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Hundreds Protest NATO Bombing That Allegedly Killed Afghan Civilians

October 15, 2014 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org , , , ,
Hundreds of villagers in the Afghan province of Paktia staged protests on Monday following a NATO bombing on Sunday, which witnesses say struck civilians—killing seven of them, including a child, and wounding one. The protesters brought seven dead bodies from the Udkey area of Gardez city to the capital of the province, according to Abdul Wali Sahi, deputy governor of the province. "The local villagers claim that they were collecting firewood on a mountainside when they were hit by the airstrike. As you can see, there are children among the dead bodies," Sahi told media outlets. "The Afghan nation is tired of such killings. We are going to seriously investigate this incident, and we strongly condemn such a killing, and whoever committed this crime must be held accountable for their action."

War Propaganda: The Fourth Estate In Flames

October 12, 2014 Medea Benjamin, www.codepink.com , , , ,
A war-weary American public that a year ago resoundingly rejected US military intervention in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime now is rallying behind the use of force to destroy the so-called Islamic State (Isis). In just three months, from June to September, support for US airstrikes in Iraq soared from 45% percent to 71%, and to 65% for airstrikes in Syria. How did such an astounding turnabout occur? Certainly it wasn’t due to the persuasive powers of President Obama, who seems to have been reluctantly dragged into a conflict that he once acknowledged has no military solution. The credit for selling Obama’s war on Isis must go to the mainstream American media. Day after day, night after night, the press relied on propaganda from both Isis and the US government to whip up fear and a thirst for revenge in the American public. Gruesome beheading videos distributed by Isis were played over and over.

From Pol Pot to ISIS

October 10, 2014 John Pilger, www.counterpunch.org , ,
In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”. As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty. As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery – including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields – I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today’s Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

Urgent: Right-Left Alliance Needed To Stop This War!

October 10, 2014 David Swanson, www.ronpaulinstitute.org , ,
When war was made the top election issue in exit polls in 2006, Democrats took power and their leader in the House, Rahm Emanuel, openly told the Washington Post that they would keep the war in Iraq going in order to campaign against it again in 2008. And so they did. Republicans elected opposing war in 2010 have been more rhetorical than substantive in their "opposition." The current war, and the endless war it is part of, must be opposed by people across the political spectrum who put peace ahead of party. ISIS has a one-hour video asking for this war. Giving it to them, and boosting their recruitment, is insanity. Ending insane policies is not a left or right position. This is a war that involves bombing the opposite side in Syria from the side we were told we had to bomb a year ago, and simultaneously arming the same side that the U.S. government is bombing. This is madness.

Where Is The Antiwar Movement?

October 8, 2014 Alex Kane, www.mondoweiss.net , , , ,
When President Obama said he intended to strike Syria last year after the Assad regime launched a chemical weapons attack, anti-war sentiment surged in the U.S. Phone calls and e-mails poured into Congressional offices with one message: don’t bomb Syria. The president eventually backed off from his plan after agreeing to a Russian proposal that saw President Bashar al-Assad get rid of his chemical weapons. One year later, the administration declared war on the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group that has taken over territory in Syria and Iraq. Warplanes have repeatedly hit targets in Iraq and Syria, and the U.S. is reportedly considering a no-fly zone over Syria. But this U.S. war is commencing with no serious opposition to slow the president down.

Ellsberg Sees Vietnam-Like Risks In ISIS War

October 6, 2014 Barbara Koeppel, www.consortiumnews.com , , , ,
At a recent talk at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says he believes there’s not one person in the Pentagon who would agree that President Obama can achieve his aim of destroying ISIS in Iraq and Syria with air strikes, along with training and arming local military forces. Nor, he says, can the Administration do it even if the U.S. sends ground troops, contrary to Obama’s repeated assurances. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg described the similarities with Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the near-certainty of comparable failure. I interviewed him after his talk, and updated the discussion this week, after the U.S. airstrikes inside Syria had begun. In his Press Club talk and with me, he read from some documents, as indicated below, and cited Web-links.

Once More, Into The Quagmire

October 5, 2014 Jason Hirthler, www.counterpunch.org , , ,
More than 191,000 dead in Syria during the civil war. Four to five million displaced. Nearly 3,800 slaughtered in Iraq in September alone. The numbers mount. But America is back on the case. President Obama has assembled a crack cabal of international criminal satraps to fight the world-historical scourge known as ISIS, the band of some 30,000 fundamentalist killers marauding through Iraq and Syria. True, ISIS is laying waste to the Iraqi Army and the slightly more respectable Kurdish Peshmerga. These mad jihadists par excellence are said to be within an hour’s drive of Baghdad, a reality that has more irony beneath it than the Middle East has petroleum. Baghdad trembles behind the new, untested al-Abadi government, which has yet to show it is any more “inclusive”—that magic touchstone—than the U.S.-installed al-Malaki government before it.

Official Washington’s Syrian ‘Fantasy’

October 3, 2014 Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com , , , ,
What does it say when the capital of the world’s most powerful nation anchors a major decision about war in what every thinking person acknowledges is a “fantasy” – even the principal policymaker and a top advocate for foreign interventions? It might suggest that the U.S. government has completely lost its bearings or that political opportunism now so overwhelms rationality that shortsighted expediency determines life-or-death military strategies. Either way, it is hard to see how the current U.S. policy toward Iraq, Syria and the larger Middle East can serve American national interests or translate into anything but more misery for the people of the region.

Cost Of Bombing ISIS Closing In On $1 Billion

October 2, 2014 Amanda Terkel, www.huffingtonpost.com , , ,
The U.S. military operations targeting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria have already cost taxpayers between $780 and $930 million, according to an analysis by an independent think tank. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments issued a new report Monday assessing how much the military campaign has already cost (through Sept. 24) and how much more will likely be spent in the coming months. CSBA estimates that if the current pace of operations continues, the United States could spend between $200 and $320 million a month, in a conservative estimate assuming a "moderate level of air operations and 2,000 deployed ground forces."

Demonstrators Denounce Civilian Deaths In Syria, Airstrikes Continue

September 30, 2014 Liz Fields, www.news.vice.com , ,
Coalition warplanes launched a fresh wave of airstrikes against Islamic State targets across Syria on Saturday, despite demonstrations in the town of al Atareb condemning the US-led assault, which residents have blamed for the deaths of at least 27 people, including civilians, in the area. The protests in al Atareb on Friday brought together dozens of people who marched and chanted through the streets, some holding placards. One sign written in English read: "Don't kill our children by your aircrafts." The outcry from residents comes three days after coalition forces conducted joint drone and plane strikes against a militant base. The bodies of at least 27 locals were pulled out of the rubble, including an unspecified number of civilians, according to a report from a group called the al Atareb Civil Defense.

Syrian Civil Society Reacts To Coalition Bombings

September 30, 2014 Dan Wilkofsky, www.syriadirect.com , ,
“There are a multitude of opinions and analyses around these attacks. The attackers say that they are targeting terrorism, represented by the Islamic State, but when everyone sees how the coalition warplanes target other brigades which are fighting the regime, and avoid hitting the regime or its terrorist militias, the [aforementioned opinions and analyses] become muddled. Destroying terrorism needs to begin from the top, in the palaces of the Assad regime, and putting an end to the flow of Syrian blood begins with the fall of this regime.”

Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria

September 30, 2014 Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org , , , , ,
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland.

The War on ISIS: Views From Syrian Activists and Intellectuals

September 27, 2014 Danny Postel, www.dissentmagazine.org , , ,
My support for the Syrian revolution is unconditional and for that reason I am opposed to the U.S. intervention. The United States and its regional allies have done everything to undermine the Syrian revolution. Most importantly they have done so by supporting the Syrian National Coalition against the grassroots movements. U.S. allies such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar initially backed Assad and later funded and equipped the most reactionary forces in the opposition. These same powers (plus Iraq) are now forming a coalition to fight ISIS. But these countries played a major role, directly and indirectly, in making ISIS a regional power. The United States and Saudi Arabia were instrumental in the creation and funding of global jihadism since the 1980s to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq led to the emergence of al Qaeda in Iraq. Qatar is helping Jabhat al-Nusra while Turkey was, until recently, allowing ISIS to operate freely and cross its borders unchecked. The U.S. intervention in Syria (and Iraq) will kill many innocent civilians. It will also fulfill ISIS’s wish to become the primary anti-American force in the region and thereby help the terrorist organization recruit more fighters.

Veterans For Peace Opposes Bombing Of Syria And Iraq

September 24, 2014 Veterans for Peace, www.veteransforpeace.org , , ,
The U.S. is racing down a slippery slope towards war in Iraq and Syria. Since Aug. 8, the U.S. has conducted more than 124 airstrikes in Iraq. Approximately 1,000 U.S. troops are now on the ground in Iraq, with at least 350 more currently on their way. President Obama initially said the bombing was part of a humanitarian mission to assist the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq being threatened by ISIS, the fundamentalist Islamic army that now controls wide swaths of Iraq and Syria. But Obama has now announced an open-ended bombing campaign, and he has ordered Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry into the region to build military and political coalitions to sustain a long term war against ISIS.

Five Arrested At White House In Anti-War Protest

September 23, 2014 Anne Meador, DC Media Group, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
A few dozen proponents of nonviolence demonstrated in front of the White House the morning after U.S.-led airstrikes on targets in Syria. They attempted to deliver a letter to President Obama calling for drastic changes in policy regarding militarism, poverty and the environment, and they engaged in a civil disobedience action by blocking a White House entrance. Five were arrested. At the same time, President Obama delivered remarks about the airstrikes in front of Marine One on the White House lawn, touting the strength of a multinational coalition. He then departed for the United Nations in New York. Signs at the protest said things such as "No U.S. Military Intervention in Syria,” “Reparations Not More Bombs,” and “There Is No Military Solution." Three demonstrators wore orange jumpsuits and black hoods and carried a banner protesting Guantanamo Bay prison. Several wore blue scarves, symbolizing their identification as global citizens, and expressing solidarity with women and youth in Afghanistan, where the blue scarf movement originated.
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