Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District had been long disgraced by the racist buffoon Democrat turned Republican Virgil Goode when Tom Perriello was elected as a non-racist buffoon Democrat in 2008. For partisans, just getting elected and doing what President Obama told him was all Perriello needed to do. For national “progressives” he was a star, which was usually explained to me in terms of how awful his district was relative to how limitedly awful he was.
But
To the Charlottesville Daily Progress
To the Editor:“Headed to another Persian Gulf War” is a helpful column in that it seeks to avoid a war on Iran, but unhelpful in that it makes that war just a little bit more likely.
Don Nuechterlein claims to know the motivations of our two presidents Bush in launching a pair of wars on Iraq. But he makes no mention of oil, of bases, of profits, or of global politics. The babies-taken-from-incubators fraud is forgotten along with the WMD lies.
War Propaganda in the Anti-War Punditry Read More »
Remarks at Lynchburg College on September 26, 2011
I’d like to thank Dave Freier for inviting me, and all of you for being here. I think I was invited to speak about my most recent book, War Is A Lie, but I asked Professor Freier if it would be all right to speak about my next book, not yet finished, and he agreed. So, the following is a relatively very short summary of a forthcoming book that is not yet finished, and which I need your help with. It
When the World Outlawed War Read More »
When a national television program this week needed to find a spokesperson for the right of presidents to launch wars without congressional authorization, it turned — to the great shame of us University of Virginia alumni — to Robert Turner. He is the co-founder of the University of Virginia’s Center for National Security Law.
Turner worked as an attorney in the Reagan White House and behaves accordingly. His center is directed by John Norton Moore who unsuccessfully defended
UVA/Reagan War Hawk Defends Obama's War Read More »
U.S. newspapers sometimes print what they call the total death count from one or more of our wars, and all the dead who are listed are Americans. They aren’t all the Americans. They don’t include contractors or suicides or various other categories of dead Americans. They certainly don’t include those who died for lack of basic needs while we dumped half of our public treasury into wars.
But they also don’t include anyone from that 95% of humanity that’s not from
Of Humans and Rights Read More »
Johan Galtung, sometimes called the father of peace studies, predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and the refusal of Egyptian soldiers to attack civilians. His prediction of the collapse of the US empire in 2020 appears to be on schedule. So, it was noteworthy when he predicted on Tuesday at the University of Virginia that the war in Libya would last 20 years. If, however, NATO and the opposition were to kill Gadaffi, he said, the fighting could go on for more than 20 years.
This prediction
Prediction: 20 Years of War in Libya Read More »
Congress held an emergency meeting to defund NPR, and then did nothing as the President spent vastly more money on bombing Libya. President Obama didn’t have to ask for the funding, because the Pentagon had enough lying around for just such an occasion.
A fundamental lie that keeps war going is the idea that we avoid war by preparing for it. “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” said Theodore Roosevelt, who favored building a big military just in case, but of course not actually
Wars Cannot Be Both Planned and Avoided Read More »
When I advocated the impeachment of George W. Bush, I did so despite, not because of, all the animosity it fueled among impeachment supporters. I didn’t want retribution. I wanted to deter the continuation and repetition of Bush’s crimes and abuses. Specifically, and by far most importantly — and I said this thousands of times — I wanted to deny all future presidents the powers Bush had grabbed. One-time abuses can be catastrophic, but establishing the power to repeat
Is Obama Even Worse Than Bush? Read More »
It’s a simple point, but an important one, and one that gets overlooked. Whether or not you think a particular war is moral and good, the fact remains that war is illegal. Actual defense by a country when attacked is legal, but that only occurs once another country has actually attacked, and it must not be used as a loophole to excuse wider war that is not employed in actual defense.
Needless to say, a strong moral argument can be made for preferring the rule of law to the law of rulers.
War Is Illegal – Even in Libya Read More »
There’s a video available online that has created quite a scandal this week. It shows a fashion designer in Paris telling someone he loves Hitler and that their mothers and forefathers would have all been gassed to death.
I think the staying power of Hitlerian madness is more easily understood when we properly understand that Hitler and the Nazis didn’t invent it out of whole cloth but built on a deep tradition that had long dominated European and U.S. culture. I wrote about U.S.
"Your Forefathers Would All Have Been Gassed" Read More »
