After two decades of unilateral U.S. foreign policy in which the United States has systematically ignored and violated international law, leaving widespread death, violence and chaos in its wake, U.S. foreign policy may finally be coming full circle, at least in the case of Afghanistan.
Last October, reporter Hiroko Tabuchi tweeted that she’d “been thinking a lot about fossil fuels and white supremacy recently,” noting that nearly every oil industry official she’d encountered as a reporter was white and male. ExxonMobil complained the tweet was a “baseless claim alleging industry links to white supremacy,” and Tabuchi later deleted it. But according to University of Notre Dame historian Darren Douchuk, Tabuchi’s tweet reflected something real.
Six years ago, on March 26, 2015, the US green-lighted and provided logistical support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen that continues on a daily basis. The US/Saudi war, which includes as allies the several members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, is an undeclared war, illegal under international law, and an endless crime against humanity.
Last week has seen the GOP triumph in focusing on making Black voters “ghosts” as far as voting rights and Brown migrants from south of the border as criminal marauders. Never mind that the “crisis” of massive attempted southern border crossings has existed through several Republican and Democratic administrations — with even the Obama administration having an aggressive deportation policy. Ted Cruz should be reminded that when the Civil War began, Texas joined the Confederacy as a slave state. The white settlers also extended their racism and land appropriation to Mexican and indigenous residents, some of whom owned land under charters from Spain.
The title of this book describes its mission, which is to move beyond surviving abuse or assault, and to organize for the purpose of addressing violence and the root causes of violence. Transformative Justice , if implemented widely and over time, will build community safety systems that can function independently of the criminal justice system. The essays in this book are first-hand accounts describing approaches for responding to and preventing violence and abuse without police and prisons.
“Is this who we are?” President Obama animatedly and passionately asked, as he made a case in favor of the closure of Guantánamo, speaking as if a human rights advocate, not a Commander-in-Chief who had direct authority to shut down the entire facility. The truth is that the Abu Ghraib tortures were not by ‘a few bad apples’ and Guantánamo is, indeed, a microcosm of exactly what the US is, or has become.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019