Antiwar.com Blog

John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy made an appearence on C-SPAN Monday to discuss those very things.

Watch it here.

The Los Angeles Times ran a piece of mine today that advocates using the same coercive interrogation methods on congressmen that Congress approve for Bush’s military tribunals.

Full text of the piece is at the LATimes here (registration required?) and at my website here.

Comments welcome at http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/08/27/how-to-pry-the-truth-out-of-congressmen/

Why would anyone support the American president at this point? The answer is simple: Cowardice.

Republicans are sissies. They talk tough and drive trucks, but in truth are very afraid that a scary Arabic Islamo-Fascist™ is going to come to hurt them – for no reason except perhaps jealousy – and because they are so frightened, they need a massive police state to fight their battles (all the while pretending it could never be used against them).

It’s a good thing for these Republicans’ congressmen that the passengers on Flight 93 – the fourth plane on 9/11, and the only plane whose passengers had heard that others had been crashed rather than flown to Cuba – weren’t Republicans. They probably would have hid like children in the back of the plane waiting for the cops to come instead of trying to take it back, leading to a suicidal dive into the U.S. Capital building rather than a field in Pennsylvania.

Every “terror threat” in this country since 9/11 (that’s 2001, dummy) has been a joke. A joke that, as the great James Bovard points out, results in a ratings boost for the president every time.

(This entry on the topic was written before, and so omits, the latest hoaxes in Miami, New York and the U.K. See also, Keith Olberman, “The Nexus of Politics and Terror”)

Even Foreign Affairs – champions of every bogus threat and the subsequent wars against them since 1921 – has published an article questioning whether there are even any terrorists out there at all:

“On the first page of its founding manifesto, the massively funded Department of Homeland Security intones, ‘Today’s terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon.’

“But if it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could so easily be exploited? …

“Although it remains heretical to say so, the evidence so far suggests that fears of the omnipotent terrorist … may have been overblown, the threat presented within the United States by al Qaeda greatly exaggerated. The massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists.”

Maybe Mohammed Atta was the very best Osama had.

In any case, the purpose of 9/11 was to bait the U.S. into the jihadist sandtrap – so that our government would bankrupt us fighting no-win wars on foreign soil until we leave the region entirely. With the murder of so many innocents in the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden lost much of his image as a defender rather than aggressor. It would be a tactical mistake for him to hit the U.S. again now. The plan already worked. By invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush/Cheney administration has split the difference for the jihadist factions who fought over whether to fight the “near” or “far” enemy and settled the question of whether or not the U.S. was the aggressor. Now the far enemy is near – and vows that it isn’t going anywhere. The al Qaeda “inspired” attacks on our allies are intended to isolate us from them, and that’s working too.

That doesn’t mean that future attacks in the U.S. are impossible, just unlikely as long as “we” are doing bin Laden’s work for him.

Meanwhile the King‘s subjects quake at every Orange Alert as we all lose the liberty that made America worth fighting for in the first place.

If you want to be safe and free, buy a gun and tell your congressman to stop meddling in the Middle East.

Comments welcome over at Stress.

Antiwar.com contributor Leon Hadar discusses his book Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East on C-SPAN.

Most conservative think tanks are nothing but conservative war tanks. A case in point is the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Even though the Marine Corps has called up more reservists, more cannon fodder is still needed. As reported in today’s USA Today, according to “resident scholar” Frederick Kagan, a “military analyst” at the AEI, U.S. forces “are overstrained and undermanned.” Kagan’s solution? Instead of removing the 138,000 U.S. troops from Iraq, followed by the 69,000 troops in Germany and the 35,000 troops in Japan and the 32,000 troops in Korea and the 12,000 troops in Italy, Kagan wants the Army to add an additional 200,000 soldiers.

Where is the republic of the Founders? It is so far gone that they wouldn’t recognize it. Modern conservatism is totally devoid of any principle, except for that of militarism. Conservative think tanks are nothing but conservative war tanks.

Friend-of-blog Dennis Perrin will be on a panel next Wednesday in Tarrytown, N.Y., addressing the topic “Horror and chaos in the Middle East: Who’s to blame, and is there a remedy?” For more information, click here.