Antiwar.com Blog

Yet another long, pretentious pro-war, pro-Bush piece in Reason by Michael Young, this time praising the $60 billion arms deal recently announced by the Bush administration, has his readers in an uproar: this comment thread is hilarious. Libertarians are, naturally, antiwar, the Reason staff is officially agnostic on the issue, but in reality its foreign policy pieces are almost uniformly neoconnish to the max. One factor left out of this equation, however, is Reason‘s readers, who, it looks like, have had enough of Senor Young’s gunslinging on behalf of the Bushies.

I woke this morning to the news that Barack Obama, the subject of my column this morning, is having yet another tiff with Hillary Clinton, this time over the issue of whether or when to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Obama is saying “Never,” but Hillary — just as she did on the neogotiations with Iran, Syria, etc. question — is saying “Never say never.” While the War Wall Street Journal is now hailing Obama as a neocon for his let’s-invade-Pakistan stance, it looks like the race to see who among the Democratic front-runners is the most neoconnish is on…..

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_08_02_richman.mp3]

Sheldon Richman, editor of The Freeman, discusses the history of American imperialism and the growth of domestic government since America lost the Spanish-American war, the roots of Anti-American terrorism (Bush I and Bill Clinton), laissez faire economics, libertarianism and social Darwinism.

MP3 here.

Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, published by The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York, and serves as senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is the author of FFF’s award-winning book Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and FFF’s newest book Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/AW073107RayOffenheiser.mp3]

Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, discusses the new report “Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq,” the catastrophe that the American invasion of Iraq has caused and his view of what should be done about it.

MP3 here.

Raymond C. Offenheiser is the president of Oxfam America, a non-profit international development and relief agency and the U.S. affiliate of Oxfam International. Oxfam works to end global poverty through saving lives, strengthening communities, and campaigning for change. Since Mr. Offenheiser joined Boston-based Oxfam America in 1995, the organization has grown more than fourfold in size and has positioned itself as an expert on international development and global trade.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_08_01_parry.mp3]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry explains why just about everything the government says about U.S. policy in the Middle East is a damned lie and what the truth is instead.

MP3 here.

Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, runs ConsortiumNews.com, and is the author of Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and the brand new Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Does former UN Amb. John Bolton – now with the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — still speak for Dick Cheney?

The new British government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown must be scratching its collective head over that question given the truly unbelievably arrogant and threatening op-ed Bolton, a Cheney protege, published in Wednesday’s Financial Times.

The column’s title, “Britain Cannot Have Two Best Friends,” refers to what Bolton calls “a clear decision point” for Britain — to choose between the United States and the European Union or, as he refers to it, the “European porridge” of which he so clearly disapproves. For Bolton, it is a zero-sum game, and, in his view, it is now up to Brown to make the choice. “[W]hether the ‘special relationship’ grows stronger or weaker lies entirely in British hands,” he states.

The catalyst for Bolton’s outburst appears to have been Brown’s statement during his visit with Bush last week that Britain’s “single most important bilateral relationship” is with the U.S. The only U.S. ambassador to the UN never to have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate – despite repeated attempts – calls that characterization a “clever but meaningless dodge.

“Drop the word ‘bilateral’. What is Britain’s most important ‘relationship’? Does Mr. Brown regard the EU as a ‘state under construction’, as some EU supporters proclaim, or not?

The answers to these questions are what Washington really needs to know. What London needs to know is that its answer will have consequences.”[Emphasis added]

For example, Bolton goes on, Britain’s absorption into the European porridge raises questions about whether it (as well as Sarkozy’s France) should still be entitled to a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. “Of course the Security Council permanent seat is not the real issue – it is the question of whether Britain still has sovereignty over its foreign policy or whether it has simply taken its assigned place in the EU food chain.”

“Consider also the US-UK intelligence relationship. Fundamental to that relationship is that pooled intelligence is not shared with others without mutual consent. Tension immediately arises in EU circles, however, when Britain advocates policies based on intelligence [such as Saddam’s uranium purchases from Niger, for example?] that other EU members do not have. How tempting it must already be to British diplomats to ‘very privately’ reveal what they know to European colleagues. How does Mr. Brown feel about sharing US intelligence with other Europeans?”

“Finally there is Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, which will prove in the long run more important for both countries than the current turmoil in Iraq. Here the US has followed the EU lead in a failed diplomatic effort to dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. If Mr. Bush decides that the only way to stop Iran is to use military force, where will Mr Brown come down? Supporting the US or allowing Iran to goose-step towards nuclear weapons?”[Emphasis added]

Bolton’s coda displays the kind of diplomacy for which he became widely despised throughout the UN during his ruinous tenure there. “I will wait for answers to these and other questions before I draw conclusions about ‘the special relationship’ under Mr. Brown,” he harrumphs. “But not forever.” At least, he didn’t use the royal “We.”

Still, one must positively wonder at the tone, content, and not least the intent of Bolton’s utterly offensive bloviation. Is he trying to provoke Brown into proving his independence from Washington? Is he trying to drive the new prime minister closer to his former UN nemesis, Mark Malloch Brown, as part of some bizarre masochistic compulsion? Is he trying to create even more anti-American feeling in Britain and “Eurabia,” as some of his Anglo-chauvinist friends refer to Western Europe these days? Is he trying to split the West? Does he actually work for bin Laden? (Is AEI an al-Qaeda sleeper cell?) And does Bolton still speak for Cheney?