United States Foreign Policy

US on UN Veto: "Disgusting", "Shameful", "Deplorable", "a Travesty" . . . Really?

    A Quick Listing of The United States' Record of Veto Use at the United Nations (UN): 1972–2011* [Including Resolutions against Decades of Atrocities and Violations, Often Supported and/or Bankrolled by the United States]       Year  Resolution Vetoed by the United States 1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids. 1973 Affirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. 1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians. 1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories. 1976 Calls for self ...

War Talk: The Obama Administration and Iran

“Let there be no doubt,” President Obama declared in his 2012 State of the Union address. “America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.” The comment drew a rousing and sustained standing ovation from the US Congress. “But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible,” the President continued to a smattering of applause that tumbled awkwardly across the silent chamber. The spectacle would suggest war on Iran seems not just a viable but perhaps even a highly popular prospect on Capital Hill. War talk holds a certain appeal. For an American president facing a difficult ...

The War on Error

American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy

One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama's demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel's demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002. Israel's position was basically that Lebanon's sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. In an area where ...

The Invention of the Palestinian

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire … I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic.” (Newt Gingrich, 7 December 2011) “The Palestinian is not a profession or a slogan. He, in the first place, is a human being who loves life and is taken by almond blossoms and feels a shiver after the first autumn rain… and this means the long occupation has failed to erase our human ...

On Being "Wrong" on Iraq

This is not another article about Christopher Hitchens. This may come as something of a relief, given the spilling of ink occasioned by Hitchens’ untimely death last week, with Neal Pollock’s fine parody hopefully bringing this outpouring to an end. After an initial set of hagiographies, it was encouraging to see a number of pieces reminding readers of Hitchens’ role in forcefully and bloodthirstily advocating for the war on Iraq, and for the “war on terror” more generally, as part of a deeply racist and Islamophobic current in his work over the past decade (or more). What has struck me in the articles that have followed, both those that praise and those that condemn ...

The Iraq We are Leaving Behind: Interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon

This is an interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon on the Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC). “Closure” is a very productive trope in political and other narratives. It drowns out all other voices (preferably with applause), produces silence and draws a fictitious end. The curtain is drawn and the crowd’s already brief attention is refocused on another spectacle on another screen. “The End” The war in Iraq is over. The flag is down and the boys are back home. “We” tried to help those wretched Iraqis, but it was all just too messy (Sunnis, Shi`ites, Iran. . .etc). Mistakes were made along the way. Now, Iraqis will have to fend for themselves. This narrative, with a ...

Bombing the Neighborhood: Daniel Ellsberg and the Radical Critique of American Empire

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. United States, 2010. “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.” – Daniel Ellsberg Two of the most chilling scenes in Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s extraordinary 2010 film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, involve Richard Nixon. Nixon had just won the 1968 presidential election, a victory that he owed in part to his promise to end the war in Vietnam and deliver to the United States an honorable exit from Indochina. Unbeknownst to anyone outside his inner circle, however, ...

"Arab League and United States Not Fit to Intervene in Syria": Interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Bassam Haddad

As regional and international pressure mounts on Syria, the domestic scene seems to be heading towards civil war. No sooner than the Arab League sanctions on Syria were announced recently, did the camps that support or oppose the status quo there entrench themselves further in their position, leaving little room for constructive dialogue, cooperation, or exit from the current impasse. The brutality of the regime's squashing of the uprising continues as regional and international pressure heads in directions that do not bode well for Syria--despite the pretense of intervening on behalf of the Syrian people. In this interview, Jadaliyya Co-Editor Bassam Haddad asserts ...

What Happens in Yemen: The "End" of Citizenship and How We Got Here

When Troy Davis was executed in Georgia, despite the recantation of seven of the nine witnesses who had testified against him and despite the lack of other material evidence implicating him in the murder for which he was convicted, it seemed like things could not get much worse for due process. Two weeks later, the US skipped the messiness of court hearings altogether and executed its own citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki, with a unpiloted drone. The government and the mainstream media tried to rationalize what had once been unthinkable: the summary execution of a citizen without due process. Perhaps al-Awlaki was, as the State Department alleged, the operational head of ...

If the Libyan War Was About Saving Lives, It Was a Catastrophic Failure

As the most hopeful offshoot of the "Arab spring" so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That's not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Qaddafi, courtesy of a NATO attack on his convoy. The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton's reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an ...

United States Should Step Aside as Mideast Broker

When it comes to Arab-Israeli diplomacy the American monopoly on mediation needs to be terminated. The reason is simple. Washington’s systematic failure over several decades has disqualified it from acting without adult supervision. Rather than the marriage counselor who must be balanced because both spouses are angry, the US is the arbitrator who sleeps with and solicits bribes from the more powerful disputant, and fixes outcomes accordingly. Given the US mantra that it cannot want peace more than the parties themselves and that negotiations without preconditions are the only acceptable formula–meaning that Israel has a veto over every decision large and small–it is ...