August 19, 2007
Militarism's Transmission Belt
By Werther*
In a previous article, we analyzed the function of supposedly nonpartisan think tanks as propaganda mills for government policies, particularly those that aggrandize the warmaking state. It is worth elaborating with a fresh example.
In the 16 August 2007 edition of The New York Times, Anthony Cordesman of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies tells us why it is a terrific idea for the United States to variously sell and give away more than $50 billion in weaponry to several Middle Eastern states. [1]
August 14, 2007
Follow the Oil
Darfur not only hugely distracts from Iraq, it enables administration warmongers to quietly incite a confrontation with China over oil and, more generally, to build up the ad-hoc team of 'humanitarian interventionists' who can give full-throated support from the sidelines to all manner of yet to be determined future adventures. 'Humanitarian intervention' being the thin end of the wedge for military conquest. Not to harp on my recent post regarding Darfur but there are at least two essays out there definitely worth perusing, one by Mahmood Mamdani, "The Politics of Naming" and the other by Brendan O'Neill, "Darfur: Pornography for the Chattering Classes." Elsewhere, Brendan makes a very apt connection between Bosnia and more recent interventions, one well worth considering in extended detail, but which I will not attempt here.
August 13, 2007
The Architecture of Perpetual War
By Werther*
Of late, many of the nation's literati have preoccupied themselves with a mendacious New York Times op-ed column by a couple of think tank hacks named Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, the burden of which is that, by golly, the glorious Surge really is working. Of course, the whole thing was a put-up job, sold on the man-bites-dog pretence that the two authors were longtime critics of the Bush administration who had gone to Iraq and seen the light. Their performance is deftly skewered by Glenn Greenwald in Salon.
August 5, 2007
Michael Ignatieff Does American Power
By David Peterson
The degree of access that the top lieutenants in the Humanitarian Brigades of the 1990s continue to enjoy on the pages of the New York Times really turns my stomach. Last Sunday, it was Harvard's Samantha Power in the Book Review ("Our War on Terror," July 29). This Sunday, it's former Harvard professor and more recently a member of the Canadian Parliament from a district (a "riding") in Toronto, Michael Ignatieff in the Magazine.
