U.S. hypocrisy on nuclear weapons and Iran

In Honduras, the coup leaders are besieging the sovereign embassy of Brazil, jailing peaceful demonstrators, and have already killed several of President Zavala’s supporters. In the U.S., riot police are using sound cannons, tear gas grenades, and rubber bullets against protesters at the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh. Israel has once again back-tracked on building new settlements in the West Bank, making certain that the war with the Palestinians will continue. . . .

And in the midst of all this, Barack Obama, the president of the only country in the world to ever use nuclear weapons against civilians, is calling for sanctions – not against Honduras or Israel, but against Iran because of a “discovery” (actually made long before he became president) that it is allegedly building nuclear weapons.

It is hard to know where to start with the utter hypocrisy of President Obama’s position. It is a distraction, drawing the attention of the world away from this country’s police repression against demonstrators. It is a slap in the face to the people of Honduras and the people of Palestine who see the U.S. posturing about peace and democracy while its allies in power stomp them with iron boots. But most of all it is a sham and travesty that the nation that has stockpiled more nuclear weapons than any other, that has threatened to use nuclear weapons more than any other, and that has actually used nuclear weapons against another nation assumes the moral and legal authority to threaten another nation for simply pursuing nuclear technology.

This is how my friend David Schultz put it, and I don’t think I can improve on this: “Is it like the smoking parent saying to the child — “don’t smoke.” Or more like the parent’s dog is named Marlboro, and every room in his house has nothing but cigarettes in it. and his kids have no food because all he does is buy cigarettes.”

The nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction amassed by the U.S. make it the most dangerous nation on the planet . . . and those weapons are bought with the wealth that should feed our children, care for our sick and house our homeless. Buying in to Obama’s hypocrisy on Iran is sanctioning the U.S, war machine that starves our children while bringing death and destruction to the children of the world. No matter whether you think Obama is right on health care reform or his appointment to the Supreme Court, the people of the United States have a moral responsibility to stop the war drive – including sanctions – against Iran.

Filed under: Endless war on terror

U.S. attack on Syrian civilians a “war crime”

Even the U.S. military likes to maintain the pretense that it respects national borders. So yesterday’s U.S. helicopter raid that resulted in the killing of eight Syrian civilians is provoking not only outrage but also serious questions from the international community.

Officially, the U.S. military will only say that it is “investigating” the attack on a small farm five miles from the Syrian side of its border with Iraq.  But the Los Angeles Times “covered” the story by pre-emptively explaining and defending the attack, and by citing high level military sources who “did not deny that a raid had taken place . . . [and] used language typically employed after raids conducted by secretive special operations forces.”  The L.A. Times correspondent also claims that the details of the attack are “sketchy” leaving us to suppose that information about the accuracy of the report or the identity of its victims is somehow difficult to discover, but the AFP news agency was able to obtain details, including statements by victims of the attack and grabs from Syrian TV showing two of the victims.

Filed under: Endless war on terror