Category: Iraq

No Justice for US-Tortured Iraqis

Human Rights Watch has found no evidence of the U.S. government paying compensation or other redress to victims of detainee abuse in Iraq. Nor has Washington issued “any individual apologies or other amends.”

US Can’t Deal with Defeat

In the U.S., the strongest collective memory of America’s wars of choice is the desirability – and ease – of forgetting them. So it will be when we look at a ruined Ukraine in the rear-view mirror, writes Michael Brenner.

Westmoreland Revisited

Given the official U.S. optimism over Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Barbara Koeppel concludes that Washington has not learned any lessons from failed wars in Vietnam, and later Iraq and Afghanistan.

Teaching Sept. 11

Approaching the terrorist attacks as a memorializing event on the anniversary generally avoids deeper inquiry into the historic U.S. role in the Middle East and Afghanistan, write Jeremy Stoddard and Diana Hess.

9/11 Bred a ‘War on Terror’ from Hell

A pattern of regret — distinct from remorse — for the venture militarism that failed in Afghanistan and Iraq does exist, writes Norman Solomon. But the disorder persists in U.S. foreign policy. 

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Dialectic of the Draft

Americans will understand themselves less fantastically if they consider the extent to which the end of the Selective Service System a half century ago gave them permission to put their public selves to sleep.