two decades will... Read More

The Torturers and the â€˜Ticking Bombâ€™: How Torture Became Routine in the Global War on Terror

Philip Giraldi •ï¿½January 30, 2020

•ï¿½1,400 Words •ï¿½42 Comments • Reply

With all the media excitement focused on the impeachment of President Donald Trump, it comes as no surprise that some recent additional insights into how the United States became a torture regime have been largely ignored. It has been known for years that the George W. Bush Administration carried out what most of the world... Read More

The War on Populism

C.J. Hopkins •ï¿½January 10, 2019

•ï¿½1,400 Words •ï¿½93 Comments • Reply

Remember when the War on Terror ended and the War on Populism began? Thatâ€™s OK, no one else does. It happened in the Summer of 2016, also known as â€œthe Summer of Fear.â€ The War on Terror was going splendidly. There had been a series of â€œterrorist attacks,â€ in Orlando, Nice, WÃ¼rzberg, Munich, Reutlingen, Ansbach,... Read More

Unsolicited Advice for an Undeclared Presidential Candidate

A Letter to Elizabeth Warren

Andrew J. Bacevich •ï¿½October 16, 2018

•ï¿½2,700 Words •ï¿½199 Comments • Reply

Senator Elizabeth Warren 317 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. Dear Senator Warren: As a constituent, I have noted with interest your suggestion that you will â€œtake a hard lookâ€ at running for president in 2020, even as you campaign for reelection to the Senate next month. Forgive me for saying that I interpret that... Read More

Holding the Line on Torture

One Organization at a Time

Rebecca Gordon •ï¿½September 9, 2018

•ï¿½2,700 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Sometimes the good guys do win. Thatâ€™s what happened on August 8th in San Francisco when the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) decided to extend a policy keeping its members out of the U.S. detention center at GuantÃ¡namo Bay, Cuba. The APAâ€™s decision is important -- and not just symbolically. Today... Read More

Rebecca Gordon: Psychologists Say No to Torture

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½September 9, 2018

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I offer you this guarantee: thereâ€™s an anniversary coming on October 7th that no one in this country is going to celebrate or, I suspect, even think about. Seventeen years ago, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched the air campaign that began the invasion of Afghanistan. It would prove... Read More

The U.S. Military Is Winning. No, Really, It Is!

A Simple Equation Proves That the U.S. Armed Forces Have Triumphed in the War on Terror

Nick Turse •ï¿½September 4, 2018

•ï¿½2,400 Words •ï¿½111 Comments • Reply

4,000,000,029,057. Remember that number. Itâ€™s going to come up again later. But letâ€™s begin with another number entirely: 145,000 -- as in, 145,000 uniformed soldiers striding down Washingtonâ€™s Pennsylvania Avenue. Thatâ€™s the number of troops who marched down that very street in May 1865 after the United States defeated the Confederate States of America. Similar... Read More

War and the Imperial Presidency

Congress Offers a Bipartisan Blank Check to Donald Trump

Danny Sjursen •ï¿½May 3, 2018

•ï¿½2,700 Words •ï¿½1 Comment • Reply

It may be too late. The president of the United States is now a veritable autocrat in the realm of foreign policy. He has been since at least 1945, when the last congressionally declared war finally ended. Wars in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen (among other places) were all... Read More

Danny Sjursen: Hail, (Donald) Caesar!

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½May 3, 2018

•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½1 Comment • Reply

It began, of course, with the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the second Afghan war of our era. In November 2002, in Yemen, the CIA conducted its first drone assassination strike outside of Afghanistan, killing six al-Qaeda suspects in a car. (More strikes would follow there years later, along with Special Operations raids of... Read More

Nick Turse: The Coming Year in Special Ops

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½January 9, 2018

•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½1 Comment • Reply

If you want to know something about life in America these days, consider how New York Times columnist David Leonhardt began his first piece of the year, â€œ7 Wishes for 2018â€: "Well, at least itâ€™s not 2017 anymore. I expect that future historians will look back on it as one of the darker non-war years... Read More

American Anniversaries from Hell

What You Donâ€™t Know Can Hurt You

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½March 23, 2017

•ï¿½2,000 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Itâ€™s true that, last week, few in Congress cared to discuss, no less memorialize, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Nonetheless, two anniversaries of American disasters and crimes abroad -- the â€œmission accomplishedâ€ debacle of 2003 and the 45th anniversary of the My Lai massacre -- were at least noted in passing in... Read More

Guantanamo's Last 100 Days

The Story That Never Was

Karen Greenberg •ï¿½March 2, 2017

•ï¿½2,500 Words •ï¿½18 Comments • Reply

In the spring of 2016, I asked a student of mine to do me a favor and figure out which day would be the 100th before Barack Obamaâ€™s presidency ended. October 12th, he reported back, and then asked me the obvious question: Why in the world did I want to know? The answer was simple.... Read More

Karen Greenberg: The Forever Prisoners of Guantanamo

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½March 2, 2017

•ï¿½500 Words •ï¿½1 Comment • Reply

Hereâ€™s a little fact of our age: Rear Admiral Peter Clark is the 16th commander of Americaâ€™s notorious prison complex at GuantÃ¡namo Bay, Cuba, opened in January 2002, and it seems he wonâ€™t be the last. As the New York Times recently reported, the Trump administration is already readying a draft executive order that would... Read More

Danny Sjursen: Mission Unaccomplished, 15 Years Later

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½February 21, 2017

•ï¿½700 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

If youâ€™re going to surround yourself with generals in the Oval Office, as Donald Trump has done, that means one thing in these years: youâ€™re going to appoint men whose careers were made (or unmade) by what was once known as the Global War on Terror. They will be deeply associated with Washingtonâ€™s 15 years... Read More

The â€œWar On Terrorâ€ Is the Hoax Foundation of the Police/Spy State

Paul Craig Roberts •ï¿½November 5, 2015

•ï¿½700 Words •ï¿½4 Comments

The â€œwar on terrorâ€ was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymakers, who are pursuing a hegemonic agenda. The American people were too trusting and too gullible and, consequently, Americans were easily betrayed by Washington and by the presstitute media. The consequences of the deceit, gullibility, and betrayal are horrendous for Americans, for millions of... Read More

How Turkey Plays the War on Terror

America's reluctant ally finally offers token assistance against ISIS only as cover for a campaign against the Kurds

Philip Giraldi •ï¿½August 25, 2015

•ï¿½2,000 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

The United Statesâ€™s engagement in the Middle East since 2001 would be a comedy of errors but for the fact that it is not funny. It all began with the exploitation of a befuddled President George W. Bush by a group of neoconservative advisers who had long planned to invade Iraq and oust its President... Read More

Cashing in on Counter-Terrorism

Government-friendly inexpert witnesses help grease the wheels for an unaccountable war on terror.

Philip Giraldi •ï¿½August 11, 2015

•ï¿½1,800 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

The counter-terrorism industry in the United States is largely invisible, but its cost is not, amounting to tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars annually, depending on what one includes in the reckoning. And the actual level of threat is certainly debatable. Anyone who looks at terrorism arrests and convictions in the United State... Read More

The True Cost of the War on Terror

Though the global body count is obscured, America's destabilizing actions may have claimed more lives than nonstate...

Philip Giraldi •ï¿½July 2, 2015

•ï¿½1,500 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Last weekâ€™s two mass murders carried out by militants allegedly associated with the Islamic State (IS) took place shortly after the release of the State Departmentâ€™s annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2014. Country Reports is 389 pages long, broken down by country and region. It also includes statistical charts, a focus on state sponsors, and... Read More

Unending War on Terror

Millions dead costing trillions of dollars

Philip Giraldi •ï¿½April 28, 2015

•ï¿½1,800 Words •ï¿½56 Comments • Reply

The admission by the White House that two western hostages were killed by an errant drone strike in Pakistan serves as only an ugly little footnote to what has been nearly fifteen years of undeclared war waged by Washington against a large part of the world. The New York Times notes that â€œâ€¦most individuals killed... Read More

ISIS Is Proof of the Failed â€œwar on Terrorâ€

Patrick Cockburn •ï¿½February 24, 2015

•ï¿½2,000 Words •ï¿½6 Comments • Reply

Today al-Qaeda-type movements rule a vast area in northern and western Iraq and eastern and northern Syria, several hundred times larger than any territory ever controlled by Osama bin Laden. It is since bin Ladenâ€™s death that al-Qaeda affiliates or clones have had their greatest successes, including the capture of Raqqa in the eastern part... Read More

Karen Greenberg: Obama's Commandments

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½February 27, 2014

•ï¿½500 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Think of us as having two presidents. One, a fellow named Barack Obama, cuts a distinctly Clark Kent-ish figure. In presiding over domestic policy, he is regularly thwarted in his desires by the Republicans in Congress and couldnâ€™t until recently get his most basic choices for government positions or the judiciary through the Senate. For... Read More

The Five Commandments of Barack Obama

How â€œThou Shalt Notâ€ Became â€œThou Shaltâ€

Karen Greenberg •ï¿½February 27, 2014

•ï¿½2,300 Words •ï¿½3 Comments • Reply

In January 2009, Barack Obama entered the Oval Office projecting idealism and proud to be the constitutional law professor devoted to turning democratic principles into action. In his first weeks in office, in a series of executive orders and public statements, the new president broadcast for all to hear the five commandments by which life... Read More

Harassed by the Empire

They Do It Because They Can

anonymous •ï¿½February 20, 2014

•ï¿½1,300 Words •ï¿½8 Comments • Reply

Iâ€™m a WASP, in my late 60s and retired after spending most of my working life in finance. Iâ€™m a US Army veteran. And I get harassed by Customs and Border Protection each time I return to my home in the USA. OK, I did work in the Middle East, but that was in the... Read More

Peter Van Buren: The Divine Right of President Obama?

Tom Engelhardt •ï¿½February 16, 2014

•ï¿½600 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Imagine this: a president and his top officials as self-professed assassins -- and proud of it, even attempting to gain political capital from it. Itâ€™s not that American presidents have never been associated with assassination attempts before. At a National Security Council meeting, Dwight D. Eisenhower personally ordered the CIA to â€œeliminateâ€ Congolese Prime Minister... Read More

Drone Killing the Fifth Amendment

How to Build a Post-Constitutional America One Death at a Time

Peter Van Buren •ï¿½February 16, 2014

•ï¿½2,500 Words •ï¿½2 Comments • Reply

Terrorism (ter-ror-ism; see also terror) n. 1. When a foreign organization kills an American for political reasons. Justice (jus-tice) n. 1. When the United States Government uses a drone to kill an American for political reasons. How's that morning coffee treating you? Nice and warming? Mmmm. While you're savoring your cup o' joe, imagine the... Read More

Why Remain in Afghanistan?

Philip Giraldi •ï¿½December 12, 2013

•ï¿½1,400 Words •ï¿½17 Comments • Reply

The White House is pushing hard to keep a significant number of American soldiers in Afghanistan contrary to President Barack Obamaâ€™s earlier pledge to have then all out by the end of 2014. As the United States President has demonstrated himself to be a habitual liar that failure to connect promises made in 2008 with... Read More

Backstage at the Theater of 'Terror'

Pepe Escobar •ï¿½February 27, 2009

•ï¿½2,400 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Afghanistan is not only the graveyard of empires; it's a graveyard of misconceptions. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden believed that the mujahideen single-handedly defeated the Soviet empire; so a more compact mujahid band, al-Qaeda, would be the vanguard in defeating the American empire. It was never that simple. In the United States, the myth rules... Read More

'War on Terror' Is Now War on Iran

Pepe Escobar •ï¿½October 27, 2007

•ï¿½1,500 Words •ï¿½Leave a Comment

Scores of middle-aged, mild-mannered, bearded gentlemen - the technocrats of the Iranian military bourgeoisie - are now officially enjoying the status of "terrorists", at least from a Washington point of view. The demonization of Iran drags on relentlessly as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been officially branded a proliferator of weapons of mass... Read More

September 11 and the Origins of the "War on Terrorism"

A revisionist account

Stephen J. Sniegoski •ï¿½March 11, 2002

•ï¿½14,700 Words •ï¿½1 Comment • Reply

I offer here what might be called a moderate revisionist account of the September 11 terror and the origin of the U.S. "war on terrorism." The official story permeating the major media runs something like this: the U.S. war on Afghanistan was simply an ad hoc response to the horrific events of September 11, which... Read More

"War on Terror" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

American Pravda: Mossad Assassinations

The JFK Assassination and the 9/11 Attacks?

Ron Unz

•ï¿½1,089 Comments • Reply

Our American Pravda •ï¿½31m ▶

The major media overlooked Communist spies and Madoffâ€™s fraud. What are they missing today?

Ron Unz

•ï¿½161 Comments • Reply

American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part II â€“ Who Did It? •ï¿½57m ▶

Ron Unz