Legitimately purchase this book

"Those who feel that like lemmings they are being led over a cliff would be well-advised not to read this book," says Noam Chomsky. "They may discover that they are right."

That book is Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, edited by Joshua Frank and Counterpunch's Jeffrey St. Clair, a compilation of essays on the Obama years just published by AK Press. Touching on everything from drone strikes to bailouts, the book includes a piece by me on the persecution of Bradley Manning. That's a hint that you should buy it.

Let's talk about sex (trafficking)

Tom Friedman is a buffoon, his buffoonery so apparent and well-documented I don't much see the point in getting annoyed at what he writes anymore. Trashing one of his columns is like panning the latest single from LMFAO (or their earlier iteration, The Black Eyed Peas) for being vapid, over-produced dreck: well yeah, no shit.

Nick Kristof, on the other hand – now that's a dude who, like a lover or a war criminal, knows how to hit all my anger buttons. Perhaps because he doesn't have a mustache and has never said “suck on this” while on national TV, Kristof enjoys an air of seriousness among serious liberals that Friedman lost somewhere around his 358th mixed metaphor. Being a New York Times columnist, he's no less an imperialist, obviously, but his imperialism is of the crusading white savior variety, which is in vogue these days among the Kony 2012-retweeting set.

Besides selling a savvier, hipper brand of American empire -- "shock and awe" giving way to "the responsibility to protect" -- Kristof is a master at making noble white liberals feel noble for feeling noble. Be it saving poor Africans or exploited sex workers or undereducated Americans or the uncomfortably (for a privileged white liberal) black-like "white underclass," Kristof knows how to couple the aw-the-poor-thing dramatizing with stock neoliberal, imperial policies, from standardized testing to bombing Libyans. Wrapping these policies up in heart-wrenching stories allows Kristof and his like-minded readers to feel morally enlightened for supporting them; we're doing something! That they don't achieve their stated ends -- peace and prosperity, a better educated populace -- is besides the point: they make Kristof and friends feel better. Superior.

This was certainly true of his latest column, "Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods" -- not a reference to the Times -- on the problem of white slavery human trafficking. The problem, as Kristof tells it, is that pimps are using websites like the Village Voice-owned Backpage.com to, well, peddle their "goods": legally underage women who have been coerced into sex work. His solution, as it were, is to have Backpage remove its sex ads altogether.

Now, Kristof freely admits that of those posting on the site, “many” – by which he presumably means “the vast majority“ – are consenting adults who, while one may disapprove of their lifestyle or lament the socio-political conditions one believes contributed to their line of work, are doing what they do as freely as one can in a state capitalist economy. But the small matter of not just inconveniencing but possibly jeopardizing the lives of these sex workers -- who, barred from posting online, may seek clients on the street -- is of no concern to Kristof. Like a kindergarten teacher or Israeli prime minister keen on collective punishment, he maintains the bad actions of a few justifies punishing the many.

Because Jane spoke out of turn there will be no recess today. Put your heads down on the desk and, god damn it Jimmy, quit running with the scissors or we'll call in the IDF and end this playtime shit once and for all.

While banning sex ads isn't the same as bombing Gaza, Krisof admits in his penultimate paragraph that it will be just as ineffective at achieving its stated goal (which may not, of course, be the real goal):

Let’s be honest: Backpage’s exit from prostitution advertising wouldn’t solve the problem, for smaller Web sites would take on some of the ads. But it would be a setback for pimps to lose a major online marketplace. When Craigslist stopped taking such ads in 2010, many did not migrate to new sites: online prostitution advertising plummeted by more than 50 percent, according to AIM Group.

Hey! Notice what he did there? First, Kristof begins his column by talking about forced human trafficking, which everyone can agree is a Very Bad Thing. Using that as his hook, he then advocates banning all sex ads on Backpage. Though he admits this won't "solve the problem" of human trafficking, he then points to statistics showing that after Craigslist got rid of its sex-for-money ads, "online prostitution advertising plummeted by more than 50 percent."

Putting aside the validity of that statistic, recall that in a piece about the need to address human trafficking Kristof is here bolstering his case for banning online sex ads from Backpage by pointing to a decline in said sex ads, not human trafficking. This is because there is not the slightest evidence that a decline those ads, if there in fact is one, has had the slightest impact on trafficking. Maybe, then, while trafficking is the public target of anti-trafficking campaigners, it is that icky matter of consenting adults engaging in consensual sex via the Internet that weirds people like Kristof out.

But who cares what the real motivation is or, worse yet, the result of the policies that are pushed? Like the Kristof-approved air war on Libya, which Amnesty International says killed “scores” of civilians, the crusade is more about the crusaders than those they are claiming to save. The impact of the policies doesn't matter so much as the spirit behind them. Kristof hasn't written about life liberated Libya, where blacks can't walk the streets without fear of murder or kidnapping, since September because the situation there is complicated. It doesn't lend itself to nice little morality tales, where you can do good by signing an online petition or deploying a few Predator drones.

Kristof meant well and he demonstrated his super-human levels of Concern with a couple 800-word, pro-war columns. And that's what matters.

Now, human trafficking is a problem, even if it's been overblown into the latest moral panic -- and by the time it hits the Times, it's indeed a certified moral panic. But it's not a problem that can be meaningfully addressed, much less solved, with feel-good measures and online advocacy; with a petition here, a letter-writing campaign there. Beware those suggesting it can: like the online petition sites, they probably just want your email address; like Nick Kristof, they probably just want your admiration.

'Foreclosing on the commons'

Check out my latest column for Al Jazeera, where I look to Peter Kropotkin for advise on addressing the US foreclosure crisis.

Obama doesn't bluff

In an exclusive interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist famed for his ability to fashion innuendo and hysterical falsehoods into a case for preemptive war, President Barack Obama reassured the Israeli government that when it comes to threatening military action against those irksome, annoyingly un-invaded Iranians, "As President of the United States, I don't bluff." He then put on a ten-gallon hat, hocked a loogie on the ground and whipped his dick out.

On what "all options" really means, the president said:

I think the Israeli people understand it, I think the American people understand it, and I think the Iranians understand it. It means a political component that involves isolating Iran; it means an economic component that involves unprecedented and crippling sanctions; it means a diplomatic component in which we have been able to strengthen the coalition that presents Iran with various options through the P-5 plus 1 and ensures that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is robust in evaluating Iran's military program.

As the Los Angeles Times recently noted, "U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb," so it's not clear what "military program" the president believes there is to evaluate.

Moving on.

I think we in the United States instinctively sympathize with Israel, and I think political support for Israel is bipartisan and powerful.

The first part of that sentences is arguable; the second, not.

[O]ur assessment, which is shared by the Israelis, is that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt.

While the bit about a "long lead time" is appreciated, this is not true. The official assessment from the US intelligence community, with which the president is presumably familiar, is that Iran is not only "not yet" in possession of a nuclear weapon, but that in the words of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, they haven't even chose to build a nuke and are instead but "keeping themselves in a position to make that decision," which is government-speak for "we've got nothing."

[O]ur argument is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily. And the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table.

Got it. The president doesn't listen to his own intelligence officials. But he's not Bush! No, he's literally not George W. Bush. He's Barack Obama, silly.

And as Obama-not-Bush hastens to point out, if you're the leader of an officially racist state seeking to annex evermore of your neighbor's land, he's the best friend you've got:

When you look at what I've done with respect to security for Israel, from joint training and joint exercises that outstrip anything that's been done in the past, to helping finance and construct the Iron Dome program to make sure that Israeli families are less vulnerable to missile strikes, to ensuring that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge, to fighting back against delegitimization of Israel, whether at the [UN] Human Rights Council, or in front of the UN General Assembly, or during the Goldstone Report, or after the flare-up involving the flotilla -- the truth of the matter is that the relationship has functioned very well.

There's no disputing that. Back to Iran:

Now, what we've seen, what we've heard directly from them over the last couple of weeks is that nuclear weapons are sinful and un-Islamic. And those are formal speeches from the supreme leader and their foreign minister.

This is actually the only time I've seen a US politician acknowledge the official statements from Iranian leaders denouncing nuclear weapons as counter to their Islamic values. So, credit where it's due, I guess: good for him.

Unfortunately, Obama appears confused but moments later when he appears to suggest an Iranian nuclear weapon is what would set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East:

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, I won't name the countries, but there are probably four or five countries in the Middle East who say, "We are going to start a program, and we will have nuclear weapons."

Weird, because if Israel already has nuclear weapons -- hundreds of them, in fact -- and the US president and his Israeli counterpart are going around claiming that now Iran wants them too, it would follow that it was Israel's construction of a nuclear weapon that set off a Middle East arms race, not Iran, no? But then, Obama refuses to even acknowledge that Israel is the one country in the region that hasn't signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has in fact covertly developed nuclear weapons, so one wouldn't expect him to make that point in an interview with a former (and proud) Israeli prison guard.

Having failed to make that obvious point, the president returns to a favorite pastime: waving his dick at the American electorate and reminding them he issued the orders to kill that unarmed, apparently surrendering motherfucker, Osama:

I think it's fair to say that the last three years, I've shown myself pretty clearly willing, when I believe it is in the core national interest of the United States, to direct military actions, even when they entail enormous risks. And obviously, the bin Laden operation . . . .

Those "enormous risks," the president did not hasten to add, are typically posed to poor foreigners, not America's patriotic, Mountain Dew-toasting drone operators in Nevada. But whatevs. Boom! Pow! This president kicks ass and he's pretty clearly willing to remind you of it.

Finally, an exchange between Obama and his prison guard over his unflinching support apartheid:

Why is it that despite me never failing to support Israel on every single problem that they've had over the last three years, that there are still questions about that?

GOLDBERG: That's a good way to phrase it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And my answer is: there is no good reason to doubt me on these issues.

No, there isn't. But come November 2012, millions of liberals will do it anyway.

Conflict and nonviolence are not mutually exclusive

Kevin Zeese, the would-be Chairman Mao of the Freedom Plaza Occupy camp in Washington, DC, has never found it within himself to say a nice word about the sister Occupy camp at McPherson Square. In listserv emails and general assembly rants, he and the other Old Left types who founded the Freedom Plaza camp (and grew bitter when it was superseded by their more vibrant, inclusive rivals) have repeatedly characterized their McPherson brethren as a bunch of naive, violent drug abusers.

Indeed, after I wrote about the assisted-living facility, more-nonviolent-than-thou vibe I picked up on after attending a general assembly at Freedom Plaza, Zeese sent me a note that, charitably, displayed a lack of self-awareness, countering my characterization of his group as generally smug and greying with -- god damn it, really? -- a long list of complaints about McPherson Square. People are openly smoking non-state-approved drugs there, I was told, as if they weren't long before the Occupy movement came around. One occupier had even asked if the noble Zeese could help "bring order" to the camp.

In sum: The damn kids. Now if I were in charge . . .

There were of course problems at McPherson that I witnessed during the time I spent there, including the same annoying fuck-those-other-guys attitude I noticed at Freedom Plaza. There were mentally unstable stable people. There were sexual harassers. I even heard one homeless guy use a "mic check" to try and find crack cocaine. But these were problems that beset many Occupy camps, and many of them were pre-existing, having more to do with DC's massive problem of homelessness than the relative inexperience of the young McPherson occupiers. And yet as I saw time and again in messages that were forwarded me from the Freedom Plaza listserv and in comments made to the press, Zeese & Friends' were willing to disseminate the absolute worst rumors about the McPherson camp with seemingly little concern that they were feeding rather than fact-checking disinformation.

Zeese and has cadre of aging activists, too timid to engage in anything confrontational, preferring Jackson Brown concerts to activism, were likewise critical of each and every McPherson-embraced action during my time back in DC. The kids at McPherson -- or "McOccupy," if you're a smug asshole -- are after all doing something, and doing something always brings with it the possibility of alienation. Block rush hour traffic? Why, that K Street lobbyist you inconvenienced is now going to go out and club an African child out of spite. Occupy an abandoned homeless shelter? Dunno, looks like vigilantism to me. Anything that entails any sort of threat of confrontation, particularly with the law, is to be condemned; after all, the police officers pepper spraying and evicting Occupy camps across the U.S. are "part of the 99%." And with just the right mix of folk music and deference to illegitimate authority, guys, they could become class conscious.

Such is the advantage of inaction, of being a critic: when the only time you and your friends are in the news is because a provocateur had the cojones to do more than just sing kumbaya, it's easy to wallow in your own perceived greater commitment to non-violence. And when you conflate saying a naughty word to a cop with "violence," it's easy to see yourself as Gandhi's lovechild.

Why am I writing about this now? Because Zeese and his partner, Margaret Flowers, have an article up at Truthdig recounting results of their personal survey of Occupy camps nationwide in which they, true to form, denounce "violence" -- i.e., conflict with the authorities -- and imply "infiltrators" are to blame for all the Occupy actions that exceeded their comfort level, which is to say any with which you're familiar. As they write about their survey, which they had the time to conduct because, well, I'll let you think on that:

Finally, the issue of escalation of tactics to include property damage and conflict with police was brought up. The euphemism for this is “diversity of tactics.” In fact, there is great diversity within nonviolent tactics. This is really a debate between those who favor strategic nonviolence and those who favor property destruction and police conflict [ed. note: can the latter not be "strategic" as well?]. In 11 of 15 occupations, there were reports of verbal attacks on police and/or escalation of tactics from nonviolence to property destruction or violence. In one occupation, an individual took over the direct action working group and escalated the tactics used beyond what the group had agreed upon. In another Occupy, the General Assembly approved putting up a structure but agreed that if the police wanted it taken down the protesters would promptly do so to prove that it was temporary. After the structure was put up, a handful of people refused to take it down causing a 10 hour police conflict and undermining public support for the Occupy. In another occupation, because a minority of the demonstrators refused to adopt nonviolent strategies, a protest with the teachers union was canceled preventing a major opportunity to expand the movement. When it comes to the issue of violence versus property damage, it is particularly hard to tell whether the differences are political or instigated by infiltrators.

While the attempt to draw a clear distinction between "property damage and conflict with police" and "nonviolence" is humorously Hedgesian, the two bolded lines about the structure -- which occupiers at McPherson Square put up in order to host meetings during the winter -- are particularly curious and characteristically condescending. First, there is no evidence to suggest the standoff with police over the building in anyway "undermin[ed] public support for the Occupy [sic]." It made national news and, while some at the McPherson camp didn't support occupying the building, the overall feeling I got was that the police response, complete with helicopters and armored vehicles, illustrated to many who were ignorant how the state operates: with overwhelming, disproportionate force to any perceived challenges to its authority. Generally speaking, enjoying good relations with law enforcement is a sign one's movement is not seen as a threat to the status quo.

But Zeese and Flowers aren't fond of anything confrontational, and claiming concern for "public support" as a way of blocking any action that may garner anything more than public indifference is their modus operandi. Second, the "handful of people" they deride for defending the building were actually more than 30, who decided to do what they did after an impromptu general assembly in which no consensus was reached on how to respond to a police demand the building be torn down. But it's cute seeing the organizers of a smaller, rival camp attempt to speak with authority on the internal deliberations of occupiers who had rejected their Old Left, hierarchical approach to activism.

There's something to these recent rash of articles bashing the idea that a social movement ought to involve, gosh, "conflict" with the powers that be: They are almost all coming from old-school activists and commentators whose tactics have been employed for decades now and found wanting. The Occupy movement, by contrast, represents the rise of a new generation of activists who, while not without fault, are when at their best at lleast trying something new. That might anger some (though certainly not all) of the older, professional activists who feel their influence waning, but passivity in the face of injustice has been tried, folks. And it has failed.

Communism and anarchism

So I'm going through this phase where, as a means of procrastination, I'm reading a lot about the Soviet Union and the history of interaction between communists of the state and anarchist varieties, such as Emma Goldman's book, My Disillusionment in Russia, and Peter Kropotkin's vision of a possible anarcho-communist revolution, The Conquest of Bread.

You'll see that I used the word "possible." One of the key differences between anarchist and state communist thinkers is the dogma: the former, like Kropotkin, though willing to lay out a general outline of what they think must be done, aren't willing to dictate a One True Way to anarcho-topia, whereas your Lenins and Trotskys would argue that there must be a revolutionary party that must seize the existing institutions of state power and must institute a centrally administered dictatorship of the proletariat.

The more dogmatic, uniform nature of state communist thinkers is evident in their lexicography, anarcho-communists and other leftist dissenters are but "petit-bourgeois," to be purged the moment the Party has assumed power. Or maybe sooner. Trotsky, for example, calls anarchism "an utterly anti-revolutionary doctrine" due to its principled anti-statism, blaming it for the fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War:

To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory. It is impossible to lead the masses towards insurrection without preparing for the conquest of power.

Trotsky, of course, wrote those words while living in exile, having been purged from the Communist Party leadership by Stalin, who later had him assassinated. Live by the conquest of power, die by the conquest of power.

Que será, será

No matter who registered voters in the U.S. select to be the ruling class' spokesman for a four-year term, the coming presidential election will make very little difference to the lives of most Americans -- and non-Americans. Banks will continue to get bailed out, both overtly and by way of the tax code and other more covert means. Bombs will continue to be dropped on poor foreigners, be it in the name of humanitarianism or the fight against terrorism. The state will still serve the interests of the rich, and so on and so on.

That's not to say resistance is futile; that no matter what we do, the cause of building a better world is for naught and efforts to affect positive social change would best be abandoned. That's the caricature of the non-electoral stance one hears from partisans of the two major parties: that the rejection of voting for one of the two corporate-sponsored candidates in a presidential election is a byproduct of nihilism glossed up as radicalism; a tacit concession that, gosh, change is hard so we might as well say screw it and play some Xbox.

In fact, those of us who reject the electoral charade do so, not because we just don't give a damn, but because we see elections as a damaging distraction, a pressure-valve that enables the average American to feel they're Throwing the Bastards Out without risking any serious damage to the institutional bastardry that goes on in Washington.

But if who occupies the White House matters little in terms of tangible policy, does it follow that it matters not at all to the cause of furthering the social revolution that is necessary to build a more just, equitable world? In terms of awakening the public to the systemic fucking they are receiving and spurring people to direct action -- lobby Congress to keep my house? No, thanks, I think me and my friends just won't leave it -- does it matter which faction of the ruling elite calls dibs on the Oval Office?

Doug Henwood, of the old state-socialist left, thinks it does. He argues that reelecting Barack Obama will be good for left-wing activists as, when his second term does not usher in a new progressive era, no longer will Democrats be able to claim Republicans have a monopoly on corporatist, war-mongering evil. That, in turn, will lead more and more people to realize the systemic nature of the American problem.

Henwood's argument has a logic to it, but one can also imagine a different outcome: Should Obama be re-elected, he will continue to pursue the same establishment-friendly, banker-approved polices as he has in his first term. Rather than admit they had been fooled not once but twice, however, Democratic pundits and partisans will continue adhering to the tried and true formula of pointing to this month's latest crazy Republican, arguing -- as they always have -- that while their guy isn't perfect, at least he's not the other guy. Rinse. Repeat. Hillary 2016.

Were a Republican in office, however, there would be no confusion about who is on who's side, no clichéd anecdotes about FDR and the need to push Obama -- gently, lovingly -- to be the best Obama he can be. War, again, would be a bad thing; hell, their might even be an antiwar movement. Government collusion with major corporate polluters would spur nasty editorials in Mother Jones, as opposed to excuse-making lectures about Political Realities.

At the same time, though, were a Republican to win in November, it would likely revive the myth of a Democratic savior. While center-left opposition to war would, maybe, be a Thing again, it would as we saw with opposition to the Iraq war be a thing used to elect more and better Democrats. Soon enough, another Obama-type figure would be found to re-brand the nominally left-leaning establishment political faction and, god damn it, we'd back to where we started all over again.

And that's why, friends, insofar as there is a debate over which party in power would be better for spawning a broad-based progressive social movement, it's kind of a silly one (yes, I've just wasted your time). A second term for Obama won't in and of itself awaken the public to the bipartisan, systemic nature of American plutocracy anymore than Bill Clinton's second term did. A Republican in office might awaken the partisan left's devotion to peace and freedom again, but only until the next Democrat is in power.

When it comes to affecting positive and systemic social change, it doesn't much matter who wields political power. Indeed, what matters is that we, the powerless, recognize that it's power -- not those who possess it at a given moment -- is the root of the problems we face. And that argument, I think, can be fairly easily made no matter whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat.

When Spanish isn't enough to sell a war

Check out my latest column for Al Jazeera, on Spanish-language broadcaster Univision's sudden shift to producing English-language war propaganda.

Quoted for truth

"You might have 100 people in your gang - we have 32,000 people in our gang. It's called the Metropolitan Police."

-- Chief Inspector Ian Kibblewhite, Enfield Police, England (BBC)

(via Lenin's Tomb)

'A Global Empire, Yet a "United States of Fear"'

In my latest piece for Inter Press Service, I review Tom Engelhardt's new collection of essays, United States of Fear, and opine on militarism in America.

Give it a read.

"Lawmakers, 'Experts' Spin Tales of Iranian Terror in Latin America"

Check out my latest piece for Inter Press Service on attempts by congressmen and career militarists posing as dispassionate experts to cast Iran's relations with Latin America as a "clear and present danger" to the United States.

Replace 'Iran' with 'Israel'

That's a tweet sent Monday from the official account of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noteworthy not only for its cocksure hypocrisy -- it's Israel that continues to produce nukes without so much as a strongly worded email  from the alleged international community -- but for its casually bold new charge against the Islamic Republic of Iran: that it not only desires a nuclear weapon, but is already busy making them.

Coincidentally, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today:

"The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to [top U.S. general Martin] Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb."

Someone ought to send that there assessment on over to the prime minister's office.

'A Decade in the Purgatory Called Guantanamo'

My report for Inter Press Service on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay.

Close Guantanamo, Abolish Authority

Check out more pictures here from the rally marking the 10th Anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama's Pentagon Strategy: A Leaner, More Efficient Empire

By Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin

In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer – and poor foreigners abroad – will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.

Speaking January 5 alongside his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president announced a shift in strategy for the American military, one that emphasizes aerial campaigns and proxy wars as opposed to “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.” This, to some pundits and politicians, is considered a tectonic shift.

Indeed, the way some on the left tell it, the strategy marks a radical departure from the imperial status quo. “Obama just repudiated the past decade of forever war policy,” gushed Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, calling the new strategy a “[s]lap in the face to the generals.”

Conservative hawks, meanwhile, predictably declared that the sky is falling. “This is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America,” cried hyperventilating California Republican Buck McKeon, chairman the House Armed Services Committee. “This strategy ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs.” In McKeon’s world, feeding the war machine is preferable to feeding poor people.

Unfortunately, though, rather than renouncing empire and endless war, Obama's stated strategy for the military going forward just reaffirms the U.S. commitment to both. Rather than renouncing the last decade of war, it states that the bloody and disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan – gently termed “extended operations” – were pursued “to bring stability to those countries.”

And Leon Panetta assured the American public that even with the changes, the U.S. would still be able to fight two major wars at the same time—and win. And Obama assured America's military contractors and coffin makers that their lifeline – U.S. taxpayers' money – would still be funneled their way in obscene bucket loads.

“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow,” the president told reporters, “but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.” In fact, he added with a touch of pride, it “will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration,” totaling more than $700 billion a year and accounting for about half of the average American's income tax. So much for the Pentagon's budget being slashed – like we were promised – the way lawmakers are trying to cut those “failed domestic programs.”

The U.S. could cut its military spending in half tomorrow and still spend more than three times as much as its next nearest rival, China. That’s because China, instead of waging wars of choice around the world, prefers projecting its might by investing in its own country. On the other hand, the U.S. under the leadership of Obama is beefing up its military presence in China's backyard, more interested in projecting its dwindling power than rebuilding its economy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower once noted that every dollar going to the military is a dollar that can't be used to provide food and shelter for those in need. Today’s obscene amount of military spending isn't necessary if the administration wished to pursue the quaint goal of simply defending the country from invasion. Maintaining “the best-trained, best-equipped military in history,” as Obama says is his goal? That's a different story – for a different purpose. Indeed, as Madeline Albright observed, possessing that kind of military might is no fun if you don't get to use it, as Obama has with gusto in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Uganda.

The truth is that the Obama administration's “new” strategy is more of the same—a reaffirmation of the U.S. government's commitment to militarism for the all the usual reasons: to promote American hegemony and, by extension, the interests of politically connected capital. And U.S. officials aren't shy about that.

Indeed, throughout the strategy document the ostensible purpose for having a military -- to provide national security -- repeatedly takes a backseat to promoting the economic interests of the U.S. elite that profits from empire. Repositioning U.S. forces “toward the Asia-Pacific region,” for instance – including the stationing of American soldiers in that hotbed of violent extremism, Australia – is cast not just as a means of ensuring peace and stability, but guaranteeing “the free flow of commerce.” Maintaining a global empire of bases from Europe to Okinawa isn't necessary for self-defense, but according to Obama, ensuring – with guns – “the prosperity that flows from an open and free international economic system.”

Of course, that economic considerations shape U.S. foreign policy is nothing new. More than 25 years ago, President Jimmy Carter – that Jimmy Carter – declared in a State of the Union address that U.S. military force would be employed in the Persian Gulf, not for the cause of peace, freedom and apple pie, but to ensure “the free movement of Middle East oil.” And so it goes.

Far from affecting change, Obama is ensuring continuity. “U.S. policy will emphasize Gulf security,” states his new military strategy, in order to “prevent Iran's development of a nuclear weapon capability and counter its destabilizing policies” — as if it's Iran that has been destabilizing the region. And as Obama publicly proclaims his support for “political and economic reform” in the Middle East, just like every other U.S. president he not-so-privately backs their oppressors from Bahrain to Yemen and signs off on the biggest weapons deal in history to that bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia.

Obama can talk all he wants about turning the page on a decade of war and occupation, but so long as he continues to fight wars and military occupy countries on the other side of the globe, talk is all it is. The facts, sadly, are this: since taking office Obama doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan; he fought to extend the U.S. occupation in Iraq– and partially succeeded; he dramatically expanded the use of killer drones from Pakistan to Somalia; and he requested military budgets that would make George W. Bush blush. If you want to see what his military strategy really is, forget what's said at press conferences and in turgidly written Pentagon press releases. Just look at the record.

Charles Davis has covered Capitol Hill for public radio and the international news wire Inter Press Service. More of his work may be found on his website.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and Global Exchange.

Love me, I'm a liberal

(via Nathan Fuller)

Come at me, bro

In a March 2010 address before the American Society of International Law, Harold Koh, the U.S. State Department's top legal rationalizer, explained why Barack Obama believes he is entitled to kill anyone in the world he chooses.

"[T]he United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces, in response to the horrific 9/11 attacks, and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law," Koh patiently explained. And that right enables the U.S. government to carry out anywhere in the world “lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”

So drones, according to Koh, are essentially the U.S. government's industrial-strength pepper spray, the inhabitants of the rest of the world its swarthy would-be rapists. Yeah . . . about that, courtesy The Washington Post:

Somalia, where the militant group al-Shabab is based, is surrounded by American drone installations. And officials said that JSOC has repeatedly lobbied for authority to strike al-Shabab training camps that have attracted some Somali Americans. 

But the administration has allowed only a handful of strikes, out of concern that a broader campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

As it turns out, firing missiles at poor foreigners from unmanned killing machines has nothing to do with Defending America, U.S. officials readily conceding that al-Shabab is but a "regional menace." But firing missiles at poor foreigners from unmanned killing machines could cause said foreigners to strike back, meaning -- god this is good -- that in the future there may actually be something to the U.S.'s claims to be acting in self-defense, albeit only to counter a threat it created.

"Sweet," says every military contractor and general in Washington.

It's a good thing there isn't the same threat of blowback from the U.S. government's broad campaign of drone warfare in Pakistan or Afghanistan, otherwise we might be in trouble!

Occupy North Pole

Institutional racism: The sine qua non of ethnic cleansing

"So, if the underlying sine qua non for any acceptable policy proposal is the long-term preservation of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people . . . ."

And if it isn't?

HOLIDAY BONUS: It sure takes a lot of chutzpah to include the following in a piece that calls for ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank:

This leads to the second element of the proposal: The grave ethnic discrimination against the Palestinians resident in the Arab world where, as I recently pointed out, severe restrictions are imposed on their freedom of movement, employment and property ownership.

But most significant, they – and they alone – are denied citizenship of the countries in which they have lived for decades.

Palestinians overwhelmingly want to acquire citizenship of the countries of their long-standing residence, opinion surveys indicate.

'Israeli drones save lives'

A couple weeks ago the editors at The Washington Post did something rather out of character: they published a piece by reporter Scott Wilson on the impact Israeli drones have had on the residents of Gaza, noting the hundreds of civilians killed in the past few years and detailing the way it has impacted every aspect of daily life -- you may not want to go over to a friend's house if there's something hovering outside armed with missiles and programmed to eliminate anybody wearing a keffiyeh. Obviously, this is outrageous. Clearly. This is the Post we're talking about: its Pulitzer Prize-winning team of journalists is supposed to be focusing on the quiet, turgid courage of those pulling the trigger, not on the torments of the targeted.

Dan Arbell, deputy chief of mission for the Israeli embassy in Washington, agrees. In a letter to the editor, he writes:

Oddly, The Post devoted a massive front-page headline and two full pages of print not to the tens of thousands of terrorist rockets aimed at Israeli neighborhoods or to the rapidly nuclearizing Iranian regime that routinely threatens to wipe Israel off the map but to Israeli drones over the Gaza Strip.

More inexplicably still, most of the article deals with the drones’ impact on Gaza residents while mentioning only in passing the trauma and devastation wrought by the more than 13,000 rockets and mortars fired at millions of Israeli civilians since 2000. Not one of these Israeli victims was interviewed for the article — in contrast to the numerous quotes from Palestinians — nor was any Israeli government source cited. Rather, the article relies solely on the infamously biased Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Israeli drones save lives. They protect Israelis from terrorist attacks and reduce the need for large-scale ground operations in Gaza. This fact, too, was overlooked in an article that failed to meet Post standards.

Dan Arbell, Washington
The writer is deputy chief of mission for the Embassy of Israel.

Dude's right about the "standards" thing.