http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/war/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Mon, 10 Oct 2005 07:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2341/a_fundamental_history_lesson/ To have witnessed even as a child the descent in Germany from decency to barbarism gave the question "how was it possible" an existential immediacy. So I have wrestled with that question, tried to reconstruct some parts of the past and perhaps intuit some lessons. The German-speaking refugees who came to this country in the '30s had enthusiastic feelings about the United States. Not only gratitude for saving them, giving many a chance for a new start, if often under harsh circumstances, but love and admiration for a country that was, when they arrived, still digging itself out from an unprecedented depression, under a leader whose motto was,"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," unlike his German… religion war David Sirota Tue, 06 Jun 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2667/iraq_on_the_big_screen/ Who should define what a war is "about"? By any ethical standard, that right should fall to the besieged--those who were waged upon, the people with the most corpses and the least to gain from combat. Of course, in reality, an armed conflict's character is limned by the powerful, in whose mitts the media will, as we all know, contort, grind and dilute matters of truth to fit the message of the campaign. The cold facts about the Iraq ordeal--from lies and sword-rattling to tens of thousands of murdered civilians and an increasingly dedicated "insurgence" (a misapplied word carefully chosen by the think tanks, and reflexively used by nearly every public voice)--are visible from a modest height. But that's not… Iraq War Art and Culture Movies David Sirota Thu, 31 Aug 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2778/bird_dogging_hillary_clinton/ In November 2005 Hillary Rodham Clinton sent out a fundraising letter to her constituents. "Part of my job is being a good listener," she wrote, going on to describe all the good listening she does as the junior senator from New York. She concluded, "Now I'd like to listen to you." In the envelope with the letter was a three-page, 18-question "2005 Critical National Issues Survey" addressing a range of topics from jobs to homeland security to separation of church and state. Not one question in the survey mentioned the war in Iraq--an omission that came as no surprise to those of us at the New York chapter of CODEPINK Women for Peace. At the time Hillary prepared her "questionnaire,"… politics iraq war activism David Sirota Thu, 07 Sep 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2811/privatized_warfare_the_summer_of_discontent/ For private contractors fighting wars and racking up huge profits without being plagued by pesky accountability, this hasn't been the happiest summer. Sure, some solace could be had in the decision of a federal judge in August to overturn a guilty verdict against Custer Battles, the company providing "risk management and security consulting services" in Iraq. The judge concluded that the company couldn't have defrauded the U.S. government with false invoices. While the company had been convicted of defrauding the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which ran Iraq from 2003 to 2004, the judge said that despite being funded with taxpayer dollars, the CPA wasn't technically part of the U.S. government. But then again, in August, a federal jury in Raleigh,… iraq war war and peace economy movies David Sirota Fri, 08 Sep 2006 11:00:19 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2788/the_good_war_on_terror/ On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote the following impression in his diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." He wasn't alone in this assessment. In the days after the attacks, editorialists, pundits and citizens reached with impressive unanimity for this single historical precedent. The Sept. 12 New York Times alone contained 13 articles mentioning Pearl Harbor. Five years after 9/11 we are still living with the legacy of this hastily drawn analogy. Whatever the natural similarities between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, the association of the two has led us to convert--first in rhetoric, later in fact--a battle against a small band of clever, murderous fundamentalists into a worldwide war of epic… war 9/11 politics David Sirota Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2824/9_11_refracted/ Katie Couric, her eyes thickly lined with black kohl, seemed to have one intention on the fifth anniversary of 9/11: to make us cry. She and CBS were instantly criticized, after her debut, for turning their nightly news broadcast into a news magazine stocked with feel good, soft news features, and 9/11 was no different. After a story about how much progress there has been in Afghanistan (which directly contradicted a piece that had aired on Couric's first night about the dangerous re-arming of the Taliban), Couric turned to a tear-jerking story (repurposed from the previous night's "60 Minutes") about a boy who had lost his father on 9/11 but had found a new father figure through a program called… iraq war media movies war on terror David Sirota Thu, 21 Sep 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2827/the_neocons_lexicon/ The Republicans' deployment of the term "Islamofascism" to define the enemy in the Bush administration's war on terror is clearly an attempt to improve their prospects in the midterm elections. By conflating contemporary terrorist threats with fearsome historical enemies, the GOP seeks to divert attention from the increasingly unpopular occupation of Iraq. But the adoption of this term also reveals the Bush administration's ideological disarray and the Republicans' political desperation. Many pundits trace the neologism to historian Malise Ruthven, who used it in a September 1990 article in the London Independent. But Ruthven used it to describe authoritarian Muslim states like Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Stephen Schwartz, the neocon author of Two Faces of Islam, insists that he is… war on terror politics iraq war religion and spirituality David Sirota Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2843/route_stepping_our_way_to_wwiii/ "Route-step, march" is a permissive military command that directs a marching formation to continue without a set cadence. So, "route-step" also is a common term of disparagement for sloppiness and indiscipline--an apt characterization, as it happens, for America's current response to world affairs. We little people, absent more vigilance and skepticism, are in danger of being route-stepped into World War III by our rulers and their ideological acolytes. If "World War III" sounds hyperbolic and alarmist, that's because it is. Precisely for that reason, it is the prevailing lingua franca of the Bush administration and those on the right who seek to solidify their hold on power by cowing the public. President Bush himself, who has unwaveringly stuck to calling… politics war and peace iraq war war on terror bush David Sirota Wed, 11 Oct 2006 07:40:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2847/halliburton_hearts_congress/ Feces in the soldiers' water. Blood on the mess hall floor. Expired and substandard food. $85,000 trucks with flat tires abandoned in the desert. Embroidered towels for twice the cost. More than $1 billion in "questionable charges." These are just a few of the allegations levied against Halliburton, and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), by former employees, soldiers and their families as well as Pentagon and congressional investigators. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, Halliburton has been working for the Pentagon under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP)--a multi-billion dollar agreement that guarantees the contractor receives a fixed profit based on the quote the company gives for tasks like food service, provisioning and outfitting of U.S.… Corporations Halliburton Iraq War Congress Government Agencies Military David Sirota Thu, 16 Nov 2006 06:00:01 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2886/a_nation_is_not_a_plate/ Back in April 2004, when the political breeze was blowing rightward, kite-cum-journalist Bob Woodward gave readers of his then-new book, Plan of Attack, an "inside" account of the Bush administration during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Among its treasure trove of conventional wisdom nuggets, the most alluring to the mainstream press was Woodward's discussion of the "Pottery Barn Rule." As reported by Woodward, Colin Powell evoked the rule when explaining to President Bush the consequences of invading Iraq. "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Powell told him. And according to the dictates of the rule, first coined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 2003, if you break Iraq, you own… Iraq War David Sirota Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2934/what_we_leave_behind/ In just one week in October, a series of bomb scares swept across Germany. Outside of Hannover, 22,000 people were evacuated when three bombs were discovered. A few days later in the same city, a weapons removal squad defused a 500-pound bomb found near the highway. Finally, a highway worker was killed when his cutting machine hit a buried bomb on the main highway into Frankfurt. The bombs hadn't been planted by terrorists, and they weren't the opening salvos of the next war. The culprit was unexploded ordnance left over from a war fought more than 60 years ago. "We'll have enough work to keep us busy for the next 100 to 120 years," the owner of a bomb-defusing company… weapons war David Sirota Tue, 09 Jan 2007 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2967/iraqi_health_care_hostage_to_war/ Zainab may be one of the 655,000 Iraqis who would be alive today if the Bush administration hadn't launched its criminally conceived and executed war. Violence caused most of the excess deaths. But 54,000 people died from non-violent causes, such as heart disease, cancer and chronic illness. They were victims of a health care system eviscerated by mismanagement, ill-placed priorities, corruption and civil war. The body count does not come from the U.S. government--which either does not bother to track, or won't release, the Iraqi death toll--but from a survey by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Baghdad's Al Mustansiriya University, published in The Lancet. Four years ago, just before the invasion, Zainab, age 10, sat small… iraq war medical health David Sirota Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2965/i_hate_to_say_e_told_you_so_but/ Now that the Bush administration has sustained massive, serial repudiations of its tragic folly in Iraq--from the Iraq Study Group, from the electorate and from the daily disasters in Iraq itself--we should note one institution that has not been given its due about being right all along: the independent press, including progressive Web sites and blogs. From the moment Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card announced in September 2002 the roll-out of their "new product"--the plan to invade Iraq--the independent press relentlessly and continuously exposed the ridiculous rationales and outright lies proffered by the administration. Remember, we were "crazy leftists" who were accused of being "with the terrorists." Turns out we also were with "reality." Let's review a tiny sample… iraq war war on terror David Sirota Mon, 15 Jan 2007 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2979/spoils_of_war/ Remember oil? That thing we didn't go to war in Iraq for? Now with his war under attack, even President George W. Bush has gone public, telling reporters last August, "[a] failed Iraq ... would give the terrorists and extremists an additional tool besides safe haven, and that is revenues from oil sales." Of course, Bush not only wants to keep oil out of his enemies' hands, he also wants to put it into the hands of his friends. The President's concern over Iraq's oil is shared by the Iraq Study Group, which on December 6 released its much-anticipated report. While the mainstream press focused on the report's criticism of Bush's handling of the war and the report's call for… iraq war bush corporations David Sirota Mon, 05 Mar 2007 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3056/counterinsurgency_101/ A soldier in Baghdad, in town for the "surge" and wondering whether things really are as bad as they seem, might want to read FM 3-24, the U.S. military's Counterinsurgency Field Manual, released last December. On Page 1-29, our soldier will find a handy table -- "Successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgency operational practices" -- that outlines the Dos and the Don'ts. (See sidebar.) In which column would one place the major decisions of the Bush administration? The dissolution of the Iraqi army, the de-Baathification of the civil service, the failure to guard important historic and cultural sites, the granting of reconstruction contracts to American firms, and the long-term neglect of legal due process -- all correspond to the advice on the… iraq war military David Sirota Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3295/extending_tours_stressing_troops/ Justin Thompson, 23, proposed to Erin underneath the Eiffel Tower last February. The photos of the two on her MySpace page have the hallmarks of a young couple in love. Thompson can't wait to get back to Lacey, Wash., to get married, and go to college. There's one problem: Thompson is in Baghdad, serving his second deployment as a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and he is losing hope that he'll ever be allowed to leave. Sgt. Thompson, assigned to the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the Second Infantry Division, was first deployed to Iraq in November 2003. When his unit returned to the United States one year later, he immediately started hearing rumors of redeployment and stop-loss--the military's… military iraq war David Sirota Mon, 10 Sep 2007 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3331/why_iraq_is_getting_worse/ A cloud of steam rises above the crowd in the 120-degree heat. As their leader approaches the podium, the thousands who have assembled meet him with pledges of their fealty. "We are all Badr Brigade!" they shout, a reference to the paramilitary organization of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), which held this rally on July 19, in honor of Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim, the party's founding leader, who was assassinated here four years ago. His nephew, Amar al-Hakim, now holds the position. I was one of the millions who attended al-Hakim's funeral four years ago, some of whom walked the 100 miles from Baghdad to Najaf to show their sorrow. It was largely a peaceful affair. But now, as Iraq… iraq iraq war David Sirota Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3350/merc_is_the_new_crack/ The United States is in throes of a deadly addiction, according to Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. In "Can't Win with 'Em, Can't Go To War without 'Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency," a report released this month, Singer argues that America is hooked on private security contractors. "[Our reliance on private security contractors] has created a dependency syndrome on the private marketplace that not merely creates critical vulnerabilities, but shows all the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction," Singer writes. "If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to private military contractors and counterinsurgency, the U.S. has locked itself into a vicious cycle. It… corporation military iraq war David Sirota Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3368/suffering_secondary_trauma/ Much has been made of the line between genius and madness. Throughout history, many of our greatest innovators, artists, rebels and revolutionaries have teetered between the two, often falling into deep, dark periods of debilitating depression, mania and paranoia. Some make it out of the abyss. Others do not. One of those who met an ill fate was Iris Chang, the talented journalist who shot and killed herself in 2005 at the age of 36, leaving behind a husband and a 2-year-old son. A new book by Chicago-based journalist Paula Kamen called Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind (Da Capo Press, November 2007) looks at the complexity of Chang's psychology as it formed around… book war David Sirota Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:10:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3393/the_disturbing_sounds_of_the_turkish_march/ On September 16, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner warned the world that when it comes to Iran's nuclear program: "We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war." The statement, predictably, caused great uproar, with criticism focused on what Sir John Holmes, head of the U.N. refugee agency, called the "Iraq taint." After the scandal about Weapons of Mass Destruction as the excuse for invading Iraq, evoking such a threat forever lost its credibility. Why should we believe the United States and its allies now, when we have already been so brutally deceived? There is, however, another aspect of Kouchner's warning that is much more worrying. When the newly elected French President, Nicolas Sarkozy,… europe theory war David Sirota