Bush’s Wars
It would not have been hard to improve on President George Bush’s normal listless speaking style and, faced with the great challenge of his speech to the joint session of Congress on Thursday night,...
View ArticleA War Prayer
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy...
View ArticleUnlimited War?
For more than a week everyone has been saying that our world changed on Sept. 11. In fact, it was on Sept. 20 that the world changed, the day that George W. Bush spoke to the nation and announced the...
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With the Northern Alliance
Complete CounterPunch Coverage of September 11 Attacks The post With the Northern Alliance appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
View ArticleBring Me the Head of Nostradamus
I never know when the phone will ring and it’ll be my old friend, Leon Despair, calling from who knows where. just when I least expect it. This time the phone rang at 2:30 a.m. He had some questions...
View ArticleHitchens and American Innocence
News from Tashkent, Uzbekistan comes to us that US military aircraft landed at a military airport yesterday. The first installment of bombers is poised to blast Afghanistan from the map, to render the...
View Article“Draining the Swampof Terrorists”
It is odd to hear a U.S. secretary of defense borrow metaphors from Mao Tse-tung during a Washington press briefing. But it is frightening when that metaphor is turned on its head to announce...
View ArticleThe Fate of Reagan’s Freedom Fighters
One of my earliest recollections of Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters,” much admired by many in the U.S. press in the early years of Jihad against the secular government of the time, was the hell...
View ArticleThe Fate of Reagan’s Freedom Fighters
One of my earliest recollections of Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters,” much admired by many in the U.S. press in the early years of Jihad against the secular government of the time, was the hell...
View ArticleTerrorism and Nonviolence
“When in despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won; there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always...
View ArticleEndless War
On the frontline facing the Taliban north of Kabul yesterday, a plump Afghan artillery officer called Commander Mustapha was expecting the war to worsen in the immediate future. “Either the Talibs will...
View ArticleThe Meaning of bin Laden
Was it really bin Laden? The question is moot. The U.S. needs a face to put on the enemy as it prepares to retaliate for the suicide bombings of September 11, and he’s our man. The Bush administration...
View ArticleTHE PRICE
Once a war criminal, once a US senator, now president of the New School, Bob Kerrey joined CNN’s Paula Zahn as for commentary Monday morning. Zahn made chaste reference to Kerrey’s expertise in...
View ArticleBlack Tuesday
Samuel Huntington’s evil desire for a clash between civilizations may well come true after Tuesday’s terror attacks. The crack that divided Muslims everywhere from the rest of the world is no longer a...
View ArticleCashbox Diplomacy
Bush is Wall Street’s president. His top advisers are all former CEO’s, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Don Evans and Paul O’Neill. Thus it’s not surprising that the administration has chosen...
View ArticleWhy the Attacks May Have “Failed”
Much airtime and bandwidth has been devoted to the “brilliance” of the elaborately-planned and well-executed September 11 terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. Some of the commentary has...
View ArticleTaliban Prisoners on Bin Laden
If there is one place on earth where the news of the attacks in America was greeted with total enthusiasm it was among the 300 Taliban prisoners of war held in a jail in the depths of the Panjshir...
View ArticleHitchens at War
When Christopher Hitchens supports a Western war he usually concentrates his fire on the ‘enemy’. During the Falklands escapade he wasn’t bothered by the sinking of the Belgrano or other such trivia...
View ArticleAll Dressed Up and No Place to Go
The table is set, at least so far as the tools of war are concerned; enormous quantities of American men, machines, and ordnance now stand ready to strike at any number of potential targets around the...
View ArticleRidge Scheduled As New Veep
Before the September 11 attacks, vice president Dick Cheney was set to quit. President George Bush was preparing to nominate Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as Cheney’s successor. A prominent...
View ArticleTaliban Prisoners on Bin Laden
Jawid smiles nervously as he recounts his escape from a Taliban jail and his flight across the front line to safety in territory held by the Afghan opposition. A taxi driver in Kabul, Jawid, 21, was...
View ArticleWar, Oil and Renewable Energy
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, citizens have begun to ask “how could this happen?” Among the several complexly twisted roots of the crisis are America and the industrial...
View ArticleWaiting for the Real War to Start
Exploding shells twinkle over a hilltop in northern Afghanistan as opposition soldiers try to show that one day they will have the strength to overthrow the Taliban in Kabul. A line of soldiers...
View ArticleBacklash and Backtrack
For the seven million Americans who are Muslims (only two million of them Arab) and have lived through the catastrophe and backlash of 11 September, it’s been a harrowing, especially unpleasant time....
View ArticleNow for a Note of Good Cheer
We’ve been surprised, listening to some friends and acquaintances in Humboldt county, northern California, and up in Portland, Oregon, who say they’re afraid. Afraid of what, we ask. In this case,...
View ArticleWhen Language Fails
In the 17 days since two planes flew into the World Trade Center, a third plane flew into the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania, I have read the same story, in different news sources,...
View ArticleWaiting For the Missiles to Fall
People fled their homes in Kabul yesterday fearing a US air attack when they heard Taliban anti-aircraft gunners open fire. It turned out to be a military exercise. The opening of an air offensive is...
View ArticleThe Pentagon’s Blueprint
A New Kind of War If you’re mystified as to what U.S. officials envisage when they talk of a long war to be fought on many fronts by many means, you would do well to read what the big boys are reading....
View ArticleBombs in 48 Hours?
The Independent The US will strike at Osama bin Laden’s supply bases “in days rather than weeks” a senior opposition leader in northern Afghanistan, in daily contact with Washington, predicted...
View ArticleWhat’s Africa Have To Do With The Eventsof September 11?
I deliberately raised this question as the caption of this commentary to underscore some points. To be sure, it is not a suggestion of culpability of Africans regarding the September 11 terror but more...
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