War

There is nothing new in governments claiming to be motivated by humanitarian concerns when they go to war. To take a couple of old examples: tsarist Russia supposedly fought the Ottoman Empire in order to rescue Armenians from massacre by the Turks, while British intervention following the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 was...
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“Dawoud Ameen, a former Iraqi soldier, lay in bed, his shattered legs splayed before him, worrying about the rent for his family of five. Mr. Ameen’s legs were shredded by shrapnel from a roadside bomb in September 2006 and now, like many wounded members of the Iraqi security forces, he is deeply in debt...
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“A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say. The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the...
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Bush gave a speech to Israel’s Knesset in which he spoke of the president of Iran, who has called for the destruction of the U.S. ally. Then, the president said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been...
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“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Michael Ledeen (American Enterprise Institute) Last month 100 U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan held hearings in Washington to describe...
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A boat carrying an arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe is anchored at the South African port of Durban. However the South African Transport Workers’ Union has already announced that their members will not offload any of the cargo, nor will any of their truckers transport it. The shipment containing “3 million rounds of ammunition...
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Preparations for a US attack on Iran are well advanced. American planes probe the country’s air defences. Commandos infiltrate Iran on sabotage and reconnaissance missions. A new military base is built close to the Iraq/Iran border at Badrah. The Fifth Fleet patrols in the Gulf and along Iran’s southern coast. Political preparations also continue....
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The latest issue of Socialist Worker (25 August) of the Socialist Workers Party (UK) carries an article on the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International which took place a hundred years ago. According to the author, John Riddell, the Congress “took a bold stand in the struggle against capitalist war”. No, it didn’t. The...
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The US anarcho-capitalist Libertarians are wrong to think that capitalism could exist without a state or that its competitive struggle for profits does not lead to wars. The anti-war movement in the United States may be underwhelming at the moment, but clearly anti-war sentiment today, four years after Bush declared the mission accomplished, is...
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  A previous post discussed the Chinese expansionism in Africa . However , the United States remain a big-player on the continent . Recently formed was the military command structure AFRICOM. Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper published for the U.S. military said :- “AFRICOM’s purpose is to make Africa the primary concern of...
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