Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies January 21, 2011. Also in Common Dreams and Eurasia Review
Many in the West are familiar with the way unarmed pro-democracy insurrections have helped bring democracy to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa. But they discount the chances of such movements in Islamic countries, despite Tunisia being far from the first. Meanwhile, the United States… continues to actively support authoritarian governments…
Category: Foreign Policy
ROTC policy on Wikileaks threatens academic freedom
Huffington Post Jan 25, 2011 |Updated May 25, 2011 by Stephen Zunes
I have found ROTC cadets to be among my favorite students… It was with great consternation, therefore, to learn that, according to a memo sent to ROTC programs at the University of San Francisco and other colleges and universities last month, they have effectively been prohibited from completing any assignments that professors may make involving any material released through WikiLeaks…
Democrats Push Through Yet Another Anti-Palestinian Resolution
December 19, 2010Though outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has insisted that there just isn’t enough time for the lame duck Democratic-controlled Congress to consider much of the progressive legislation on the docket prior to the Republican takeover early next month, she and other Democratic leaders did find time last Wednesday to pass a resolution condemning efforts by Palestinian moderates to seek recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The Oslo accords were signed in 1993 with the vision of Israel’s eventual withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This was an enormous compromise on the Palestinian side, given that such a state would leave them with only 22% of their historic homeland, the rest of which became the state of Israel in 1948…
Richard Holbrooke Represented the Worst Side of the Foreign Policy Establishment
Truthout December 14, 2010; also Huffington Post and on KBOO Radio
The many accolades coming out following the sudden death on Monday of veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and his deathbed conversion in opposing the Iraq war have overshadowed his rather sordid history of supporting dictators, war criminals and military solutions to complex political problems…
WikiLeaks Cables on Western Sahara Show Role of Ideology in State Department
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies December 6, 2010; also in Huffington Post & Global Voices
Over the years, as part of my academic research, I have spent many hours at the National Archives poring over diplomatic cables of the kind recently released by WikiLeaks. The only difference is that rather than being released after a 30+ year waiting period — when the principals involved are presumably dead or in retirement and the countries in question have very different governments in power — the WikiLeaks are a lot more recent, more relevant and, in some cases, more embarrassing. However, those of us who have actually read such cables over the years find nothing in them particularly unusual or surprising.
A “Progressive Hero?” Time to Think Outside of the Boxer
Huffington Post Oct 20, 2010|Updated May 25, 2011; also ZNetwork
The failure of progressives to make major inroads in electoral politics in the U.S. today could not be better illustrated than a recent decision by Democracy for America, a million-member political action committee founded by former Vermont governor Howard Dean which claims leadership in the support for progressive candidates for office, regarding a veteran U.S. senator facing reelection in November. The senator has strongly defended Israeli attacks on civilian population centers in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Lebanon and rejected calls for linking the billions of dollars in U.S. aid to human rights considerations…
Congress Defends Murder of American Peace Activist and Other War Crimes
Truthout October 11, 2010; also in Znetwork
Despite revelations from a detailed investigation by a special commission of the UN Human Rights Council confirming that Israel committed war crimes, the overwhelming majority of both Republican and Democratic members of Congress remain on record defending the Israeli attack as legitimate self-defense. This is particularly striking given evidence presented in the report that five of the nine people killed, including a 19-year-old US citizen, were murdered – shot execution-style by Israeli commandos…
Senate Again Undermines Obama’s Middle-East Peace Efforts
Huffington Post October 11, 2010. Also by ZNetwork.
Once again, as President Barack Obama began pressuring the right-wing Israeli government to freeze the expansion of its illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, leading Congressional Democrats have joined in with Republicans to try to stop him.
Iraq: The Democrats’ War
Truthout Sept. 10, 2010 & Common Dreams
The ongoing presence of over 50,000 US troops, many thousands of civilian employees and tens of thousands of US-backed mercenaries raises serious questions over the significance of the partial withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. The August 31 deadline marking the “end of US combat operations in Iraq” is not as real or significant a milestone as President Obama implied… with all the attention on the supposed withdrawal of US combat forces, it is important to acknowledge the forces that got us into this tragic conflict in the first place.
The Other Oil Spill
Huffington Post Sep 8, 2010, Updated May 25, 2011
Leading congressional Democrats are outraged at British Petroleum and others responsible for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But that stands in sharp contrast to their outspoken support of those responsible for a major oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean in 2006, the largest in that region’s history. On July 13 and 15 of that year, as part of a major bombardment of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Israeli planes bombed the fuel tanks for the Jiyeh power plant on the coast near Beirut, releasing 10,000–15,000 tons of oil…
Harry Reid’s Anti-Islamic Agenda
Truthout September 1, 2010
The moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party could not be any more evident than in its continued support for Nevada Sen. Harry Reid as majority leader despite his decision to join the bigoted and Islamophobic campaign against the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center in New York, arguing that it “should be built somewhere else.”
This was also an apparent effort to embarrass President Barack Obama – who, in a rare example of showing some spine in the face of right-wing attacks – defended the First Amendment rights of the Muslim group…
Pavlovian Congress Jumps to Israel’s ‘Self-’ Defense
Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, June 25, 2010, also in Znetwork.org
In a letter to President Barack Obama date June 17, 329 out of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives referred to Israel’s May 31 attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters, which resulted in the deaths of nine passengers and crew and injuries to scores of others, as an act of “self-defense” which they “strongly support.” Similarly, a June 21 Senate letter — signed by 87 out of 100 senators — went on record “fully” supporting what it called “Israel’s right to self-defense,” claiming that the widely supported effort to relieve critical shortages of food and medicine in the besieged Gaza Strip was simply part of a “clever tactical and diplomatic ploy” by “Israel’s opponents” to “challenge its international standing.”
Israel’s Dubious Investigation of Flotilla Attack
Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies June 24, 2010: Also by OpEdnews.com, Common Dreams, Huffington Post & Znetwork
Few decisions of the Obama administration have outraged the peace and human rights community as much as its successful efforts to block an international inquiry into May’s Israeli aid flotilla attack. Instead, supported by leading Republican and Democratic members of Congress, the Obama administration has thrown its weight behind an investigative committee handpicked by right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu… [source]
Democratic Party Defends Israeli Attack
OpEdNews Op Eds, June 16, 2010, and Common Dreams
Tens of thousands of Israelis protested in the streets of Tel Aviv last weekend against their right-wing government’s attack on an unarmed humanitarian aid flotilla sailing in international waters. International condemnation of the raids continued in foreign capitals. Meanwhile, in Washington, Democratic congressional leaders were lining up alongside their Republican colleagues to defend the Israeli assault. Countering the broad consensus of international legal scholars who recognize that the attack was in flagrant violation of international norms, prominent Democrats embraced the Orwellian notion that Israel’s raid, which killed at least nine activists and wounded scores of others, was somehow an act of self-defense… [source]
Will the Flotilla Attack Be Our “Kent State” Moment?
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, June 7, 2010;
also CommonDreams, ZNetwork & Baltimore Nonviolence Center blog
Israel’s attack on the unarmed flotilla last weekend could be a “Kent State moment.” When white middle-class students were gunned down on a college campus, it woke up a whole new segment of American society to police killings of minority students. Similarly, while the Israeli military has been killing Arab civilians for years, now that they have attacked European and American peace activists it has created a whole new dynamic. [source]
The Gaza War, Congress and International Humanitarian Law
Middle East Policy Council April 16, 2010; also Institute for Palestine Studies, ResearchGate, Typeset.io & Wiley
The large-scale killing of civilians during Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09 received widespread condemnation from human-rights advocates and international legal scholars the world over. In both Europe and North America, public reaction to the grossly disproportionate Israeli response to Hamas rocket attacks was the most negative ever expressed against an Israeli military action. In Israel itself, soldiers who had witnesses some of the atrocities joined Israeli peace activists in exposing war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). However, the U.S. Congress, under the leadership of the Democratic Party, overwhelmingly defended the Israeli offensive, even to the point of attacking leading defenders of international humanitarian law. [source]
U.S. Lawmakers Support Illegal Annexation
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, April 5, 2010; also CommonDreams, Global Policy Forum, Huffington Post, Toward Freedom, Transcend International, ZNetwork & Baltimore Nonviolence Center blogIn yet another assault on fundamental principles of international law, a bipartisan majority of the Senate has gone on record calling on the United States to endorse Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony invaded by Moroccan forces in 1975 on the verge of its independence. In doing so, the Senate is pressuring the Obama administration to go against a series of UN Security Council resolutions, a landmark decision of the International Court of Justice, and the position of the African Union and most of the United States’ closest European allies.
More disturbingly, this effort appears to have the support of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. [source]
Obama Stumbles on Human Rights
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, March 4, 2010; also AHEWAR.org, CommonDreams, Huffington Post & Nasir-Khan blog
It was a relatively short response to a question in a town hall-style meeting in Florida, yet it said much about President Barack Obama’s lack of concern about human rights in his foreign policy… The student’s question was simple: Given that Obama had spoken about “America’s support for human rights,” she asked, “Why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt’s violations of human rights against the occupied Palestinian peoples [while continuing to support such oppression] with billions of dollars coming from our taxes?” [source]
Obama and the Denial of Genocide
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, March 11, 2010; also Armenian National institute, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, CommonDreams, History of Macedonia, & Huffington Post: The Obama administration, citing its relations with Turkey, has pledged to block the passage in the full House of Representatives of a resolution passed this past Thursday by the Foreign Relations Committee acknowledging the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire of a 1.5 million Armenians. Even though the Obama administration previously refused to acknowledge and even worked to suppress well-documented evidence of recent war crimes by Israel, another key Middle Eastern ally, few believed that the administration would go as far as to effectively deny genocide. [source]
John Hall: Still the One? Why Democrat John Hall does not deserve MoveOn endorsement
Alternet, March 8, 2010 and Huffington Post, May 10, 2010: In the face of expected Republican gains this year, receiving the support of MoveOn, one of the country’s largest progressive advocacy groups, is of particular importance for Democratic candidates. One of only a handful of House incumbents to receive the coveted endorsement by MoveOn’s political action committee is Democrat John Hall, who represents the 19th district in upstate New York. John Hall is the former frontman for the band Orleans (“Dance with Me,” “Still the One,” etc.).