Droning on about American Drones

A commentary on Medea Benjamin’s new book, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control: Killing individuals (and whoever is near them) via drones (“unmanned aerial vehicles”) has become the primary substitute in U.S. public policy for capture/imprisonment/torture. As Medea Benjamin documents, the United States has avoided detaining people, only to murder them with a drone days […]

Clandestine Pentagon commandos wage secret warfare in all corners of the world

Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones […]

US Special Forces warfare Geneva Conventions and UN Charter be damned

[Until recently, the approaches to warfare could be summed up as] the Powell Doctrine, the Rumsfeld Doctrine, and the Petraeus Doctrine. The Powell Doctrine is essentially conventional warfare a-la-World War II: massive firepower, lots of soldiers, clear goals. This was the formula for the first Gulf War, which, after a month of bombing, lasted only […]

The New Face of US War

The assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden did more than knock off America’s Public Enemy Number One, it formalized a new kind of warfare, where sovereignty is irrelevant, armies tangential, and decisions are secret. It is also one that requires a vast intelligence apparatus, one that now constitute almost a fourth arm of government […]

US drone warfare up close and personal

Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and […]

Keyboard Credit and the new Financial World War

What is to stop U.S. banks and their customers from creating $1 trillion, $10 trillion or even $50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world, along with all the land and other assets for sale in the hope of making capital gains and pocketing the arbitrage […]

Surge in contractor deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most privatized in American military history. Today, there are 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. As of March 2010, there were more than 200,000 private contractors, though that number is believed to have declined since. In any case, more private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq […]

Repercussions of Unmanned Drone Warfare, the Weapon of Choice – Present and Future

When a young Pakistani-U.S. national pleaded guilty last week to a failed attempt to detonate explosives packed in a vehicle in the heart of New York City, he was conscious of the fact he would have killed dozens of civilians, including women and children. His justification: “Well, the (U.S.) drone-hits in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t […]

Insurgent history repeating itself in Afghanistan

History is repeating itself in Afghanistan because the Americans repeated the mistake made by the Soviets. They are being made to pay for their folly of overestimating themselves and underestimating the skill and fortitude of the Afghan guerillas. In a war against insurgency unless the mission is accomplished within a year, the war tends to […]

A pensive Christmas Eve

As today is Christmas Eve, it might be useful for those of us who call ourselves Christians to recall the teachings of Jesus Christ regarding humility, charity, tolerance, and peacemaking. The Christian message should be particularly welcome to the American people who have borne the burden of nearly continuous warfare since 2001, resulting in the […]