“I’m now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq,” General Norman Schwarzkopf, known as ‘Stormin’ Norman, said at a press conference sometime in 1991, as he showed a video of US bombs blasting an Iraqi bridge, seconds after the Iraqi driver managed to cross it. But then, a far more unjust invasion and war followed in 2003, following a decade-long siege that cost Iraq a million of its children and its entire economy.
More that half of the US foreign military spending for 2016 goes to Israel. As in all things, Israel gets special treatment by the US allowing Israel to spend 25% of its gift from the US to pay itself for buying weapons from its own weapons industry.
Not only is the United States not a hegemonic power but it isn’t even the most powerful actor in this fragmented region. Its unwillingness to admit this reality to itself is a danger to the entire world.
The US military presence will not create long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan. On the contrary: as long as US troops are there, militants will fight to oust them. The ills afflicting the Afghan people require a political solution that includes the withdrawal of all foreign forces. That, indeed, is the only long-term cure.
Imagine the Syrian war from the point of view of ordinary Syrians from a variety of backgrounds. They are most likely to offer a different perspective and to hold entirely different expectations than most other parties involved.
It has been recently announced that Arab ‘media experts’ plan to ‘celebrate’ Arab Media Day on April 21, 2016. Yet Arab media has little to celebrate. If anything, Arabs should lament the moral malaise afflicting their media, whether official, semi-official, independent or opposition.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019