Blowback: Why They Try to Bomb Us
AP / Emilio Morenatti
By David Sirota
Imagine, if you can, an alternate universe.
Imagine that in this alternate universe, a foreign military power begins flying remote-controlled warplanes over your town, using onboard missiles to kill hundreds of your innocent neighbors.
Now imagine that when you read the newspaper about this ongoing bloodbath, you learn that the foreign nation’s top general is nonchalantly telling reporters that his troops are also killing “an amazing number” of your cultural brethren in an adjacent country. Imagine further learning that this foreign power is expanding the drone attacks on your community despite the attacks’ well-known record of killing innocents. And finally, imagine that when you turn on your television, you see the perpetrator nation’s tuxedo-clad leader cracking stand-up comedy jokes about drone strikes—jokes that prompt guffaws from an audience of that nation’s elite.
Ask yourself: How would you and your fellow citizens respond? Would you call homegrown militias mounting a defense “patriots” or would you call them “terrorists”? Would you agree with your leaders when they angrily tell reporters that violent defiance should be expected?
Fortunately, most Americans don’t have to worry about these queries in their own lives. But how we answer them in a hypothetical thought experiment provides us insight into how Pakistanis are likely to be feeling right now. Why? Because thanks to our continued drone assaults on their country, Pakistanis now confront these issues every day. And if they answer these questions as many of us undoubtedly would in a similar situation—well, that should trouble every American in this age of asymmetrical warfare.
The Mystery of the Third Frontier Program
April 28, 2010 By Matt Mayer The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions (www.buckeyeinstitute.org) COLUMBUS: The silence is deafening. Rarely has there been an issue so thoroughly lacking in hard opposition as Issue 1, the $700 million bond renewal request for the Third Frontier grant program. Does the silence indicate that Third Frontier is universally [...]
How the SEC and Congress Can Bring Down Goldman Sachs and Expose the Financial Coup
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report (ampedstatus.com) Not only did Goldman Sachs profit on betting against CDOs they designed to fail; more importantly, they insured them through AIG which led to a $182 billion taxpayer bailout. Have you heard the news? It’s everywhere! The SEC and Congress have all of a sudden sprung to life and [...]
The Puppet Tries To Cut His Strings
by Eric Margolis (www.lewrockwell.com) As Henry Kissinger once rightly observed, it is often more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy. Watching Washington’s growing anger at Afghan president Hamid Karzai, one recalls the unhappy endings of such former US allies as South Vietnam’s Diem, Iran’s Shah, Indonesia’s Suharto, Nicaragua’s Somoza, and Pakistan’s Zia ul-Haq. Washington [...]
Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think
By Robert Higgs When President Obama presented his budget recently for fiscal year 2011, he proposed that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by about 4.5 percent beyond its estimated outlays in fiscal 2010, to a total of almost $719 billion. Although many Americans regard this enormous sum as excessive, few appreciate that the total amount [...]
Iraq War Vet: “We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us”
Wednesday 07 April 2010 by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Report On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq, taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the [...]
