After World War II, U.S. prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed aggressive war the “supreme international crime” because it unpacked all the other evils of war. But Official Washington now treats U.S. invasions of “enemy” states as a topic for casual…
Category: Politics
Ronald Reagan: Accessory to Genocide
Exclusive: More than any recent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan has been lavished with honors, including his name attached to Washington’s National Airport. But the conviction of Reagan’s old ally, ex-Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt, for genocide means “Ronnie” must face history’s…
China Tip-Toes into Mideast Peace
The pro-Israel lobby has been so effective dominating U.S. policy toward the Middle East that the success, paradoxically, has made Washington increasingly irrelevant to the peace process. That has created a vacuum that China and other nations may try to…
The Lure of Violent Revolution
It’s become trendy in some circles mostly on the Right since the election of the first African-American president but also a bit on the Left to talk breezily of armed revolution. But bloodshed is wrongheaded and reckless when political space remains for…
Republican Hypocrisy on Benghazi
Exclusive: Official Washington is obsessing over the Benghazi “scandal,” proof that the Republicans and their right-wing media can make the smallest things big and the biggest things small. It is a disparity that has distorted how Americans understand their recent…
America’s Excessive Nuke Arsenal
Slashing the U.S. nuclear stockpile and still having plenty of bombs left over for “deterrence” would represent a huge saving to the American taxpayers and could help leverage more cooperation on nuclear proliferation in other countries, writes ex-CIA analyst Melvin…
Who’s at Fault for Guantanamo Mess?
Official Washington’s “tough-guy-ism” no one wanting to look “weak” on “terror” has stopped sane and humane policies toward Guantanamo. Members of Congress have blocked President Obama’s efforts to close the prison and he has shied away from a political battle…
The Spark that Ignited the Vietnam War
Exclusive: A half-century ago, religious clashes in Vietnam — leading to a dramatic photo of a Buddhist priest burning himself alive — shocked the U.S. government and drove it deeper into the morass of the Vietnam War, a confluence of religion and…
The Danger from Conventional Wisdom
Official Washington’s “conventional wisdom” is a pernicious fact of life in the U.S. capital as various presumed realities reverberate through the echo chamber of policymakers and journalists. Conventional wisdom is especially dangerous when what-everybody-knows-is-true isn’t, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R.…
The Almost Scoop on Nixon’s ‘Treason’
From the Archive: Former Vietnam War correspondent Beverly Deepe Keever has just published a memoir, Death Zones & Darling Spies, in which she addresses her almost scoop on Richard Nixon’s 1968 sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks, a story that…