Exclusive: Secretary of State Kerry met with dissident State Department “diplomats” to hear their call for U.S. airstrikes on Syrian government troops, but the plan is both dangerous and illegal, writes Marjorie Cohn.
The Reagan administration inadvertently created Al Qaeda by arming the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s, then George W. Bush’s Iraq War gave rise to ISIS. So, one might draw a lesson about overusing military force abroad, says Ivan Eland.
Exclusive: Besides bashing Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton offered few specifics in her big foreign policy speech which stressed the value of “friends.” But those “entangling alliances” helped create today’s global chaos, writes Daniel Lazare.
Exclusive: The Obama administration claims Syrian rebels in Ahrar al-Sham deserve protection from government attack although they have close ties to Al Qaeda and joined its official Syrian affiliate in a slaughter of Alawites, writes Daniel Lazare.
Exclusive: As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: A recent PBS report about the war in Yemen exposed the secret connection between the U.S.-Saudi alliance and Al Qaeda, a reality that also underscores the jihadist violence in Syria, writes Daniel Lazare.
The Paris and Brussels attacks are blowback from what Islamic State terrorists see as betrayal by Western benefactors who thought using jihadists could bring “regime change” in Syria, says Pakistani analyst Nauman Sadiq.
From the Archive: The threat from Pakistan’s nukes began with Ronald Reagan’s deal trading U.S. acquiescence on nukes for Pakistani help organizing Islamist militants to fight Soviets in Afghanistan, wrote ex-CIA analyst Peter W. Dickson in 2008.
Finally, the Obama administration may be demanding that its Mideast allies stop smuggling arms to jihadist rebels in Syria, a move that makes a negotiated settlement possible, says Gareth Porter.
When Russian airstrikes began in Syria, the U.S. media falsely claimed President Putin had promised to hit only ISIS and instead attacked “moderate” rebels, but the dirty secret was that those rebels were working with Al Qaeda, writes Gareth Porter.