Militarism (MIMAC)

I’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t do a speaking event related to war and peace without being asked numerous reasonable and not so reasonable questions about 9/11 (each accompanied by a stack of DVDs and flyers presented to you as a revelation from on high). There was a long period when you could count on the inevitable question about “peak oil.” Originally published at Worldbeyondwar.org I’ve been around enough to know that you can’t talk to peace-oriented people without a question about creating a Department of Peace, or to non-peace-oriented people without a question about good humanitarian wars against irrational foreigners who can’t be reasoned with, or to any group at all in the United States and some other countries without “What about Hitler?,” or to any self-selected audience at a peace-related event without the question about why the other people in the room are disproportionately old, white,...

William J. Astore December 3, 2021 Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn’t serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. In God We Trust is on all our coins. But, again, which god? The one of “turn the other cheek”? The one who found his disciples among society’s outcasts? The one who wanted nothing to do with moneychangers or swords? As Joe Biden might say, give me a break. Originally published at Responsible Statecraft America’s true god is a deity of wrath, whose keenest followers profit mightily...

Daniel Ellsberg November 8, 2021 Given the intellectual and ethical status of many leaders in today’s world, this is not – as it may seem – a far-fetched question. It must be raised and discussed since the shocking revelation made by Daniel Ellsberg (1) earlier this year. In 1958, the US had a president – Dwight D. Eisenhower – who was himself a military man. Military people are often more cautious about war because they know much better than politicians what it would mean to start and fight a real war. What would Western leaders do today if a hard dilemma came up? The 12-min documentary below should – together with other articles we have published on this issue – serve as a wake-up call for those who believe that nuclear war is something that belongs only to the past. Young people who engage wonderfully in climate issues seem not...

Relatives mourn as bodies of Iraqi residents of west Mosul killed in an airstrike are placed and covered with blankets on carts on March 17th, 2017. Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images Imogen Piper & Joe Dyke October 31, 2021 Airwars tally offers assessment of the direct civilian impact of 20 years of US strikes Originally posted on Airwars homepage on September 6, 2021 You often find a similar refrain in US media reporting of the cost of two decades of the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ The trope goes something like this: “more than 7,000 US service people have died in wars since 9/11,” an article or news report will say. In the next line it will usually, though not always, try to reflect the civilian toll – but almost exclusively in generalities. Tens, or even hundreds, of thousands. Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist atrocities, and the subsequent launch of the...

Handover ceremony at Camp Anthonic, from US Army to Afghan Special Forces, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 2, 2021. Tom Engelhardt October 27, 2021 They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is. In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these last weeks shouldn’t have been surprising, given our history. After all, we were the ones who prepared the ground and dug the grave for the previous interment in that very cemetery. Originally published at Countercurrents That, of course, took place between 1979 and 1989 when Washington had no hesitation about using the most extreme Islamists — arming, funding, training, and advising them — to ensure that one more imperial carcass, that of the Soviet Union, would be buried...

Translation of the Introduction to the New Edition of Arnold Toynbee’s Civilisation on Trial, translated into Persian by Farhang Jahanpour Farhang Jahanpour October 28, 2021 More than 45 years have passed since the publication of my translation of “Civilisation on Trial” by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) – read the entire book in English here. When that translation was first published by Isfahan University Press in 1976 it was warmly received, and in a short time, more than half of the copies of the first printing had been sold. Unfortunately, a short time after its publication, with the start of the growing political tensions and clashes that led to the Islamic Revolution, the book was caught up in the revolutionary maelstrom. Since then, the book has never been republished. However, more than 45 years later, in view of the importance of the book and its relevance regarding some of the latest political...

[bswise / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0] See the deeply moving photos from Motel Lorraine on Gordon Belray’s page. By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon October 22, 2021 The anniversary of his assassination – April 4, 1968 – always brings a flood of tributes to Martin Luther King Jr., and this year will surely be no exception. But those tributes — including from countless organizations calling themselves progressive — are routinely evasive about the anti-militarist ideals that King passionately expressed during the final year of his life. You could call it evasion by omission. Originally published at Scheerpost on April 4, 2021 The standard liberal canon waxes fondly nostalgic about King’s “I have a dream” speech in 1963 and his efforts against racial segregation. But in memory lane, the Dr. King who lived his last year is persona non grata. The pattern is positively Orwellian. King explicitly condemned what he called “the madness of militarism.” And...

Omri Walach October 21, 2021 Originally posted on Visual Capitalist’s homepage on September 30, 2021 Which Countries Have the Most Nuclear Weapons? In theory, nuclear weapon stockpiles are closely held national secrets. The leading countries have rough estimates that aren’t regularly updated, newly nuclear countries keep their capabilities vague and unclear, and Israel has never officially confirmed a nuclear weapons program. But thanks to limited disclosures, records, and leaks, we can visualize the full extent* of the world’s nuclear arsenal. This graphic uses estimated nuclear warhead inventories from the Federation of American Scientists as of August 2021. Based on these estimates, there are just nine countries with nuclear weapons in the world. Editor’s note: Exact numbers of nuclear warheads possessed by countries are closely guarded state secrets, with the FAS estimate being the closest, most-used, and most-trusted international approximation available. Nuclear Weapons, by Country The nuclear arms race has always centered around the U.S. and Russia. After the end of World...

Introduction by Jan Oberg October 14, 2021 This South China Morning Post article by Mark. J. Valencia is very informative about the larger perspective surrounding the US “Connecticut” submarine that hit and was damaged by something “unidentified” in the South China Sea on October 2, 2021 – a story that the US Navy cared about to tell the world only five days later. You should read also this article and this one. This incident – whatever it really was – is an integral part of the ongoing China Cold War Agenda of the US that TFF has issued a large report about – Behind The Smokescreen. Perhaps naturally, our media – as well as virtually everybody else – focus on conflicts and wars on land. It is systematically forgotten that conflicts and, to some extent, wars are permanently fought in the world’s oceans, the main weapons being submarines, including nuclear...

Jeffrey D. Sachs September 29, 2021 For decades, the American political class has intervened relentlessly and recklessly in countries whose people they hold in contempt. And once again they are being aided by America’s credulous mass media, which is uniformly blaming the Taliban victory on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. Originally posted on Project Syndicate on August 17, 2021 NEW YORK – The magnitude of the United States’ failure in Afghanistan is breathtaking. It is not a failure of Democrats or Republicans, but an abiding failure of American political culture, reflected in US policymakers’ lack of interest in understanding different societies. And it is all too typical. Almost every modern US military intervention in the developing world has come to rot. It’s hard to think of an exception since the Korean War. In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, the US fought in Indochina – Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia –...

Neta C. Crawford Listen to this article here September 24, 2021 The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 to destroy al-Qaida, remove the Taliban from power and remake the nation. On Aug. 30, 2021, the U.S. completed a pullout of troops from Afghanistan, providing an uncertain punctuation mark to two decades of conflict. For the past 11 years I have closely followed the post-9/11 conflicts for the Costs of War Project, an initiative that brings together more than 50 scholars, physicians and legal and human rights experts to provide an account of the human, economic, budgetary and political costs and consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Originally published by The Conversation Of course, by themselves figures can never give a complete picture of what happened and what it means, but they can help put this war in perspective. The 20 numbers highlighted below, some drawn from figures released on Sept. 1, 2021,...

Listen to this article here With the end of the failed ‘forever war’ in Afghanistan, the US military-industrial complex needs to find another struggle to further enrich itself, and China now fits that bill Alex Lo September 24, 2021 “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address, 1961 The “potential” of the military-industrial complex for mischief that Eisenhower warned against in his famous speech is now actual; indeed, it has been for some time now. Much of the “war on terror”, including the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, have been a gravy train for private contractors and arms makers. “The Forever War” may not have made America and Americans safer, but it has made the military-industrial complex...