Category: American Empire/Foreign Policy

The United States is a Lawless Empire that Regularly Bombs, Invades, and Kills with Impunity

Last week president Biden ordered more illegal airstrikes against Iraqi forces in Iraq and Syrian forces in Syria. The State Department issued a

Images released by the US military showing Syrian facility bombed

statement (more on that below) declaring that the US was merely exercising “its right to self-defense,” echoing Israel’s favorite excuse for its illegal bombings in Gaza.

Let’s recall several crucial facts, however:

One, US military forces in both Iraq and Syria are in those countries illegally. Both are sovereign nations, whether or not we like their governments. Both governments have told the US, in no uncertain terms, that they wanted US troops OUT of their countries long ago.

Thus, we are in both countries as an illegal invading/occupying power. Under international law, such military forces have no right to “self-defense.”

We are the illegal aggressors. It is the Iraqis and Syrians who have every legal, moral right to defend themselves against the unwanted US forces that have outrageously installed themselves in their countries.

Two, Iran in a neighbor to both Iraq and Syria. The US is not. The Iraqi and Syrian governments are free to seek military assistance from anyone they choose.

Given the hostility directed against Iran by the US, and the close regional, strategic affinities linking Iraq and Syria to Iran, it is hardly surprising that local militias fighting against the unwanted US presence would seek and accept Iran’s assistance in their struggle.

That assistance does not constitute a threat against the US.

Keeping those simple facts in mind, Glenn Greenwald offers an excellent

Independent, investigate journalist, Glenn Greenwald

analysis on Joe Biden’s war-mongering, which is actually a bipartisan, long-standing American practice.

It is not an accident that most of the people around the globe regularly say that the US poses THE greatest danger to the rest of the world.

Glenn’s article appears at SheerPost and is entitled, “Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties.” Below is an excerpt (all emphases are mine):

U.S. citizens derive no benefit, but instead suffer great loss, from endless war in the Middle East. But their interests are irrelevant to decisions of bipartisan Washington.

For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden’s first air attack in February: The U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.”

Embedded in this formulaic Pentagon statement is so much propaganda and so many euphemisms that, by itself, it reveals the fraudulent nature of what was done. To begin with, how can U.S. airstrikes carried out in Iraq and Syria be “defensive” in nature? How can they be an act of “self-defense?” Nobody suggests that the targets of the bombing campaign have the intent or the capability to strike the U.S. “homeland” itself. Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country, rendering the claim that its airstrikes were “defensive” and an “act of self-defense” to be inherently deceitful.

The Pentagon’s description of the people bombed by the U.S. — “Iran-backed militias groups” — is intended to obscure the reality. Biden did not bomb Iran or order Iranians to be bombed or killed. The targets of U.S. aggression were Iraqis in their own country, and Syrians in their own country. Only the U.S. war machine and its subservient media could possibly take seriously the Biden administration’s claim that the bombs they dropped on people in their own countries were “defensive” in nature. Invocation of Iran has no purpose other than to stimulate the emotional opposition to the government of that country among many Americans in the hope that visceral dislike of Iranian leaders will override the rational faculties that would immediately recognize the deceit and illegality embedded in the Pentagon’s arguments.

Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden’s dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama’s deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump’s bombing of Assad’s forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden’s bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal. And the same is true of bombing Iraq. The 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, which the House just last week voted to repeal, has long since ceased to provide any legal justification for ongoing U.S. troop presence and bombing campaigns in that country.

In its statement justifying the bombing raids, Biden’s Pentagon barely even bothered to pretend any of this is legal. It did not cite either the 2002 AUMF for Iraq or the 2001 AUMF authorizing the use of force against those responsible for 9/11 (a category which, manifestly, did not include Iran, Iraq or Syria). Instead, harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, the Biden Defense Department claimed that “as a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense,” and casually asserted that “as a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq.”

Those claims are nothing short of a joke. Nobody seriously believes that Joe Biden has congressional authority to bomb Syria and Iraq, nor to bomb “Iranian-backed” forces of any kind. As The Daily Beast‘s long-time War on Terror reporter Spencer Ackerman put it on Sunday night, discussions of legality at this point are “parody” because when it comes to the U.S.’s Endless Wars in the name of the War on Terror, “we passed Lawful behind many many years ago. Authorization citations are just pretexts written by lawyers who need to pantomime at lawfulness. The U.S. presence in Syria is blatantly illegal. Such things never stop the U.S.”

That is exactly right. The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants. The requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance but was completely central to the design of the country. Article I, Section 8 could not be clearer: “The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare war.” Two months after I began writing about politics — back in December, 2005 — I wrote a long article compiling the arguments in the Federalist Papers which insisted that permitting the president unchecked powers to wage war . . . 

The rest of the article appears here.

More Reasons Not to Believe US News Reports About Russia

I have followed Ray McGovern’s work for many years. He works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city


Ray McGovern, retired CIA official and a man with a conscience

Washington.

His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

His latest article at AntiWar.com is entitled “New York Times Pushing the Envelope on Russia.” Mr. McGovern dismantles the latest story accusing the Russian government of hacking US agencies.

All demagogic governments think they need an enemy, real or imagined. Nothing unites a people like the fear of a common enemy. It’s an ancient tactic used to distract people from their own government’s failures and to unite them around an otherwise disreputable government establishment.

Naturally, career politician Joe Biden understands these things very well, as do the various agencies and corporate powers that benefit from keeping the American people misinformed and distracted.

The corporate media are not to be trusted, folks. Not at all…

Here is Ray’s piece:

If Wednesday morning’s passive-voice (“Russian hackers are accused of”), evidence-free New York Times article titled “Attempted Hack of R.N.C. and Russian Ransomware Attack Test Biden” has a familiar ring, look who wrote it. The senior author is David Sanger, the NYT’s chief Washington correspondent. Based on Sanger’s unenviable record, the story he wrote with Nicole Perlroth can be dismissed as a proverbial nothingburger with Sanger sauce.

The article claims that Russian hackers breached a contractor for the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week “around the same time that Russian cybercriminals launched the largest global ransomware attack on record”. Sanger and co-author Nicole Perlroth cannot resist editorializing in the first paragraph that the “incidents are testing the red lines set by President Biden” at the June 16 summit with Russian President Putin. Biden, they noted, “presented Mr. Putin with a list of 16 critical sectors of the American economy that, if attacked, would provoke a response”.

The NY Times does not seem to know if the RNC is included among those 16. Indeed, there is little sign that the Times actually knows what those 16 critical sectors are. No worries, the Russians nonetheless “are accused” of activities that “test those red lines”.

The Times, and Sanger in particular, have shown themselves receptive to parts of our government (especially the security services) as well as to those who need an enemy to justify huge defense spending – all of whom have a deep vested interest in painting Russia and Putin in the most dangerous colors. It is a safe bet that this is what is going on here.

Sanger was first off the blocks in parroting former CIA Director John Brennan’s concoction, in the misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017, that Putin personally directed the “hacking of the DNC emails”. Those who rely on the NT Times do not know this yet, but testimony taken under oath by the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 5, 2017 revealed that no one – not the Russians, no one – hacked those emails.

That testimony was made public on May 7, 2020, 14 months ago, but the mainstream media have suppressed it. Clearly, it does not fit the Times’s narrative. The modus operandi of today’s NYT seems to be “only the news that fits we print”. See: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf. AND New House Documents Sow Further Doubt That Russia Hacked the DNC.

Still, it is hard to believe how Sanger nor Perlroth (who specializes in cyber security) can pretend to be unaware of the that House Intelligence Committee testimony.

While for the past five years Sanger has been concentrating on the “threat” from Russia and parroting grist from his CIA feeders, he has a long unenviable record as mouthpiece for those asserting WMD in Iraq, to those claiming falsely that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, to those contriving the story about the Russians paying bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops.

His most disreputable performance came in the months before the March 2003 attack on Iraq. For example, Sanger reported “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as flat fact no fewer than seven times in this article of July 29, 2002.

Call me “quaint” or “obsolete”, but back in the day we intelligence analysts looked closely at a source’s record before we put his/her words into a serious report.


	


	





	

		
		
Col. Andrew Bacevich, “Donald Rumsfeld Was a Disaster”
	


	
	
	

		
Andrew Bacevich offers a candid obituary of former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week. Bacevich speaks with a level of moral


Andrew Bacevich


clarity that you will not find in the main stream outlets which specialize in the hagiography of establishment figures.


Bacevich is the president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s a retired colonel and Vietnam War veteran. He is also professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and author of several books. His most recent book, just out, is titled After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. In May, he wrote a piece for The Boston Globe headlined “My son was killed in Iraq 14 years ago — who’s responsible?”


I have read a number of Bacevich’s books and they have all been informative, historically astute, and prophetic in their conclusions. I highly recommend anything Col. Bacevich writes.


He is also a devout Roman Catholic whose Christian faith informs his perspective on life and international relations. He cares deeply about everyone’s humanity, and so, is regularly a critic of US policies overseas.


Take a few moments to hear the truth about Rumsfeld’s legacy. It ain’t pretty. The video is approximately 18 minutes long. Below is Bacevich’s summary of Rumsfeld’s legacy:


Donald Rumsfeld


I don’t expect that there’s going to be any revision of Donald Rumsfeld’s reputation in the future. He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore, caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly. And I don’t think there’s any way to disguise that.





	


	





	

		
		
Too Bad the People of Guatemala Couldn’t Tell the US State Department, Military, or the CIA, “Do Not Come”
	


	
	
	

		
Recently Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Central American country of Guatemala, the jumping off point for the folks braving a dangerous overland journey to our southern border.


She told them, “Don’t do it. Do not come.”


She wasn’t worried about the risks these people would take in bringing their children to the US. Her motives were purely political, as the Republicans continue to browbeat President Biden over the pressures of (illegal) immigration.


The brutal irony of Harris’ order to Central America was the way it exemplified the history of US/Latin American relations. Once again, the USA is telling those Spanish-speaking southerners what they can and cannot do.


If only the people of Latin America had been able to tell the Americans, “Do not come. Stay home. Leave us alone.”


All of the countries in Central America, and almost all in South America, have been the victims of US-led military coups, US-trained death squads, political assassination’s, CIA interference with their democratically elected governments, and neoliberal economic manipulations that keep them as perpetual debtor states.


For just one example, journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone have produced a new documentary (approximately 13 minutes long) outlining current US efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, close neighbor to Guatemala.


It’s called “How US govt-funded media fueled a violent coup in Nicaragua.”


You will never hear these facts from Kamala Harris or American media:



	


	





	

		
		
Stephen Wertheim: “Sorry Liberals. But You Really Shouldn’t Love NATO.”
	


	
	
	

		
The one time I have been arrested for peacefully protesting was at an Anti-War/Anti-NATO demonstration in Chicago. I include a brief account of that arrest in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).


I participated in that march, with tens of thousands of others, because I have long believed that NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) should have been disbanded at the end of Cold War.


It was and remains a Western military alliance that was created to “protect Western democracy” against the alleged threats of world communism advanced by the Soviet Union. But once the USSR ceased to exist, why shouldn’t the largest bloc of military forces in the Western world also disband?


Since then, the USA has easily twisted NATO into an ostensibly “independent” European arm of its own nationalistic, military objectives.


Quite predictably, NATO’s continued existence, and the omnivorous hegemony that inevitably characterizes every multi-national military machine, has been a key player in instigating many of the regional conflicts playing themselves out in Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East today.


The dissolution of the USSR meant the demise of NATO’s communist equivalent: the Warsaw Pact. So we can forgive Russia’s well-founded nervousness when NATO announced that it would not similarly disband.


To assuage Russia’s fears, the US pledged that if NATO expanded, it would never included nations that had once been a part of the Warsaw Pact.


NATO quickly broke that promise and now includes member states sitting cheek to jowl with the Russian border. And we wonder why Russia has become antagonist and suspicious of US foreign policy?


NOW who is the colossus seeking world domination? I’ll give you a hint: it sure ain’t Russia.


Dr. Stephen Wertheim is an historian of U.S. foreign policy, the director of


Stephen Wertheim


grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a visiting faculty fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School.


His recent book is entitled, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy. I have it now on my reading list.


He also recently wrote an important editorial for the New York Times criticizing President Biden’s reaffirmations of the US commitment to NATO.


The article is called “Sorry, Liberals. But You Really Shouldn’t Love NATO.” It is important reading. Since it is behind a paywall, I have reproduced it in full. (All emphases are mine):




Even before today’s NATO summit, President Biden settled the most important question: He affirmed America’s commitment to defend the alliance’s 30 members by force. And despite divisions on many other foreign policy issues, his party stands in lock step behind him. To most Democrats, alliances symbolize international cooperation. Proof positive is that Donald Trump supposedly sought to tear them down.


Yet current progressive enthusiasm for NATO is anomalous. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, depriving NATO of its original reason for being, skeptics of the alliance included liberals as much as conservatives. In 1998, 10 Democratic Senators joined nine Republicans in opposing the first, fateful round of NATO enlargement, which would soon extend the alliance to Russia’s border.


Among the dissenters was Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. In between voting against the first Iraq war in 1991 and the second after Sept. 11, Mr. Wellstone warned that expanding NATO would jeopardize Europe’s hard-won gains. “There is peace between states in Europe, between nations in Europe, for the first time in centuries,” he said. “We do not have a divided Europe, and I worry about a NATO expansion which could redivide Europe and again poison relations with Russia.”


Events have proved him wiser than his party seems to think. The left has ceded criticism of NATO to the right, mistaking armed alliances for friendly partnerships and fixating on Mr. Trump’s rhetoric instead of his actions. (In the end, he reaffirmed every U.S. alliance commitment, embraced NATO’s expansion to Montenegro and North Macedonia, and beefed up U.S. forces in Eastern Europe.) It’s time for Americans to recover their critical faculties when they hear “NATO,” a military alliance that cements European division, bombs the Middle East, burdens the United States and risks great-power war — of which Americans should want no part.


At first, the United States figured it could enlarge its defense obligations under NATO because doing so seemed cost-free. Throughout the 1990s, post-Soviet Russia lay prostrate. The United States, by contrast, could trim its military spending only to enjoy greater pre-eminence than ever. If the Soviet collapse made NATO seem less necessary, it also made NATO seem less risky. Warnings like Mr. Wellstone’s, voiced by many analysts at the time, sounded hypothetical and distant.


But they have gained credence as Russia objected, first with words, eventually with arms, to the expansion of an alliance whose guns had always pointed at Moscow. By 2008, NATO declared its intention to admit Georgia and Ukraine. Each had been a founding republic of the Soviet Union and had territorial disputes with Russia. For each, Russia was willing to fight. It swiftly occupied parts of Georgia. Once Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown in 2014, Russia seized Crimea, home to its Black Sea naval base, and backed separatists in the Donbas region.


The conflict in Ukraine continues, with no resolution near. Rather than use diplomacy to back an internationally negotiated settlement, the United States has preferred to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons. After decades of overreach, the Biden administration now faces a stark choice: commit to fight for Ukraine, creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end.


Lacking an adversary of Soviet proportions, NATO has also found new foes “out of area” — its euphemism for waging wars in the greater Middle East. The bombing of Libya in 2011 was a NATO operation, signaling to war-weary Americans that this time the United States had real partners and multilateral legitimacy. The war proved disastrous anyway.


NATO helped fight the forever war in Afghanistan, too. Seeking to support U.S. aims after Sept. 11, it undertook “our biggest military operation ever,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg boasted in March. Two decades later, European soldiers are leaving, having failed to remake Afghanistan but perversely succeeded in making NATO seem relevant. Absent the Soviet threat, as Secretary General Stoltenberg admitted, the alliance has had to go “out of area or out of business.”


At least the Middle East contains the real, if receding, threat of terrorism, against which minimal military action can be warranted. But Europe is stable and affluent, far removed from its warring past. America’s European allies provide their people with world-leading living standards. They can also perform the most basic task of government: self-defense. In any case, Russia, with an economy the size of Italy’s, lacks the capability to overrun Europe, supposing it had any reason to try. If American leaders cannot countenance pulling U.S. forces back from Europe, then from where would they be willing to pull back, ever?


The danger of permanent subordination to America has started to register in European capitals, long solicitous of American commitment. President Emmanuel Macron of France has accused NATO of experiencing “brain death” and proposed creating an independent European army, an idea rhetorically welcomed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The watchword in Brussels these days is “strategic autonomy,” meaning autonomy from the United States. Europeans scarcely seek to disinvite American forces from their continent. Still, they are finding that cheap security from Washington carries mounting costs: dependence on an erratic superpower, pressure to restrict business with China and Russia, and division in Europe itself.


The real question is what Americans want. They could continue to fetishize military alliances as a “sacred obligation,” as President Biden characterized NATO on Wednesday. Or they could treat them as means to ends — and coercive means that often corrupt worthy ends.


For progressives who seek to end endless wars and prevent new ones, the matter of Europe can no longer be skirted. The United States can trust Europeans to defend Europe. Otherwise, it would seem that America truly intends to dominate the world in perpetuity, or until the day a war so great puts dreams of dominance to rest.



	


	





	

		
		
Speaking Truth to Power in American Will Get You Death Threats
	


	
	
	

		
Somali born US representative Ilhan Omar recently asked the US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, an important question about America’s


Ilhan Omar questions Anthony Blinken by Zoom


relationship to the International Criminal Court (ICC).


She asked Blinken a thoughtful, necessary question which he skirted completely. Here is the complete transcription of that question:


Mr. Secretary, the last time you were here, I asked about the Trump sanctions on the ICC staff, so I wanted to thank you publicly for doing the right thing and lifting them. I know you opposed the court’s investigation in both Palestine and in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen any evidence in either case [sic] that domestic courts both can and will prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I would emphasize that in Israel and Palestine, this includes crimes committed by both the Israeli Security Forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan, it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban. So, in both of these cases, if domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice, and we oppose the ICC, where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice and what justice mechanism [inaudible 00:01:29]?


Given the long-standing US antagonism towards the ICC, including the scuttling of any and all cases that even tangentially involve the United States or Israel, Rep. Omar asks the obvious question: where can the victims of these crimes against humanity turn for justice?


Predictably, conservatives and pro-Israel apologists jumped on Rep. Omar immediately. In her defense she sent out the following Tweet:


We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.


The pundit class immediately torn their clothes and screamed in outrage.


Anthony Blinken


How dare Rep. Omar put the US and Israel in the same class of miscreants as Hamas and the Taliban! She must be excoriated, even excommunicated, for her blasphemy against the lily-white mythology of “American (and Israeli) exceptionalism.”


Never mind the fact that those who study our history know full well that the US is every bit as guilty – many will argue even more so — of war crimes as are the Taliban or Hamas.


It did not take long for Rep. Omar to suffer the most hateful vitriol from not only her congressional colleagues but also conservative news media and the wider public.


Below is a short video explaining the recent series of attacks against Rep. Omar and her family:




Let me say again, as I have many times before, I love Ilhan Omar.


She is a very brave woman of color with the integrity, strength of character, and rightly attuned moral compass to speak truth to power.


Sadly, for jingoistic, “patriotic” Americans, including politicians in both parties who have sold their souls to corporate power, genuine justice and equality before the law are nothing more than bland banners to wave at 4th of July picnics.


They have no hold in real life; certainly not in the hardball realm of Realpolik. They possess no power of moral suasion that might move the consciences of America’s leaders to confess and repent of the nation’s many, grotesque national sins – including war crimes and crimes against humanity.


Why are all the members of Congress claiming to be Christians on the wrong side of this debate?


As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am grieved that (almost certainly) a majority of American evangelicals share in the hateful attitudes now on display in these vile attacks against Rep. Omar.


We are seeing another clear example of the corrupting influence of Nationalism, and why all Nationalisms are antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.


Nationalism is inherently incapable of genuine confession, repentance, rectification, and restoration. It is an ideology rooted in the elevation of the Collective Self, which has no relation to Christian discipleship.


Humility and self-abasement, cardinal attributes of authentic Christian faith, are anathema to Nationalistic sentiment. Thus, the label Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, a blasphemous self-contradiction.


Ilhan Omar’s Muslim faith, combined with her life experience as a Somali refugee, has formed a more noble and enlightened conscience, a more Godly sense of right and wrong than we now see among any of the Family Research Council, Religious Right, Republican, or Democratic critics demanding that she be punished for asking the obvious and necessary questions about America’s place in the world.


This is why I pray from Ilan Omar. I ask the Lord to protect her and her family, and that she continue to find the courage to continue working for justice in this world.


And this is why I pray for American Christianity, that the Lord redeem us from our apostasy. And that we renounce the destructive sin of Nationalism with all its evil power.

	


	





	

		
		
The Bombing May Be Over, But the Devastation Remains
	


	
	
	

		
Israel and Hamas may have reached a “ceasefire,” but Palestinian suffering continues unabated.


While Israel violated the ceasefire almost immediately, the western press says nothing about it. [I will be posting about this common scenario very soon.]


The recent missile exchange killed 12 Israelis and at least 288 Palestinians, including 69 children and 40 women. More than 8,900 others were injured in Gaza, many with life-threatening wounds.


Israeli bombing damaged or destroyed 187 Gazan schools, including 55 kindergartens and 132 elementary schools.


This man lost 14 family members in a single strike. Of course, all human lives are sacred. We are all created as the Image of God. But this one man lost more family members than were killed in the entire state of Israel.


Watch below to learn about his story:



	


	





	

		
		
Repost: Dispelling a Memorial Day Myth
	


	
	
	

		
[This Memorial Day weekend, I am reposting an article I shared several years ago. After listening yesterday to several speakers on Christian radio — neither of whom had served in the military or ever been to war — advertise the beauties of “Americanism” while defending Christian Nationalism and glorifying our military; hearing them disparage people like me who warn against the dangers of Christian Nationalism, I decided to resurrect this article.]


I wrote this article in 2006. It was originally published in Perspectives Journal  (August 1 issue).  It is as relevant today as it was then.


The only difference for me is that my father died several weeks ago of war related health problems.


“I’m an Army brat, the proud son of a proud veteran who completed four tours of duty in two separate conflicts. I am immensely grateful that my father always returned home, at least physically. My mother was never forced to grieve at her husband’s graveside, but there is more than one way for a soldier to die. Often the man who comes home is not the same man who left for war.


“I remember my mother’s stories of how his hands would encircle her throat at night as she crept into his nightmares, the sleeping wife lying next to him fused with the Chinese enemy crawling under his tent flap. I vividly recall the continual depression, the emotional detachment, the explosions of anger. Our family eroded (internally, if not externally) and gradually fell apart like a sand castle trying to withstand an oncoming tide.


“There is more than one way for a soldier to die. Sometimes the family that waits behind gets back only a shell of the man they once knew. Somewhere overseas the soldier’s insides are emptied onto a battlefield, scooped out by bombs and artillery, sleepless nights and ‘collateral damage.’ The father I once knew had been replaced by someone new, a stranger haunted by guilt and riddled with sickness.


“What do my mother and siblings have to celebrate on Memorial Day?


“Please, don’t urge me to remember the veterans who gave their lives so that we could be free. It’s cold comfort because it’s not true. Aside from the clearly religious overtones of those words, something my Christianity finds deeply offensive, my father’s life was not ruined while defending American freedom. Were that the case, I might be able to celebrate. But with the possible exception of World War II, what modern war has this nation fought for such noble purposes? None. My father’s life was hollowed out for a discredited domino theory that preserved American freedom by only the most strained exercise in mental gymnastics. (If Southeast Asia falls, we’re next!) In the end, half the Korean peninsula and the whole of Vietnam were ‘lost.’ Yet, our freedoms were not diminished one iota.


“Let’s be honest in our celebrations. My father’s comrades-in-arms died believing that they were defending American freedom. They died because this nation’s political leaders had convinced themselves that the borders of American national interests extended into Southeast Asia. But the verdict is now inescapable. American freedom was never at risk in any of those conflicts.


“Soldiers gladly give their lives defending the buddies huddled beside them.


Wounded U.S. paratroopers are helped by fellow soldiers to a medical evacuation helicopter on Oct. 5, 1965 during the Vietnam War. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s First Battalion suffered many casualties in the clash with Viet Cong guerrillas in the jungle of South Vietnam’s “D” Zone, 25 miles Northeast of Saigon. (AP Photo)


Soldiers die because they obey their orders, no matter how dangerous. Many die because they are patriots. Sometimes they die in the conviction that they are defending someone else’s freedom. More die because they didn’t know what else to do after high school graduation. Soldiers die because they trust their leaders and believe the rallying cries of the commander-in-chief. But none of this necessarily has anything to do with the defense of American freedom. History demonstrates that our soldiers most often die as instruments of the ambition, naivete, stubbornness, ignorance, arrogance, and miscalculations of our nation’s leaders.


Washington DC, USA – June 18, 2016: The Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC at dawn.


“It is far more accurate to say that Memorial Day commemorates those men and women who unwittingly gave their lives for the extension of America foreign, political, and economic interests. But that’s neither catchy nor comfortable to repeat.


“In 1775 Samuel Johnson characterized patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is also the first refuge of the masses unwilling to face hard political realities. I’ll stand to memorialize the patriot soldiers who gave their lives protecting a buddy while carrying out dangerous commands. But don’t ask me to memorialize a lie. My family has suffered enough for patriotic delusions.”

	


	





	

		
		
When Are Palestinians Allowed to Defend Themselves?
	


	
	
	

		
American and Israeli officials repeatedly remind us that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It is the standard refrain whenever Israel unleashes another conflagration upon the people of Gaza.


In fact, it is the perennial explanation for anything and everything the Israeli military does that results in the death or injury of Palestinians, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or Israeli proper.


Israel’s right to self-defense is the diplomatic equivalent of Abracadabra, making all details, questions, and specific circumstances irrelevant when it comes to reporting events on the ground in Israel/Palestine.


Regardless of the situation, no matter the sequence of events, whenever Israeli power meets and defeats a Palestinian standing in its way, the bloody outcome is always chalked up to Israel’s right to self-defense.


But when do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?


When are they finally given permission to stand up and say, “Enough is enough! We are not going to take this oppression anymore.”


By what law does Israel and its allies serve as judge and jury in adjudicating these “rights” on the world stage, determining the guilty and the innocent from their bastions of power and privilege?


I was sitting in the small kitchen of a Palestinian family living in the Dheisheh refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem. As in so many Palestinian homes, three generations shared the tiny space together, continuing to bear witness to the aggrieved ancestors who fled their home in 1948. Terrified of the approaching Israeli army, they hoped to escape the bloodshed that had taken so many others before them.


Now they lived in fear of night raids and random shootings carried out by the Israeli army in their refugee camp.


My friend served as translator as the matriarch of the family updated me on the family story. Five of us were crowded together sipping coffee in the living room. The woman’s two sons sat in chairs on either side of me. She held a shy granddaughter on her lap while the child’s mother stood back in the kitchen listening to our conversation.


Both men were home briefly from the local hospital. They had returned to eat lunch and would go back for more treatment when they were finished. Each of them was wrapped in fresh bandages, one around his waist, the other on his leg. Neither could walk without assistance.


They both were recovering from gunshot wounds given to them by Israeli soldiers.


They were walking home after dark when neighbors warned them to be careful. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) was conducting another night raid, breaking down doors, invading homes, pulling people out of their beds and arresting them for unknown “offenses.”


As these brothers got close to home, flashlights peered from around a corner shining abruptly into their faces. Quickly running up the short flight of stairs to the front door, shots rang out.


Opening the door and falling inside, both men had been hit. One in the leg. The other in the abdomen. Two expanding pools of blood now decorated the kitchen’s linoleum.


Israeli soldiers burst in after them and ran-sacked the house. The place was torn apart. Chairs, a baby’s crib, and bedding materials all ruined. I asked for permission to photograph the damage to make some small record of their claims.


After determining that the brothers were not the men they were looking for, the soldiers walk out leaving the panicked grandmother and wife to deal with their wounded, bleeding menfolk on their own.


Fortunately, neighbors who owned a car quickly got the two men to the local hospital where they received emergency medical aid. This was not their night to bleed to death as victims of Israel’s “shoot first and ask questions later” policing policy.


But there will be other nights. And many, many future opportunities to be crippled, wounded, maimed, or die at the hands of Israeli soldiers.


The family is now left to cover the medical expenses for themselves. No one receives a Sorry We Shot You letter in the mail. No one from the Israeli government ever comes around to say, “Oh, sorry. We shot you by mistake. Our bad! We meant to kill someone else. Let us pay your hospital bills.”


Nope. If you are a Palestinian, it’s all on you. After all, your mere existence is a pain in the ass to Israel’s ever expansive settler colonial enterprise. The soldiers had hoped you would bleed out on the kitchen floor. Couldn’t you take the hint? That’s why they didn’t give you any medical assistance at the time.


This is daily life for the Palestinians living in the West Bank. Gaza stories are even more horrific than this. But that will have to wait for another post some other day.


Imagine living in this fragile environment, under this type of interminable threat day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Not just in one location, but in many, many places all throughout your homeland where dozens and dozens of others are abused in similar ways over and over again with no end in sight.


No one ever comes to your assistance. No one stands up for you. No one defends you. No one tells Israel that they have to stop mistreating you, now.


So, one day, you decide to stand up for yourself. You are not going to take it anymore.


The only question is: when will the rest of the world wake up and recognize that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves?