Al Jazeera columnist Charles Davis reminds us that the Democratic Party is the War Party and they are proud, absolutely proud, that Obama will not consult lawyers before starting a war with Iran and that his administration has imposed the harshest, toughest, and crippling child-killing sanctions ever.
Here is the quote from the official Democratic National Committee website titled “MITT ROMNEY CONTINUES TO DISTORT THE TRUTH ON IRAN”:
Contrary to Romney’s rhetoric today, President Obama has repeatedly stood by Israel and said it would be unacceptable for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. He has consistently stated that no option is off the table. And he backs up his rhetoric with action. The Obama administration has put in place the most severe sanctions Iran has ever faced and requested a record level of military assistance to aid Israel’s security.
In contrast to President Obama’s decisive action, Romney said more than four years ago he would consult with his lawyers before figuring out how to deal with Iran. He also has had investments in companies that do business in Iran. The commander-in-chief only gets one chance to get it right when it comes to matters of foreign policy, and Romney’s bluster on Iran only shows yet again that he will say anything to get elected.
PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS MADE IT CLEAR HE WILL NOT ALLOW A NUCLEAR IRAN AND ALL OPTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE
Did you see the bit that was bolded and underlined? I did not and no one else reading it would miss it as it appears like that on the website.
The implication of this attack on Romney is that unlike the masculine, terrorist-killing Obama, Romney is a sissy who will consult his lawyers whether it is legal to attack a country which poses no threat whatsoever to the United States.
“ALL OPTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE” the Democrats proudly scream.
Two female Army reservists are suing the DOD because policies excluding them from assignments “solely because they are women” violate their right to equal protection guaranteed by the Constitution’s 5th Amendment. “This limitation on plaintiffs’ careers restricts their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits.”
So actually, they just want money, but are willing to kill to get it if necessary.
And I thought joining the military was for patriotism, honor, duty, and country?
— Laurence Vance on women who want to kill.
In a story that is not getting enough attention, it appears to be that the White House has succeeded in pressuring Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai in adopting an indefinite detention regime for the over 3,000 prisoners in Obama’s Afghan Gitmo.
John Glaser reports:
With Washington’s supervision, Afghanistan is secretly adopting a system of indefinite detention for thousands of prisoners previously held without charge by the U.S., human rights organizations have found.
As part of the Obama administration’s concessions to the government in Kabul, led by President Hamid Karzai, control of all Afghan prisons will be relinquished to Afghan control. But Washington has directed Karzai to secretly adopt what is called “administrative detention,” which means indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial for the over 3,000 detainees held in Bagram Airbase.
This convenient arrangement allows the White House to commit egregious human rights abuses without the risk of political liability by outsourcing all of that to Afghanistan’s government.
It can be argued that the existence of these “gulags” also delegitimizes Karzai’s government in the eyes of the Afghan people. Empowered by the United States’ approval, the use of indefinite detentions by the Afghan government will inevitably increase and, if it has not already happened, be expanded to include the suppression of dissent.
Afghanistan has often enough been called “the graveyard of empires.” Americans have made it a habit to whistle past that graveyard, looking the other way — a form of obliviousness much aided by the fact that the American war dead conveniently come from the less well known or forgotten places in our country. They are so much easier to ignore thanks to that.
Except in their hometowns, how easy the war dead are to forget in an era when corporations go to war but Americans largely don’t. So far, 1,980 American military personnel (and significant but largely unacknowledged numbers of private contractors) have died in Afghanistan, as have 1,028 NATO and allied troops, and (despite U.N. efforts to count them) unknown but staggering numbers of Afghans.
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Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Road to Amnesia | TomDispatch (via nickturse)
I wish I can say that eight years of Bush and soon eight years of Obama has desensitized the American people to war and all its horrors. This is, however, not the case.
For the American people to be desensitized to their wars is for them to be exposed to the carnage and to be made aware of the inhuman toll of those wars. There is no numbness to be had when Americans never meet the soldiers whose bodies, minds, and lives are irreparably ruined. Empathy for the victims of America’s imperial ambitions is unnecessary when one never has console a mother or a child whose entire family had just been incinerated by a Predator Drone.
With America and her wars, there is no desensitization, but a willful ignorance and silent complicity.
(via nickturse)
Watch how quickly “liberals” ignore Rahm Emmanuel’s vicious attack on free speech rights. Emmanuel, former Obama administration chief of staff and current mayor of Chicago, had his police conduct pre-protest raids on activists’ homes. The police are claiming that the raids were spurred in part by a bomb plot targeting Emmanuel’s home and the Obama campaign headquarters.
If you thought it was going to take at least five years or a Republican president to start charging protesters with terrorism, think again.
