Antiwar, anti-drone protest on April 3, 2013 in San Francisco, California. (Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
One argument that’s prevalent in certain circles is that mostly white people, particularly males, care about drones. This argument has become pretty prominent in the age of Obama. It’s typically made by Obama supporters to shut down critics of his counterterrorism policies, such as drone strikes. It’s an asinine argument that marginalizes nonwhite antiwar voices and provides a multicultural veneer to empire. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: anti-war, antiracism, black, black politics, civil liberties, drone warfare, empire, Farea al-Muslimi, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, International Law, Kill List, liberals, Pakistan, race, racism, Somalia, targeted killing, War, war crimes, War on Terror, white people, Yemen
U.S. Marine tank in Baghdad, April 14, 2003.
Photo source: Wikipedia
As American combat troops left Iraq in December 2011, at that point, the war was largely forgotten by the American public. What remains in public memory are retrospectives of the war, especially on its ten-year anniversary. The dominant narrative is that the Iraq war was a mistake because of the lies or “faulty intelligence” that were used to justify it, costs to the United States, and the strategic folly of invading the country in the first place. However, the war was more than a mistake — it was a crime. Portraying the war as a mistake does three pernicious things: downplay the gravity of the crime, does not question the premises of militarism and permanent war, and perpetuates the myth of American benevolence. Cumulatively, these retrospectives amount to a gross revision of history. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 9/11, anti-war, Condoleezza Rice, crime of aggression, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, empire, George W. Bush, Global War on Terror, hegemony, Human Rights, imperialism, International Law, Iraq, Iraq war, Middle East & North Africa, oil, Paul Wolfowitz, War, war crimes, war of aggression, War on Terror, weapons of mass destruction, WMD
Predator drone fires a Hellfire missile (Source: Wikipedia)
On Monday, NBC News reported on a leaked Department of Justice “white paper” summarizing memos that make the Obama administration’s legal case for targeted killing of U.S. citizens suspected of links to al-Qaeda or “associated forces”. In September of 2011, the Obama administration launched a drone strike against alleged al-Qaeda leaders Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in Yemen, both of whom were U.S. citizens. Neither was charged or convicted of any crime. In fact, Yemen experts raised doubts about how operational al-Awlaki was in al-Qaeda.
Two weeks later, al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in another drone strike, even though he was not charged or convicted of any crime. It is very likely that he wasn’t the intended target. In fact, one Obama administration official called the strike that killed Abdulrahman “an outrageous mistake…. They were going after the guy sitting next to him.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Afghanistan, anti-war, Barack Obama, CIA, civil liberties, drone warfare, drones, Human Rights, International Law, Iraq, John Brennan, JSOC, Kill List, legal memo, Pakistan, permanent war, Somalia, targeted killing, War, War on Terror, white paper, Yemen
The Pentagon, January 2008 (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
With high unemployment, massive poverty, inequality, and a weak economic recovery, the economy is obviously the number-one issue in public consciousness. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney continue to trade barbs on the presidential campaign trail. Romney accuses Obama of being “anti-business”, while Obama criticizes Romney’s record with Bain Capital, Romney’s private equity firm that was involved in outsourcing American jobs overseas. Amidst this cacophony of superficial babble and quacking from two politicians backed by multinational corporations and Wall Street, one fact is conveniently left out of the discussion — the $1 trillion national security budget.
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Tags: $1 trillion, 2011 debt deal, 2012 presidential election, anti-war, Barack Obama, CIA, drones, economic injustice, economic justice, empire, global economic crisis, imperialism, militarism, military-industrial complex, Mitt Romney, national security, national security budget, unemployment, War
This is the text of a speech I gave at a panel Stanford Says No to War hosted called “It’s All About U.S.: Questioning U.S. Militarism”. This speech was given on May 26th, 2010 and is the last speech I gave at Stanford.
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During the Nuremberg Trials, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, famously stated: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” America has a long history of war and its accumulated evils. It began as thirteen small colonies that sat along the Atlantic coast. In over a century, the United States expanded all the way to the Pacific Ocean – from sea to shining sea. The process was not pretty. It involved the genocide of the native Americans and the enslavement of millions of black Africans whose free labor was needed to fuel the American capitalist economy. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States began to colonize other lands, such as Hawaii, the Philippines and Cuba. Since then, it has occupied and militarily intervened in several parts of the globe, such as in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. And let’s not forget the many democratically-elected leaders America overthrew in places like Chile and Iran. The United States currently occupies two countries – Iraq and Afghanistan – and has a network of over 700 bases across the planet. Thus, the United States is an empire. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Afghanistan, anti-war, colonialism, Condoleezza Rice, Human Rights, International Law, Middle East & North Africa, Stanford University, Torture, War, war crimes
It is essentially common knowledge that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States. Iraq possessed no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and had no connection to al-Qaeda or 9/11, thus, discrediting the Bush administration’s justifications for war. Since the invasion was not authorized by the United Nations Security Council nor waged in self-defense against an imminent threat, the invasion of Iraq was an unlawful use of force (see Art. 39 and 51 of the Charter of the United Nations). In other words, the war in Iraq was a crime against peace and a war of aggression. The Nuremberg Principles (Art. 6) define “crime against peace” as “namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing”. The Judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal famously stated that “to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Upon waging war with another country, the consequences of that initial act of aggression are various forms of human suffering. This includes, but is not limited to, torture, rape, mass murder, and the intentional or unintentional killing of civilians. This has evil has manifested in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Afghanistan, anti-war, Human Rights, International Law, Iraq, Middle East & North Africa, War, war crimes, WikiLeaks
As an African-American male, people have wondered why I chose to study Arabic and am involved in anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism. It’s an image that people are not used to seeing. However, if I were to just stick to fighting on so-called “black” issues, such as civil rights and poverty (which I do, as well), then people probably wouldn’t be so curious. To me, the connection between the black freedom struggle and working in solidarity with other oppressed people around the globe is crystal clear. However, not everyone sees it that way. The black freedom struggle and the struggle for Palestinian self-determination is part of a broader post-colonial struggle for global justice and human emancipation. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: anti-war, black liberation, colonialism, economic injustice, Human Rights, IDF, International Law, Israel, Middle East & North Africa, Palestine, radicalism, struggle, War, war crimes
Blues African 