Anti-War

“These are people who had been working hard for months, non-stop for the past week. They had not gone home, they had not seen their families, they had just been working in the hospital to help people... and now they are dead. These people are friends, close friends. I have no words to express this. It is unspeakable.

“The hospital, it has been my workplace and home for several months. Yes, it is just a building. But it is so much more than that. It is healthcare for Kunduz. Now it is gone.

“What is in my heart since this morning is that this is completely unacceptable. How can this happen? What is the benefit of this? Destroying a hospital and so many lives, for nothing. I cannot find words for this.” - Lajos Zoltan Jecs

Only a non-patriot or someone with a bit of respect for the Bill of Rights would have opposed the Patriot Act.

Only a child-hater or someone with a bit of respect for public education would have opposed the No Child Left Behind Act.

And only a genocide-supporter or someone who's fed up with endless aggressive foreign wars would oppose the forthcoming Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act from Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD).

Names can be deceiving, even when supporters of bills and of those bills' names have the best of intentions. Who wouldn't like to prevent genocide and atrocities, after all? I'm of the opinion that I support many measures that would help to do just that.

President Barack Obama has vetoed a military authorization bill. Why would he do such a thing?

Was it because dumping $612 billion into a criminal enterprise just finally struck him as too grotesque?

Nope.

Was it because he grew ashamed of holding the record for highest average annual military spending since World War II, not even counting Der Homeland Security Department or military spending by the State Department, the Energy Department, the Veterans Administration, interest on debt, etc.?

Nope. That would be crazy in a world where pretense is everything and the media has got everyone believing that military spending has gone down.

The accepted story in the United States of what's happened in Syria is just that, a story told to make narrative sense of something completely un-understood.

In Southern Sweden a giant round rock lies on flat farmland, and the lovely story my ancestors used to tell to explain how it got there came down to this: a troll threw it there. As evidence, in a nearby castle, one can find a horn and a pipe that come into the story. The horn contained what today would be called chemical weapons, which burned the back of a horse when the hero of the story was smart enough to dump it over his shoulder rather than drinking it. Man and horse got away by riding across the furrows of a field, because everyone knows that trolls must run back and forth the full length of each furrow, which slows them down tremendously. The facts all fit. Some fringe conspiracy theorists may question the very existence of trolls, but such arguments need not be taken seriously.

There's a view of Syria, common even among peace activists in the United States, that holds that because the United States has been making everything worse in Syria and the entire Middle East for years, Russian bombs will make things better. While the actions of the United States and its allies will lead to victory for ISIS, horror for millions of people, and chronic chaos in Syria along the lines of post-liberation Iraq and Libya, Russian bombs -- this view maintains -- will destroy ISIS, restore order, uphold the rule of law, and establish peace.

No, it’s not really fair to blame President Obama personally for the waves of aerial bombing that took more than an hour on October 4 to destroy a neutral hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan, even though it appears on its face to be yet another US war crime.

But it’s totally fair to blame President Obama for giving the world another six years (so far) of President Bush’s policy of bringing chaos and devastation to whatever part of the Middle East happens to be annoying the folks who have decided these things since 2001. Not that it was all bread and roses before that, given the century-plus of unrelenting Western subjugation of the region by direct force and by establishing vicious proxy dictatorships (exhibit #1 is Iran).

There is video and audio. It exists. The Pentagon says it's critically important. Congress has asked for it and been refused. WikiLeaks is offering $50,000 to the next brave soul willing to be punished for a good deed in the manner of Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and so many others. You can petition the White House to hand it over here.

Imagine the Syrian war from the point of view of ordinary Syrians from a variety of backgrounds. They are most likely to offer a different perspective and to hold entirely different expectations than most other parties involved.  

A resident of Idlib, a villager from Deraa, a housewife, a teacher, a nurse or an unemployed ex-prisoner from anywhere else in Syria would distinguish their relationship to the war in terminology and overall understanding that is partially, or entirely, opposed to the narrative communicated by CNN, Al-Jazeera, Russia Today, the BBC, Press TV, and every available media platform that is concerned with the outcomes of the war.  

These media tailor their coverage and, when necessary - as is often the case - slant their focus in ways that would communicate their designated editorial agendas, which, unsurprisingly, is often linked to the larger political agenda of their respective governments. They may purport to speak in accordance with some imaginary moral line, but, frankly, none of them do.  

The Pentagon is promising an investigation today after it was revealed that an AC-130 warplane carried out sustained fire against a Doctors Without Borders-run hospital on the outskirts of the Taliban-held city of Kunduz, killing 19 including 12 staffers and three children.

The hospital was already overwhelmed by the huge number of casualties from the past week of fighting over Kunduz, which the Taliban seized Monday. Doctors Without Borders is demanding clarification on what happened, noting they contacted the US after the first strike near their hospital to warn them it was so close, and sustained attacks against the hospital continued for over 30 minutes after that.