Hirschkind%20Feminism%20Taliban. U.S. Labels ALL Young Men In Battle Zones As “Militants” … And American Soil Is Now Considered a Battle Zone. All Military-Age Men Are Labeled “Militants” In Areas of Conflict Glenn Greenwald has two must-read posts on the reason that virtually everyone the U.S. kills is called a “militant” or “suspected militant”.
He wrote Monday: Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were ”militants” – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. The next day, Greenwald noted: Will This Policy Apply to Americans On U.S.
Fox News reports: Outraged Over Atrocities (Unless They’re Ours) In the war fever being ramped up against Syria, there is broad public indignation over the massacre of more than 100 civilians in the town of Houla last weekend.
Would that the U.S. diplomatic corps and the commercial press were equally outraged over our own military’s atrocities. While details of the Syrian massacre are unclear and still subject to dispute, Canada, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Australia, Germany, Spain and the United States have expelled Syrian diplomats in protest. The State Department called the rampage “despicable” and complained about a regime that could “connive in or organize” such a thing. The department was silent on the U.S. killing four years ago of just as many Afghan civilians, including 60 children, in Azizabad. U.S. envoys weren’t thrown out of capital cities when Afghan villagers said between 70 and 100 civilians, including women and children, were killed May 5, 2009 by a U.S. raid against Bala Baluk.
Empire... The Political Economy of Oil. Why is there so little accountability in foreign policymaking. I gave a lecture last night at the Cape Ann Forum, on the topic of America's changing position in the world and what it might (should) mean for U.S. grand strategy.
My hosts were gracious and the crowd asked plenty of good questions, which is what I've come to expect when I speak to non-academic groups. Indeed, I'm often impressed by how sensible many "ordinary" Americans are about international affairs in general and U.S. foreign policy in particular. And so it was last night. One of the attendees was iconoclastic journalist Christopher Lydon, who's been a friend for some years now. Chris asked a great question: Why is there so little accountability in contemporary U.S. policy-making, and especially regarding foreign policy? I didn't have a particularly good answer for him, but I thought about it more as I drove home. Part of the problem is institutionalized amnesia.
A second reason is the incestuous clubbiness of the foreign policy establishment. Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images.
US / Latin America relations... US Foreign Policy - reading.... US / China relations... To sort... US Middle East policy.