Military
Less than a day after Republicans in the United States Senate rejected a chance this week “to slam on the brakes and stop [America’s] role in enabling the suffering in Yemen,” at least 26 more children were slaughtered by a U.S.-backed Saudi-led bombing in the western part of the country.
War has had a terrible impact on children in Afghanistan. After almost two decades of United States development efforts, with the hopes of helping the war-weary country take a path to stability and self-reliance, little has changed on the ground for children growing up today in Afghanistan. They are not safer. They do not have more rights. And they have never known peace. The truth is, living conditions in the country may be worse than when the “peacemaking” started in 2001.
Here are 8 things that are undermining your freedom that you need to know about (but probably don’t) by Gary Z McGee (The Mind Unleashed).
In the wake of the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition’s horrific bombing of a school bus last week that killed 40 Yemeni children and amid reports on Tuesday of dozens more civilian deaths after a new wave of Saudi bombings, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has sent a detailed letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General demanding an investigation into whether Trump administration officials violated U.S. or international law by assisting the Saudis in their assault on Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition, which receives essential military support and intelligence from the U.S., “has repeatedly hit civilian targets—including schools, hospitals, funerals, and weddings—nowhere near military targets,” Lieu writes.
The Yemenis mean us no harm and have committed no crime against us. US citizens bear responsibility for the US government’s support of war crimes against Yemen.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader puts check on Laura Bush and Michelle Obama for selective criticism when it comes to kids harmed by brutal U.S. policies: “Would be nice if Laura Bush and Michelle Obama had expressed similar heartfelt concern for the tens of thousands of children killed or seriously maimed by the wars of their husbands in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”
With a “green light” from the Trump administration and essential military support from the U.S. government, Saudi-led forces plowed ahead with an assault on the Yemeni port city of Hodeida on Wednesday, brushing aside dire warnings from international humanitarian organizations and a small group of American lawmakersthat an attack on the key aid harbor could spark a full-blown famine and endanger millions of lives. Win Without War wrote on Twitter that the attack on Hodeida is “a dark moment of shame for the United States. We could have stopped this.”
After Pompeo’s unveiled “Plan B” for nuclear negotiations—which comes around two weeks after President Donald Trump violated the Iran nuclear accord and placed the U.S. on the path to yet another war in the Middle East—National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi argued that the Trump administration’s demands are intentionally unrealistic and “clearly designed to ensure there cannot be any new negotiation.”
If Any Other Country Was Shooting Civilians Like Israel, The US Would Be Calling For Invasion By Now
The death toll in Gaza increased dramatically on Monday as Israeli Defense Forces opened fire on thousands of Palestinian civilians, killing 41 and injuring at least 1,700, and the United States’ response served as a reminder that if the governments in Iran, Syria, North Korea or Russia had done the same thing, the U.S. would be calling for a full-scale invasion right now. It is hypocrisy at its finest, especially considering the fact that the U.S. has a history of cheering on and aiding protests against foreign governments. In fact, when the mainstream media began sharing reports of protests in Iran in December 2017, President Trump took to Twitter to cheer on the dissidents.
Once again, the Israeli military has turned its guns on Gaza—this time on unarmed protestors, in a series of shootings over the last few weeks. Gaza’s already under-resourced hospitals are straining to care for the thousands of protesters who have been injured, in addition to the 40 who have been killed.
As Americans rushed to pay their taxes on Tuesday before the official deadline, peace groups reminded the public of the uncomfortable fact that an “astronomical amount” of the money sent to the IRS each year goes not to funding education or a single-payer healthcare system the U.S. supposedly can’t afford, but straight into the bloated coffers of the Pentagon.
The media’s job, we are told, is to ask skeptical questions about the people in power. That didn’t happen in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and it’s not happening now. Here are the questions that should be asked – not just on the eve of a bombing attack, but every day we continue our disastrous and drifting military intervention in the Middle East.
A 1983 document signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria” (PDF), states (their emphasis): Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.
Holding up the U.N. charter, which allows the use of military force for members only when necessary for self-defense or with the approval of the Security Council, Bolivian ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz said, “And we also know that they have nothing but scorn for international law…”
In August 2012, then-President Barack Obama publicly warned the Assad government that the red line for his administration was “a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” which would prompt a U.S. intervention. Since Obama drew his red line, the official narrative went something along these lines: Assad decided to give Obama the political middle finger and routinely massacre civilians with banned nerve agents such as sarin gas, even in the face of warnings and hawkish calls for intervention. The latest alleged attack took place over this past weekend in a Damascus suburb in Eastern Ghouta known as Douma, just days after Trump called for the withdrawal of U.S. forced from Syria.
