American foreign policy remains locked in a cycle of violence, with the Obama administration failing to escape the neocon insistence on a swaggering “tough-guy-ism” abroad. That reliance on military intervention also comes with the cost of “blowback,” as ex-CIA analyst…
Tag: Barack Obama
The Power of False Narratives
Exclusive: The defeat of a modest gun-safety bill in the Senate is further vindication of Orwell’s cynical observation that “who controls the past controls the future” since the American Right has persuaded millions of Americans that a false narrative about the Second…
Over-Analyzing Terror Incidents
Just when it seemed the U.S. news media had learned some lessons from earlier “terrorism” misreporting, CNN rushed out and then retracted a report about the arrest of a “dark-skinned” suspect. But a related problem is the compulsion to draw…
No Rush to Judgment in Boston
Exclusive: Three people died and scores were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, part of the annual celebration of the Patriots who drove the British back from Lexington and Concord in 1775. For…
Russia Bars Bush-Era Torture Lawyers
Exclusive: Washington and Moscow exchanged lists imposing sanctions on each other’s officials accused of human rights crimes. But America’s benefit of the doubt no longer applies, as the Russians named John Yoo and David Addington, Bush-era legal advisers who twisted…
The Consensus Behind Militarism
While the U.S. media has some spirited debate over politics and social issues i.e. Fox News vs. MSNBC there remains a broad consensus about foreign adversaries whose behavior is almost always cast in the harshest light, a reality that colors how…
Behind the North Korean Crisis
U.S. propagandists and the mainstream media present foreign crises, like the current one with North Korea, as black-and-white morality plays with Official Washington behaving wisely and the adversaries as crazy. But the reality is always more complex, as Christine Hong…
Obama Opts for Syrian ‘Regime Change’
The most realistic route for peace in Syria is a power-sharing arrangement that protects the interests of the Sunni majority and the Alawites and other religious minorities backing President Bashar al-Assad. But President Obama has thrown in his lot with…
George W. Bush’s Lie-bury
As minor African despots are dragged before the International Criminal Court, ex-President George W. Bush remains free, despite having committed major war crimes like torture and aggressive war. With the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands, he will…
Obama’s Retreat to Neocon Strategies
After signaling a willingness last year to undertake serious negotiations on Iran and Syria, President Obama appears to have slid back into the default U.S. position of “tough-guy-ism.” Obama’s retreat to that neocon-favored posture could bring chaos to the Mideast, warns Adil E.…